gnome terminal moving through folders

Question

I was wondering if there was a way to navigate back to the previous folder after a 'cd'.

e.g.

~/ cd /home/
~/ cd /usr/local/
~/ want should I write here to return to the home dir (not 'cd /home' ^^)

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

If you're using bash or some similar shell you can use cd - to return to the previous working directory.

[ignacio@localhost ~]$ cd bin/
[ignacio@localhost bin]$ cd -
/home/ignacio
[ignacio@localhost ~]$ 

Answer 2

The pushd/popd utilities keep a stack of the directories that you have visited.

[arcege]:~/Documents> pushd /usr/local
/usr/local ~/Documents
[arcege]:/usr/local> pushd /tmp
/tmp /usr/local ~/Documents
[arcege]:/tmp> dirs
/tmp /usr/local ~/Documents
[arcege]:/tmp> popd
/usr/local ~/Documents
[arcege]:/usr/local> popd
~/Documents
[arcege]:~/Documents>

The downside is that you need to remember to use pushd instead of cd.