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Comment by revicon

1 year ago

I have a bunch of little scripts and aliases I've written over the years, but none are used more than these...

alias ..='cd ..'

alias ...='cd ../..'

alias ....='cd ../../..'

alias .....='cd ../../../..'

alias ......='cd ../../../../..'

alias .......='cd ../../../../../..'

In fish, I have an abbreviation that automatically expands double dots into ../ so that you can just spam double dots and visually see how far you're going.

  # Modified from
  # https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1891#issuecomment-451961517
  function append-slash-to-double-dot -d 'expand .. to ../'
   # Get commandline up to cursor
   set -l cmd (commandline --cut-at-cursor)
  
   # Match last line
   switch $cmd[-1]
   case '*.'
    commandline --insert './'
   case '*'
    commandline --insert '.'
   end
  end

I used to do this, but unary kind of sucks after 3; So maybe others might like this better before their fingers get trained:

    ..() { # Usage: .. [N=1] -> cd up N levels
      local d="" i
      for ((i = 0; i < ${1:-"1"}; i++))
        d="$d/.."  # Build up a string & do 1 cd to preserve dirstack
      [[ -z $d ]] || cd ./$d
    }

Of course, what I actually have been doing since the early 90s is realize that a single "." with no-args is normally illegal and people "cd" soooo much more often than sourcing script definitions. So, I hijack that to save one "." in the first 3 cases and then take a number for the general case.

    # dash allows non-AlphaNumeric alias but not function names; POSIX is silent.
    cd1 () { if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then cd ..; else command . "$@"; fi; } # nice "cd .."
    alias .=cd1
    cdu() {           # Usage: cdu [N=2] -> cd up N levels
      local i=0 d=""  # "." already does 1 level
      while [ $i -lt ${1:-"2"} ]; do d=$d/..; i=$((i+1)); done
      [ -z "$d" ] || cd ./$d; }
    alias ..=cdu
    alias ...='cd ../../..' # so, "."=1up, ".."=2up, "..."=3up, ".. N"=Nup

and as per the comment this even works in lowly dash, but needs a slight workaround. bash can just do a .() and ..() shell function as with the zsh.

I have setup a shortcut: alt+. to run cd.., it's pretty cool.

I also aliased - to run cd -

  • but alt-. in bash is used for pasting the last argument to the previous command into the current one.

    • Good point, when working with keybindings, you'll inevitably end up overriding built-ins. I see it as a trade-off, between something I don't know of (and wouldn't use) and something I find useful. Works for me :)

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