bash Cookbook

Setting Your $CDPATH

Problem

You want to make it easier to switch between several directories in various locations.

Solution

Set your $CDPATH appropriately. Your commonly used directories will likely be unique, so for a contrived example, suppose you spend a lot of time working with init’s rc directories:

/home/jp$ cd rc3.d
bash: cd: rc3.d: No such file or directory

/home/jp$ export CDPATH='.:/etc'

/home/jp$ cd rc3.d
/etc/rc3.d

/etc/rc3.d$ cd rc5.d
/etc/rc5.d

/etc/rc5.d$

/etc/rc5.d$ cd games
bash: cd: games: No such file or directory

/etc/rc5.d$ export CDPATH='.:/etc:/usr'

/etc/rc5.d$ cd games
/usr/games

/usr/games$

Discussion

According to the bash Reference, $CDPATH is “a colon-separated list of directories used as a search path for the cd built-in command.” Think of it as $PATH for cd. It’s a little subtle, but can be very handy.

If the argument to cd begins with a slash, $CDPATH will not be used. If $CDPATH is used, the absolute pathname to the new directory is printed to STDOUT, as in the example above.

Warning

Watch out when running bash in POSIX mode (e.g., as /bin/sh or with --posix). As the bash Reference notes:

“If $CDPATH is set, the cd built-in will not implicitly append the current directory to it. This means that cd will fail if no valid directory name can be constructed from any of the entries in $CDPATH, even if a directory with the same name as the name given as an argument to cd exists in the current directory.”

To avoid this, explicitly include . in $CDPATH. However, if you ...