Ubuntu – Quick path jumping

command linepathssoftware-recommendation

I was just at a lecture, where I noticed the lecturer using a command (probably aliased) to jump to a specific folder.

Example:

~/code$ j sciproj
~/projects/sciproj2011/$

This looked quite slick, so I started wondering:

Is this a standard utility, and if so, what is the name?

I have two theories as to how it works:

It can both create, delete and jump to aliases directly from the command-line in the style of the example, without having to set up aliases in a configuration file or script or whatnot manually.
It searches the home directory for a folder matching the name and jumps to it.

The second option seems a bit slow, however, so the first would be preferred.

Best Answer

As an addition to sagarchalise's comment:

It's in natty: http://packages.ubuntu.com/natty/autojump

Should work in older releases as well.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – What does // mean in a path

/ is equivalent to //

From the POSIX specification (emphasis added):

3.267 Pathname

A string that is used to identify a file. In the context of POSIX.1-2008, a pathname may be limited to {PATH_MAX} bytes, including the terminating null byte. It has optional beginning <slash> characters, followed by zero or more filenames separated by <slash> characters. A pathname can optionally contain one or more trailing <slash> characters. Multiple successive <slash> characters are considered to be the same as one <slash>, except for the case of exactly two leading <slash> characters.

And:

4.12 Pathname Resolution

...
A pathname consisting of a single <slash> shall resolve to the root directory of the process. A null pathname shall not be successfully resolved. If a pathname begins with two successive <slash> characters, the first component following the leading <slash> characters may be interpreted in an implementation-defined manner, although more than two leading <slash> characters shall be treated as a single <slash> character.

For a nice discussion of exceptions (cygwin and directories) see: How does linux handle multiple consecutive path separators (/home////username///file)?

Ubuntu – a full path name

No, your assumption is wrong. The full path name for my_script file from your home directory is: /home/your_user_name/my_script. When you type ./my_script in terminal you actually try to execute the script (if is executable) and it will be executed only if your current working directory is /home/your_user_name/. To execute the script you can use also the full file path which is, as I said /home/your_user_name/my_script.

It is believed that a UNIX path name looks and feels like Internet addresses, thus result into compatibility. The full path name of the current working directory can be found in terminal by using the following command:

pwd

To find out the full path for your user home directory, you can use:

echo ~
echo $HOME
echo /home/$USER

The above three commands are equivalent.

To find out the full path name for a file you can use readlink command. For example, in your case:

cd ~
readlink -f my_script

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – What does // mean in a path

3.267 Pathname

4.12 Pathname Resolution

Ubuntu – a full path name

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