CODEWITHSUNDEEP
shellunix
aldebaran-ms
aldebaran-ms

Reputation: 666

Unix terminal, "cd .." for a specific number of directories

Let's suppose we have this directory structure:

/home/myuser/dir_1/sub_1/sub_2/sub_3

and I want to traverse from sub_3 to dir_1, what I need to do is 

cd ../../..

My question is, isn't there something shorter? I mean something like:

cd -t 3

where you can tell the shell how many directories you want to go back.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 495

Answers (5)

bishop
bishop

Reputation: 39464

Build the path using printf then cd to it:

cdup() {
    # $1=number of times, defaults to 1
    local path
    printf -v path '%*s' "${1:-1}"
    cd "${path// /../}"
}

Use as:

cdup 4 # to go up four directories
cdup 1 # to explicitly go up one directory
cdup   # to implicitly go up one

Has the nice property that cd is called once, regardless of how big N is.

Upvotes: 4

V. Michel
V. Michel

Reputation: 1619

You can put cdup in your .bashrc

 alias cdup='_(){ a=$1;while ((a--));do cd ..;done;};_'

Or

cdup() { a=$1;while ((a--));do cd ..;done; }

Test to make two cd ..

cdup 2

Upvotes: 0

Paul Ruane
Paul Ruane

Reputation: 38620

I just a couple of weeks ago made a Zsh completion function to do this. The answer is here.

It allows you to type cd ..... then hit tab (or return) to expand the dots into the relevant number of directories.

Upvotes: 0

ivanivan
ivanivan

Reputation: 2225

cd ~/dir_1

Should do the same as well. Of course, that only works when you are going somewhere in your home directory....

Upvotes: 1

chris01
chris01

Reputation: 12433

for i in {0..2}; do cd ..; done

Upvotes: 1

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