Unix Reference

(Fancy) pushd and popd (to easily move back and forth between folders)

Video

As you work on projects with multiple directories, you may find that you want to move between directories but you don't want to keep typing the previous directory. There are two commands that allow you to keep track of previous directories and go back to them:

pushd : pushes the current directory onto a stack and moves to that directory popd : pops the last directory off the stack and moves to that directory

For example:

$ pwd
/afs/.ir/users/c/g/cgregg/cs107/cs107/assign0
$ pushd /afs/.ir/class/cs107
/afs/.ir/class/cs107 ~/cs107/cs107/assign0
cgregg@myth5:/afs/.ir/class/cs107$ ls
cgi-bin  private_data  repos  samples  staff  tools  WWW
$ popd
~/cs107/cs107/assign0
$ pwd
/afs/.ir/users/c/g/cgregg/cs107/cs107/assign0
$

Another command to simply move you back to the previous directory you were in is cd -, and this can come in handy if you just want to temporarily move to another directory and then come back.

Back to contents