Cruising the filesystem

CDPATH

CDPATH holds a list of directories in memory that the shell searches when changing directories. It works like PATH, but for the cd command rather than searching for executables:

  • define CDPATH in your .bashrc file
  • when you change to a dir using CDPATH, the shell prints the absolute path to stdout
  • add .. to add every parent directory. This lets you change to sibling directories without needing to enter ... For example, cd ../sibling becomes cd sibling.
  • works best if you don’t have directories with duplicate names
CDPATH=$CDPATH:$HOME/core/first/second/third:..                     # define CDPATH var
echo $CDPATH
/home/elinux:/home/elinux/core:/home/elinux/core/first/second/third

~/core
cd fourth/
/home/elinux/core/first/second/third/fourth