2w ago

That is the way

146 comments

undefined

$ cd .. $ ls $ cd .. $ ls
"hmm yes.. everything seems to be in order"
- I need a shell/plugin/tool/whatever that always shows me the content of the current dir in a little popup or something.
  Anything I do in the shell is like cd this, ls, cd there, ls *, I feel like a have the navigational awareness of a amnesiac goldfish
  
  Put this in bashrc or whatever flavour of shells's bashrc you use:
  function cs () { cd "$@" && ls }
  I didnt remember the function sintax of bash so I just copied it from SO.
  
  Alternatively, you could use a TUI file manager. Once you get the navigation down you can manage things pretty quickly. Especially with ones that have options for dual directory layouts, like Midnight Commander or vifm.
  
  It is called windows 2000 explorer and it's great for file operations :) In Linux i have yet to find a really good replacement ;(
  
  that, or you have to make ABSOLUTELY SURE that you haven't accidentally pressed a button on your keyboard that has inevitably resulted in the total destruction of the directory contents
  
  A window, you say!?
  
  You probably want rangerfm or vifm. They use miller columns for to show you your surrounding context.
- pwd seems more appropriate than ls
  
  Doesn't let you rifle through things approvingly as you go. "Yes this is the correct directory because it has the three files I was looking at earlier--
  You know what let's do a ls -al just to be super sure it's the right modification
- shell
  
  cd .. pwd ls ls -a tree -d git status -bs cd .. ...
  
  I ain't reading allat
- Sometimes I throw off the linux admin reading my log by throwing in a pwd before going to the next one. Know it's not gonna be in that directory you know?

cd ..
⭡ ⏎
⭡ ⏎
⭡ ⏎
- Oh, shit.
- square

undefined

In your rc: alias ..='cd ..' alias ...='cd ../..' alias ....='cd ../../..' Usage: 1/2/3 $ ... 1 $
- That's pretty neat
- Or just use zsh
  
  Yeah, let's use whole different shell, because you can't add some few aliases to your .bashrc.
- This is the way.

..... for zsh users
- Excuse me what? I've been multi cd'ing for years like a chump?
  
  Exactly. The fucking what now?

Depending on where you are, maybe just "cd".
- Smh when are you going to upgrade to dvd

cd .. ls cd .. ls cd .. ls cd .. ls

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alias cd..='cd ..' alias cd...='cd ../..' alias cd....='cd ../../.. alias cd.....='cd ../../../..'
- Then forget all that and just use
  cd ~ or cd /
  
  No need for ~ - just cd works as well.

I alias .. to cd ..
Works for me 🤷🏻
- I do that too!
  I also alias ... to cd ../... I'll be honest, I often forget to do it, but in theory it can speed things up.
- I feel like thats eventually going to case problems when you run a script...

for i in { 1..4 }; do cd ..; done

Try zoxide
- Installing zoxide led me to installing fzf, which has improved my terminal experience by about 35%, I already installed it in all the machines I'm managing
  Got any more tools? :)
  
  Check out Atuin. Its another must have for me. When you push up arrow, it shows your command history in a very pleasing list. You can even generate account keys to migrate your history between PCs, but I've never bothered with it. You can also search past commands on the history menu.
  You don't need an account for it. That's only for the migration keys.
  
  Yeah, these two are fucking awesome. I recently installed zoxide and OMG, i dont know how ive lived without it.
  Other awesome tools: Eza - prettier ls Yazi - vim-like file manager
  
  I don't think there's anything too unusual but here's my nix packages
  undefined
  
  { pkgs }: with pkgs; [ # General packages for development copier # Project scaffolding and templating fastlane jujutsu just # Project specific command runner mise # Tool version manager ngrok # Public tunnel ngrok.com sqlite pre-commit trufflehog # Scan for secrets in code repositories # Encryption and security tools age age-plugin-yubikey gnupg libfido2 # Container tools and SDKs colima podman podman-compose # Media-related packages dejavu_fonts ffmpeg hack-font noto-fonts noto-fonts-emoji meslo-lgs-nf yt-dlp # Text and terminal utilities bat btop # resource monitor #chezmoi # manage dotfiles; to try coreutils # GNU system tools curl delta exiftool f3 # flash drive verification tool fd # alternate find command fzf htop iftop jq # command line JSON tool # openssh ripgrep s3cmd shellcheck # static analysis for shell scripts tree tmux unison unrar unzip wget zip zoxide # fish specific fishPlugins.foreign-env fishPlugins.forgit fishPlugins.fzf-fish fishPlugins.tide fishPlugins.z # Python packages python3 virtualenv ]
  
  I can recommend featureful terminal emulator Kitty. I'd been using tmux and screen for over a decade, but now just get that functionality baked into the terminal. The only time I use tmux now is for remote sessions.
  
  Are you sure it's not 33.3, repeating, of course? Just making sure.
  
  eza is pretty cool, too. I replacement for ls which has built in tree view, dir size summary, and git status.
- zoxide, btop and lazygit are a must for me in any computer.
- Yup. I usually have zoxide installed. It's grand.

Or the alias I have set up
…..
- I kept saying "cd up" in my mind so I just made an alias for cdu, became a reflex within the next day
- Once you've typed .. you know if you type more dots it's to go up more dir, so you don't really need two dots for each additional dir.
  
  Yeah so it was five dots for four directories up. I also have
  … for 2
  And
  …. for 3
  I don’t think I have one for 5. I’d have to look. I also use autojump and fzf which is very useful.
- Ya, this is the way. I use ... all the time

i use fish shell with https://github.com/nickeb96/puffer-fish
basically when i type ... it expands to ../.. and adds another /.. for every additional dot i type
its similar to what the zsh users in the comment section are doing
- I was about to post something similar. With fish you can do your own functions, right? So, you can pass any dots as arguments to a function called cd, so, for every extra dot after .., you append a /.. at the end.
  
  yeah, but its less visual
  cd ..... is harder to understand than cd ../../../..
  also the extension work with any commend, not just cd

I use a lot cd - (go to previous) or just cd to go home.

You forgot the pwd after each 'cd'.
- ls*
  
  Ls doesn't tell them where they are, just what files exist in their current location.

cd ..
<Up arrow>
<Up arrow>
<Up arrow>
<Up arrow>
- cd ..
  history
  !1
  !1
  !1
  ...
  
  undefined
  
  cd .. !! !! !!

cd ..... I use zsh btw
- Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
- don’t even need the cd since if it’s a dir, zsh automatically cd to that path ;)
  just ….. works great
  
  I didn't know that. Thanks!

Me doing it the worst way > opening up dolphin(file explorer) navigating to the folder then opening terminal there.
- I like ranger (https://github.com/ranger/ranger).
- Doesnt dolphin has a terminal in built so you can watch files in gui and still use cli?
  
  Yep you can toggle it with F4
  
  Yes I use it sometime but then I close it and forget about it

undefined

cd .. !! !! !!

alias .4=cd ../../../..
- alias -g .4="../../../.."

undefined

.....

 undefined

    
alias ..='cd ..' #: up one directory
alias ...='cd ../..' #: up two directories

The first two options (autocd and cdspell) have been a lifesaver in fixing my frustrations with the default bash settings (and even lets me stick with bash, instead of feeling I should move to zsh or any other shell.

I can just type a foldername, tabcomplete it and press enter to go there. It's great.

 bash

    
# == shopts ==
# https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/The-Shopt-Builtin.html
shopt -s autocd         # cd into folder without cd, so 'dotfiles' will cd into the folder
shopt -s cdspell        # attempt spelling correcting on folders
shopt -s direxpand      # expand a partial dir name
shopt -s checkjobs      # stop shell from exit when there's jobs running
shopt -s dirspell       # attempt spelling correcting on folders
shopt -s expand_aliases # aliases are expanded
shopt -s histappend     # append to the history file, don't overwrite it
shopt -s histreedit     # lets your re-edit old executed command
shopt -s histverify     # I'm confused.
shopt -s hostcomplete   # performs completion when a word contains an '@'
shopt -s cmdhist        # save multiple-line command in single history entry
shopt -u lithist        # multi-lines are saved with embedded newlines rather than semicolons; explictly unset
shopt -s checkwinsize # update LINES and COLUMNS to fit output

Tbf it is less key presses since you can generally just recall the last command.

undefined

cd .. && ls !! !! !! !!
- What's so surprising?? What did you see in that dir??
  
  Double-bang repeats the previous command. Great if you forget sudo.
  bash
  
  $ rm -rf <folder> permission denied $ sudo !!

cd - helps
- - returns you to the previous path rather than repeat the last cd right? so cd - would undo the cd ..
  
  Point was: most of the time I see someone spending time counting the requisite number of ..s, all they really wanna do is “go back to where I was before”.
  cd foo/bar/baz/qux and cd - is better than cd foo/bar/baz/qux and cd ../../../..

undefined

~$ mkdir -p 1/2/3/4 ~$ pushd 1 ~/1 ~ 1$ pushd 2/3/4 ~/1/2/3/4 ~/1 ~ 4$ popd ~/1 ~ 1$

undefined

cd .. ls ls -la cd .. ls cd .. rm -rf /

Easiest solution, use fish instead of bash! Default fish keybindings will allow you to just type . . or name a directory similar to how you could do with Zoxide.
Also, wait until you find about pushd and popd ;)
- Really buried the lede there: pushd and popd are what I use instead of cd most times!

I've used a script that made 'up 4' a thing. Forgot to migrate it though.
- Biggest issue I have with custom macros is I’m logging into like 5 different machines a day. Don’t wanna keep copying over my custom bash files. Prefer built-in commands.
  
  Yeah, I get that. But I'm traversing my machine a lot while developing, so I want that as hassle free as possible.
  
  Me too. Would love a tool that allows me to have bells and whistles on my remote machines without having to install extra packages on them.
- Heyy I have that in my .bashrc
  Works a charm
  
  Had it in my .zshrc. I should look for it, it was helpful

Honestly I haven't tried this on Linux yet, but didn't Windows implement this somewhere along the way?...
cd ....
- Windows be like
  cd ..
  ls
  grumble grumble
  dir
  
  Wanna fix that real quick?
  echo @dir %1 %2 %3 %4>%SystemRoot%\System32\ls.bat
- I believe, zsh supports that.
  
  Interesting, I might have to check that out someday.
  Though when I write scripts, I'm not a fan of blind folder navigation like that, there's a good reason for the pushd and popd script commands.
- I aliased cd to a custom funtion in my bashrc to do this at one point, but cd ../../../.. is too engrained so I never rembered to use it.
  
  You will probably like zoxide (i am not sure about policy on links here, but here you go https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide)

cd .../...

Wait until we tell them about autojump

The history of the CTO at a previous job was filled with dc and sl because he was a fucking moron. Yes I'm still bitter that he earned way more money than me who had to fix all his mess.
- You could have gifted him some silly fun with the sl package.

I feel called out. Should definitely make an alias or two that auto CDs me the amount of times I need...

Why no cd /////// speceficterm if you know how deep it is
Those are supposed to be stars. I'm not fixing this on a phone

Nah, I always cd to full path, that way I can easily use my history to move back there

I guess if you enjoy being a virgin that much you can do it that way.
- Well, mom said I could be anything when I grew up...

z myDir

Childhood me with only MS-DOS machines is all feeling nostalgic.

cd /some/thing/i/remember

git () { if [ "$1" = "cd" ] then shift cd "./$(command git rev-parse --show-cdup)$*" else command git "$@" fi }

td aliased to cd $(whatever the command is to get the git root directory)

cd..

I created a script called GoUpALevel.

undefined

cd .

alias cdr='cd /'
Heh

undefined

cd .. pwd
- and then rinse and repeat for every level because you just don’t trust that mischievous cd

cd '/dev/sda1'
or
cd "C:/"

More like cd… dir cd… dir cd…

https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bourne-Shell-Builtins.html#index-cd
TIL about $CDPATH may have to populate that!

The good thing about Dolphin is you can have the real tree following your navigation. Want to go up a few levels, just click once, directly where you want to go next. None of this up, up, up nonsense. Great for snooping in many different folders in quick succession.

cd ./..
cd ../._

146 comments