Shell - Navigate up 'n' directories

Question

I often find myself doing commands like this

cd ../../../../../

Is there a shortcut I can use that will cd ../ n times?

Does this answer your question? climb up the directory tree faster - personally I like geirha's answer the best. — wjandrea, Jan 11 '20 at 02:07
Or this one https://askubuntu.com/a/703701/295286 Pretty much all solutions revolve around the same idea — Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy, Jan 13 '20 at 07:57
@wjandrea I voted to close but then retracted my vote since the linked question specifies [[tag:bash]] while Zsh and csh solutions can be found on this page. — Melebius, Jan 16 '20 at 10:58
@Melebius Also this question is much more popular than the older one now. When I commented they were on about the same level. I'm retracting my close vote. — wjandrea, Jan 16 '20 at 12:58
Not directly related, but if you're always traveling to a set of common folders you could use a script like z to let you jump to folders from anywhere. Just z Documents to go there, for example — GammaGames, Jan 20 '20 at 21:30

terdon · Accepted Answer · 2020-01-12T14:17:37.603

No, there is no existing command for this, but it is trivial to write one. Add these lines to your ~/.bashrc file (thanks to D. Ben Knoble for pointing out that the variable should be local):

function ncd(){
  local path=""
  for ((i=1;i<=$1;i++)); do
    path="../$path"
  done
  echo "Moving to $path" >&2
  cd "$path"
}

Save the file, open a new terminal, and you can now move N directories up using ncd N. For example:

$ pwd
/home/terdon/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/dir7/dir8/dir9
$ ncd 5
Moving to ../../../../../
$ pwd
/home/terdon/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4
$ ncd 2
Moving to ../../
$ pwd
/home/terdon/dir1/dir2

score 16 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 11 '20 at 16:43

16

Coming from the Windows world, Alt + Up Arrow navigates to the parent directory in Windows Explorer. So I made something like this in ~/.inputrc:

"\33\33[A": "cd ..\n"

then pressing Alt + Up Arrow moves to the parent directory in the terminal. You have to press multiple times of course to move higher, but I have found it to be very fast. Also you can change the shortcut to your liking.

answered Jan 11 '20 at 16:43

Zombo

1

1

Thanks. Quite a nice solution – Mike Seeds Jan 11 '20 at 23:51
This is wonderful. I had trouble getting the arrow keys to bind under Debian, so I used Alt-u instead:
"\eu": "cd ..\n"

.inputrc can be immediately reloaded with bind -f ~/.inputrc
– Jason Stewart Apr 07 '22 at 18:51

score 15 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 10 '20 at 15:37

You can easily create aliases or shell functions to perform the given task. I personally use these:

alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias ....='cd ../../..'

and so on, manually defined for up to many-many dots in my .bashrc.

A shell function could instead easily take a numeric parameter, and execute cd .. in a loop that many times.

D. Ben Knoble · Answer 4 · 2020-01-12T16:47:27.937

8

Similar to @terdon's answer, with slightly more natural usage and output:

# go up
up() {
  local count="${1:-1}"
  local path=../
  while (( --count > 0 )) ; do
    path="$path"../
  done
  echo "cd -- $path"
  cd -- "$path"
}

This defines a function up, which has the following properties:

up n will go up n directories
up will go up exactly one directory (i.e., the default for n is 1)
output mimics that when using shopt -s autocd (hence the --, which are technically unnecessary)
as before, OLDPWD is set correctly to the current value of PWD, rather than one of the intermediate directories. This means that up 5; cd - works as expected.

edited Jan 12 '20 at 16:47

answered Jan 11 '20 at 19:32

D. Ben Knoble

221

Similar? That's the same, only more confusing. – rexkogitans Jan 12 '20 at 13:48
1

I guess "torek" is me? :) Your addition of local makes a lot of sense, I should have thought of that myself! Then, you are defaulting to cd ../ when no input is passed, which is also good, but you don't actually explain any of these benefits, so they aren't obvious to the novice. The -- is pointless since you know the argument will always be a variation of ../. And you could simplify to while (( --count > 0 )) ; do to avoid the needless repetition of (( count-- )). But this is indeed a better version than mine, it's a shame you don't point out the benefits. – terdon Jan 12 '20 at 14:16
@terdon eek! Sorry I was thinking of torek, who i see in tag:git a lot. Updates coming eventually. – D. Ben Knoble Jan 12 '20 at 15:53
@rexkogitans what's confusing? I'd love to know to increase the readability. – D. Ben Knoble Jan 12 '20 at 16:47
I admit that a function should declare all variables as local. My point in saying it's more confusing is - maybe subjective: for is more readable than while with a predecrement. Also, what does ${1:-1} do? If i did not oversee something, that's the same as just $1. I would also quote everything, like path="${path}../". – rexkogitans Jan 13 '20 at 08:10
What does ${1:-1} do--see man bash, and look under Parameter Expansion (Use Default Values. If parameter is unset or null, the expansion of word is substituted. Otherwise, the value of parameter is substituted.) The while is subjective, but I'm not convinced I should change it. Reasonable point about the quotes though – D. Ben Knoble Jan 13 '20 at 14:23

score 4 · Answer 5 · answered Jan 13 '20 at 04:10

4

Using the printf hack:

function updir(){
    cd $(printf '../%.0s' {1..$1})
}

E.G. updir 5 will move you up 5 directories.

answered Jan 13 '20 at 04:10

Eric Reed

161

2

Yes, very clever ! The 0 also can be dropped, so printf '../%.s' works just as well – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jan 13 '20 at 08:07

score 2 · Answer 6 · answered Jan 11 '20 at 18:24

2

Another possibility to consider is physically sending the keys if you have xdotool:

xdotool type ../

Assign it to a keyboard hotkey through Keyboard -> Shortcuts dialog. Then you can press the hotkey a required number of times.

answered Jan 11 '20 at 18:24

stackzebra

645

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 11 '20 at 20:08

2

If you use zsh you can use repeat:

repeat 5 { cd ..}

answered Jan 11 '20 at 20:08

jesse_b

171

1

In [t]csh, repeat 5 cd .. works. (I can’t figure out how to get it to work with braces.) – G-Man Says 'Reinstate Monica' Jan 12 '20 at 04:09

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jan 16 '20 at 10:55

In Zsh, you can simply add a single dot per level, i.e.

cd ... equals to cd ../.. and
cd ...... equals to cd ../../../../..

Unfortunately, this cannot be used together with other path components, i.e. commands like

cd ...../foo

don’t work.

See also more tips on the cd command in Zsh.

score 1 · Answer 9 · answered Jan 15 '20 at 19:51

I have used this for years:

alias up=" cd .."
alias up2="cd ../.."
alias up3="cd ../../.."
alias up4="cd ../../../.."
alias up5="cd ../../../../.."
alias up6="cd ../../../../../.."
alias up7="cd ../../../../../../.."
alias up8="cd ../../../../../../../.."
alias up9="cd ../../../../../../../../.."

Shell - Navigate up 'n' directories

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