Fast Navigation in the Command Line

2020-05-24

A two-line solution for bookmarking directories and navigating them with cd.
Create .marks/ folder within home directory and add this to .bashrc:

export CDPATH=.:~/.marks/
function mark { ln -sr "$(pwd)" ~/.marks/"$1" }

Then:

mark @name         # add bookmark called @name for the current directory
cd @name           # jump to the bookmarked location
cd @name/subidr    # jump to a subdirectory within bookmarked location
cd @n<tab>         # auto-complete a bookmark
cd @<tab>          # list all available bookmarks

Note: prefixing bookmarks with a special symbol like "@" avoids interference with directories in the current folder.

A zero-line solution for maintaining a list of "bookmarks".
If bookmarks are only kept for active projects directory structure can be adjusted instead:

└── work
    ├── active_project_1/
    ├── active_project_2/
    ├── todo.txt
    └── zzz/
        ├── inactive_project_1/
        ├── inactive_project_2/
        ├── inactive_project_3/
        ├── inactive_project_4/
        └── ...

Note: frequently accessed directories are placed under work/ and are transferred to zzz/ once unnecessary.

Karolis Koncevičius