How to easily and quickly change directories in terminal

[hakerdefo]

Okay, most of us spent quite a bit of time in a terminal window, right?
Now navigating between directories in terminal can be cumbersome sometimes.

For example you want to navigate to the "Terminator" directory,

Code: [Select]

~/Downloads/Videos/Movies/Action/Terminator/
You will have to enter,

Code: [Select]

cd Downloads/Videos/Movies/Action/Terminator/

I know you can use Tab-completion but even with it you'll agree there are plenty of key-presses involved here.

Okay, now assume you are in the "Terminator" directory and you want to go back to the "Videos" directory. You'll have to do,

Code: [Select]

cd "../ ../"

See, it's cumbersome! Here is the easiest and smartest method to change directories in terminal.

First we need to install a tiny application,

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install go2

After the installation has completed, in your terminal run,

Code: [Select]

go2; source $HOME/.bashrc

That's it! Now you can navigate to "Terminator" directory easily like this,

Code: [Select]

go2 Terminator

Or if you are in a hurry,

Code: [Select]

Go2 Term

And from "Terminator" directory going back to the "Videos" directory is just as easy,

Code: [Select]

go2 Videos

If in hurry,

Code: [Select]

go2 Vid

Now if you have two directories "Downloads" and "Documents" and you do,

Code: [Select]

go2 Do
go2 will prompt you to select one of them,

Code: [Select]

a: ~/Documents
b: ~/Downloads
If you want to select "Documents" you need to enter "a" and for selecting "Downloads" you enter "b". Simple!!!

For more info,

Code: [Select]

man go2

Cheers!!!

[VastOne]

Nice ... thanks for this one

Nothing like a How To to make a rainy day better!

Cheers!

only 114KB!!  HA! ...

 

[VastOne]

Any known reason why creating an alias

Code: [Select]

alias go='go2'
would be a bad idea?  Thinking in terms of scripts or any other need for 'go'

[hakerdefo]

It's so addictive you might stop using good old "cd" 

Cheers!!!

[hakerdefo]

Any known reason why creating an alias

Code: [Select]

alias go='go2'
would be a bad idea?  Thinking in terms of scripts or any other need for 'go'

If someone is using Go, then it might not be a great idea 

Cheers!!!

[VastOne]

Yeah.. pretty sure I will not have to worry there..

Thanks!

[hakerdefo]

Yeah.. pretty sure I will not have to worry there..

Thanks!

I don't use "Go" myself so the alias works fine for me too. It removes an extra key press 

Cheers!!!

[VastOne]

What have I mucked up?

All I get when running go2 is

Code: [Select]

go2 already configured, skipping.
Google does not offer a thing.. hmmm

[hakerdefo]

Add following to your .bashrc,

Code: [Select]

GO2TMP=~/.go2/tmp
go2 () {
    /usr/lib/go2/go2.py $*;
    if [ -e $GO2TMP ]; then
cd "$(cat $GO2TMP)"
rm $GO2TMP > /dev/null
    fi
}

Save the file and run,

Code: [Select]

source $HOME/.bashrc

Try go2.

Cheers!!!

[VastOne]

I did get it to work after a dump of it and then a reinstall.. Not sure what it was but it is all good now!

[hakerdefo]

That's great 

Cheers!!!

[a]

I like goto (https://github.com/ankitvad/goto.git)
Its just a bash script really that also puts an alias in your .bashrc
I like that i'ts easy to make shortcuts to dirs but even without it's seems to know all the dirs that are there. So if I type goto .scripts, it goes into my .scripts folder in my home folder without me first making a shortcut.