An irritation no longer: command line joy

/* ---[ pushd and dirs ]--- */

I have long been a command line person. I hate having to use the mouse. One thing that is a little cumbersome about the command line is jumping around into various deeply nested directory structures. I've long been a user of pushd, dirs and popd on Unix/Linux/Cygwin consoles. But if you are alternating between 3 or more directories with some regularity, those commands require some care to use correctly.

/* ---[ Improvement #1: pd ]--- */

An improvement on that is a small bash function that I found on stackexchange:

function pd() { 
  if [ "$1" ]; then
    pushd "${1/#[0-9]*/+$1}";
  else
    pushd;
  fi > /dev/null
}

which simplifies using pushd. A basic session of use would be:

midpeter444:~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun$ pd .
midpeter444:~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun$ dirs
 0  ~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun
 1  ~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun
midpeter444:~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun$ cd ~/.mozilla/
midpeter444:~/.mozilla$ dirs
 0  ~/.mozilla
 1  ~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun
midpeter444:~/.mozilla$ pd .
midpeter444:~/.mozilla$ cd /tmp
midpeter444:/tmp$ dirs
 0  /tmp
 1  ~/.mozilla
 2  ~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun
midpeter444:/tmp$ pd 2
midpeter444:~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun$ 

pd can take either a dot, which means "remember this directory" or a number which refers to the position on the dirs history list. The random-access list metaphor is easier to work with the the pushd stack-based metaphor.

/* ---[ Vast Improvement #2: z ]--- */

But recently I discovered rupa/z or "z" and now I only occasionally use pd anymore. z is the biggest change and improvement to my command line life in years. I really love it. It works with cygwin as well for my time on Windows machines in my day job.

If you use the command line much, go get it now: https://github.com/rupa/z

What is it?

First it is not z-shell (I'm a bash user), which is what I thought initially. (It doesn't help that the main GitHub page for it starts with "ZSH USERS BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY WARNING").

What it is, is a 200-line shell script compatible with bash and z-shell that is basically a clever LRU-type cache of your directory visitations - the cache weighting is based on both frequency and recentness, which the author dubs "frecency". As you navigate around to different directories, it keeps track of where you've been, how often you've been there and how recently.

To see your current cache in ascending order of 'frecency', just type z:

midpeter444:~$ z
0.313808   /home/midpeter444/apps/apache-ant-1.8.4/bin
0.313808   /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/books/land-of-lisp/wizards-adventure/doc
0.313808   /home/midpeter444/lang/java/projects/mybatis-koans
0.392263   /tmp
0.429067   /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/source-code
0.627622   /home/midpeter444/lang/lisp
0.784525   /home/midpeter444/.mozilla/firefox
0.83702    /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/projects/clj-how-tos/clj-sockets
0.86298    /home/midpeter444/media/ebooks
1.62       /home/midpeter444/Dropbox/scripts-and-config-files
2.32335    /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/sandbox/src/sandbox
5.6486     /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/books/land-of-lisp/wizards-adventure
8.54205    /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/books/land-of-lisp/orc-battle
10.7351    /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/projects/clj-how-tos/clj-sockets
20.9559    /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/books/land-of-lisp
30.7926    /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/books/land-of-lisp/webserver
32.099     /home/midpeter444/Downloads
192.24     /home/midpeter444/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun

The number on left indicates the frecency score. So ambiguous entries will resolve in favor of the one with the higher score.

To navigate somewhere you've been, pass a part of the path to the z command:

midpeter444:~$ z fun
midpeter444:~/lang/clojure/concurrency-fun$

midpeter444:~$ z lisp
midpeter444:~/lang/clojure/books/land-of-lisp/webserver$

midpeter444:~$ z moz
midpeter444:~/.mozilla$ 

It also has tab-completion. If I hit tab for the example above where I typed moz it expands to:

$ z /home/midpeter444/.mozilla

Now the only part of the command line usage I once found irritating is pure joy.