Unix Tip: Favorite Tricks, Take Two

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Several weeks ago, I shared some of my favorite Unix "tricks" and invited readers to tell me about some of theirs. Quite a few people responded, so this week's column reflects some of the submitted favorites.



Easy Directory Maneuvering



Several of the ideas submitted involved ways to facilitate moving around in the Unix file system. In particular, how to move from one directory to the next with the least amount of typing and how to most easily remember where you've been and how to get back to some of the more strategic directories that you have been working in.

Jeffrey White mentioned the Korn shell's ability to replace a portion of the current path in a cd command. For example, if you are positioned within a directory named /opt/app/abc/files/conf and you want to move into the /opt/app/xyz/files/conf directory, you could carefully construct a cd command that backs you up and then moves you forward (e.g., cd ../../xyz/conf) or you could use a command like the cd command shown here (third line):



$ pwd

/opt/app/abc/files/conf

$ cd abc xyz

$ pwd

/opt/app/xyz/files/conf

If you are moving between project or customer subdirectories, this sort of cd command is rather intuitive. Think about "cd CT MD" for moving from one state directory to another. What could seem more natural?



Steve Lloyd uses an alias to move from one directory to another. By capturing pathnames using meaningful variable names, he can move between directories that are important to a particular task. The alias he uses looks like this:


alias mark 'set \!*=`echo $cwd`'



Once this alias is set up, Steve can do things like this:



$ cd /opt/app/abc/files/conf

$ mark abc

...

$ cd $abc

If the marked directory is one that Steve needs to return to repeatedly to accomplish a particular task, he will have made coming back to that directory again and again a lot less annoying.



If you are moving between user home directories, there's always the convenience of the ~username syntax to move you quickly to each user's home. Several people mentioned how much time this shortcut saves them.



Jared Still (of Perl for Oracle DBAs fame) has turned directory organization into something of an art with his dirs package. A set of directory stack functions load into the shell environment, giving the user tools for creating and using a directory name stack.

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