If you are dealing a lot with the terminal you probably use the cd command very often. cd here, cd there, cd .., etc. What if I told you that you can avoid typing the cd command completely? That can save you a lot of keystrokes which is good because it:
- Makes you more productive
- Helps you avoid RSI problems, such as the infamous CTS
The first tool that I want to show you is autojump. Once installed, autojump (abbreviated by the command j) maintains its own database to help you navigate to a directory without the need to remember:
- Where the directory actually is
- The full name of the directory (partial names will do)
Here’s an example of using autojump to quickly open my website’s repo directory.
If you give to autojump a name pattern that is not yet familiar with, it will simply ignore it and stay to the current directory. So what can you do to save some keystrokes until the database of autojump is good enough, or when visiting unexplored territories? autocd to the rescue!
Modern bash versions (>= 4.0) support a builtin option called autocd. That allows you to navigate through directories without the need to use the cd command. Combine it with a few shell wildcards and it will save a lot of routine typing. To enable the autocd option all you need is shopt -s autocd. Put the command in a profile/initialization file to make the setting persistent. Follows an example of how you can use autocd to quickly (and using minimum keys) open a (yet unknown to autojump) directory.
