scd - smart change of directory

Define scd shell function for changing to any directory with a few keystrokes.

scd keeps history of the visited directories, which serves as an index of the known paths. The directory index is updated after every cd command in the shell and can be also filled manually by running scd -a. To switch to some directory, scd needs few fragments of the desired path to match with the index. A selection menu is displayed in case of several matches, with a preference given to recently visited paths. scd can create permanent directory aliases, which appear as named directories in zsh session.

INSTALLATION NOTES

Besides oh-my-zsh, scd can be used with bash, dash or tcsh shells and is also available as Vim plugin scd.vim and IPython extension. For installation details, see https://github.com/pavoljuhas/smart-change-directory.

SYNOPSIS

scd [options] [pattern1 pattern2 ...]

PATTERNS

Patterns may use all zsh glob operators available with extendedglob option. Specified patterns must match the absolute path and at least one of them must match in the tail. Several special patterns are also recognized as follows:

^PAT: PAT must match at the beginning of the path, for example, "^/home"
PAT$: require PAT to match the end of the path, "man$"
./: match only subdirectories of the current directory
:PAT: require PAT to match over the tail component, ":doc", ":re/doc"

OPTIONS

-a, --add: add current or specified directories to the directory index.
--unindex: remove current or specified directories from the index.
-r, --recursive: apply options --add or --unindex recursively.
--alias=ALIAS: create alias for the current or specified directory and save it to ~/.scdalias.zsh.
--unalias: remove ALIAS definition for the current or specified directory from ~/.scdalias.zsh. Use "OLD" to purge aliases to non-existent directories.
-A, --all: display all directories even those excluded by patterns in ~/.scdignore. Disregard the unique matching for a directory alias and filtering of less likely paths.
-p, --push: use "pushd" to change to the target directory.
--list: show matching directories and exit.
-v, --verbose: display directory rank in the selection menu.
-h, --help: display this options summary and exit.

Examples

# Index recursively some paths for the very first run
scd -ar ~/Documents/

# Change to a directory path matching "doc"
scd doc

# Change to a path matching all of "a", "b" and "c"
scd a b c

# Change to a directory path that ends with "ts"
scd "ts$"

# Show selection menu and ranking of 20 most likely directories
scd -v

# Alias current directory as "xray"
scd --alias=xray

# Jump to a previously defined aliased directory
scd xray

FILES

~/.scdhistory: time-stamped index of visited directories.
~/.scdalias.zsh: scd-generated definitions of directory aliases.
~/.scdignore: glob patterns for paths to be ignored in the scd search, for example, /mnt/backup/*. The patterns are specified one per line and are matched assuming the extendedglob zsh option. Lines starting with "#" are skipped as comments. The .scdignore patterns are not applied in the --all mode.

ENVIRONMENT

SCD_HISTFILE: path to the scd index file (by default ~/.scdhistory).
SCD_HISTSIZE: maximum number of entries in the index (5000). Index is trimmed when it exceeds SCD_HISTSIZE by more than 20%.
SCD_MENUSIZE: maximum number of items for directory selection menu (20).
SCD_MEANLIFE: mean lifetime in seconds for exponential decay of directory likelihood (86400).
SCD_THRESHOLD: threshold for cumulative directory likelihood. Directories with a lower likelihood compared to the best match are excluded (0.005).
SCD_SCRIPT: command script file where scd writes the final cd command. This variable must be defined when scd runs in its own process rather than as a shell function. It is up to the scd caller to use the output in SCD_SCRIPT.

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