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I'm looking for a command that invokes readline or similar, primed with the current $PWD, to let the user edit the current directory, then cd to the edited value. E.g.

> cd ~/a/b/c/d
> pwd
> /home/alice/a/b/c/d

Then run the proposed icd command (for "interactive cd", inspired by imv in renameutils). It prompts the user as follows:

> icd
icd> /home/alice/a/b/c/d

Then the user can, e.g. press Alt-b, Alt-b, Alt-t, resulting in:

icd> /home/alice/a/c/b/d

(Alt-t transposing b and c)

Upon pressing Enter, the icd command changes the current directory to /home/alice/a/c/b/d.

Ideally icd would have some autocompletion. Maybe even visual indication of whether the current value is an existing/valid directory.

This can nearly be done in zsh by typing

> cd `pwd`

then pressing Tab. But a command like icd would save keystrokes.

Related: Interactive cd (directory browser)

Jeff Schaller
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Robert Fleming
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    Your title says "sh"; did you mean for something POSIX-compliant, or zsh-focused? – Jeff Schaller Jul 11 '19 at 17:45
  • zsh-focused would be fine, since I use it, but I put "sh" because I figured this would be easy enough to do-able in basic sh, making the answer more generally helpful, while also still probably compatible with zsh. I named a shell at all because, e.g. a csh-specific answer would not help me. – Robert Fleming Jul 12 '19 at 16:28
  • An sh like like dash has so few line-editing features that I'd imagine something like this would be hundreds of times more difficult there. (Not that anyone uses dash interactively, I hope) – muru Jul 13 '19 at 02:52

2 Answers2

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For bash and any other shell supporting readline you might be able to use this function

icd() { local a; read -ei "${1:-$PWD}" -p "$FUNCNAME> " a && cd "$a"; }

Usage

icd          # Starts editing with $PWD
icd /root    # Starts editing with /root
Chris Davies
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    This is perfect, thanks! Unfortunately zsh's read doesn't support -i. But modifying your solution to use vared works for me: icd() { local a="${1:-$PWD}"; vared -p "$FUNCNAME> " a && cd "$a"; } – Robert Fleming May 18 '20 at 22:32
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It can be done at least in zsh. A similar thing is built into fzf, where you can press Alt+C to cd into a directory through fuzzy selection:

Instead of fzf, one could presumably use your proposed icd tool.

I do not believe it can be done in a POSIX-compliant way.

Chris Davies
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L3viathan
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