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Accepted
Radu Rădeanu
Asked: 2014-07-09 10:42:27 +0800 CST

Change current working directory only by typing the name of the new one

  • 772

Something similar to this Q&A, I know that cd will change current working directory in terminal to a new directory like this:

cd /path/to/new_directory

But I wonder how can I change current working directory only by typing for example:

/path/to/new_directory

followed by Enter, of course. Nothing more.

command-line

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I just find out that by activating autocd shell option, using the following command:

    shopt -s autocd

    then

    a command name that is the name of a directory is executed as if it were the argument to the cd command

    (from man bash, somewhere at the line 5131).

    So it will actually let me use any directory as a command and will cd to it:

    cd

    To make the change permanently, add the following line to the end of your ~/.bashrc file:

    shopt -s autocd
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  2. This is the default behavior for zsh with the Grml config. zsh is an advanced shell, it has a lot of improvements over bash, the default shell in Ubuntu.

    To install zsh, type:

    sudo apt-get install zsh

    To grab the Grml configuration, run this from your home directory:

    wget -O .zshrc http://git.grml.org/f/grml-etc-core/etc/zsh/zshrc
wget -O .zshrc.local  http://git.grml.org/f/grml-etc-core/etc/skel/.zshrc

    Then run zsh to start it. If you like it, you can make it your default shell by running the following command:

    chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh
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