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pLumo
Asked: 2017-05-11 22:39:09 +0800 CST

Keep $OLDPWD between Shell Sessions

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Often, I'm leaving the terminal and the next day run it again. Then I want to be able to quickly go back to the last working directory.

I would like to do this using cd - as usual. But $OLDPWD is not kept between terminal sessions.

So I added an alias for exit to write pwd to a file and read it on the next start.

alias exit='pwd > ~/.lwd && exit;'
test -f ~/.lwd && export OLDPWD=`head -1 ~/.lwd`

That works perfectly for exit.

How can I create the same alias (or make a trap) for Ctrl+D ?

bash

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Use trap to add a handler for EXIT:

    trap 'pwd > ~/.lwd' EXIT

    This should handle both the exit command and CtrlD. The rest, you can do as with the alias.

    • 4

  2. Thanks to Anwar to lead me in the right direction. This post from the Unix & Linux Stack Exchange helped me.

    I created a file ~/.bash_logout with following content:

    echo "$PWD" > ~/.lwd

    In ~/.bashrc I added:

    test -f ~/.lwd && export OLDPWD=`head -1 ~/.lwd`

    This works for exit and CtrlD for gnome-terminal and for ssh connections.

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