NAME

cdlintern.pl - A perl utility to display the different visited directories.

SYNOPSIS

   cdl var : will search in CDLOG any file/dir name containing var
   cdl <regexp> : will search in CDLOG any file/dir which matches
                regular expression regexp.
   cdl -h : to print this help
   cdl -c : to clean the $CDLOG ( removing unused item )
   cdl -d abc : It is similar to cdl abc but it will search from
       current directory
   cdl -? : This will print last 10 entries.
   cdl -n? : This will print last n entries.

DESCRIPTION

It is designed to be used from bash. The idea is that on every directory change by cd command, we save the directory into a log file. Any time, to go back to a previous visited directory, we can use cdl command with directory name by regular expression.

To be used from bash, we have to define two function named cd and cdl. My functions are attached in this documentation. Log file name is given by a environment variable CDLOG. By default shell function cd sets the CDLOG to $HOME/tmp/cdsave/`hostname`cdlog.txt. If directory doesn't exist then it creates it.

On execution when it prints "Enter directory Option/Command" . When we enter the number, it changes the directory to the directory. If we don't enter the number, it treats it as a shell command and tries to execute it. The usefulness of the this feature is that in shell command we can refer the corresponding directories by their number using $5. In the command we can use $n to replace the directory name. e.g command : diff $5 $6 will run the diff command with directory entry 5 and directory entry 6.

Advantages over pushd/popd/dirs :

• It saves the visited directoy in log file so it could remain save for days and months until you delete it. Also it remain valid for several invocation of shell.

• Any shell operation ( e.g copying/moving files) between directories with deep nesting is much simpler.

CONFIGURATION

Copy this script anywhere in the directory which is inside PATH. I prefer to put it in ~/bin directory.

Configuring .bashrc: Here are the bash functions which need. To use it from .bashrc we need to declare the two functions.

function cd () { set +u CDLOG_File=~/tmp/cdsave/cdlog`hostname`.txt if [ -z "$CDLOG" ]; then export CDLOG=$CDLOG_File touch $CDLOG chmod 666 $CDLOG fi CDLOG_Dir=`dirname $CDLOG_File` if [ ! -d "$CDLOG_Dir" ]; then mkdir -p ~/tmp/cdsave fi if [ $# -eq 0 ] then builtin cd $HOME else builtin cd "$*" fi pwd >>$CDLOG unset CDLOG_File unset CDLOG_Dir }

function cdl () { set +u if [ -z "$CDLOG" ] then cd "." fi if test -e ~/bin/cdlintern.pl then #echo "Running ~/bin/cdlintern.pl"; perl ~/bin/cdlintern.pl $* else #echo "Running cdlintern.pl in path "; perl -S cdlintern.pl $* fi if [ -f "$CDLOG.sh" ] then source "$CDLOG.sh" else echo "$CDLOG.sh doesn't exist" fi } export BASH_VERSION # Endif of entries in .bashrc

EXAMPLES

[~] $ cd /tmp/

[/tmp] $ cd /var

[/var] $ cdl

1 ----> /tmp <--- 1

2 ----> /var <--- 2

Enter directory Option/Command : 1

cd /tmp

CommandLine = cd /tmp ; CDORGCMD="cdl "; history -s cd /tmp

[/tmp] $ cd /usr/bin

[/usr/bin] $ cd /usr/local/bin

[/usr/local/bin] $ cdl bin$

1 ----> /usr/bin <--- 1

2 ----> /usr/local/bin <--- 2

Enter directory Option/Command : 1

cd /usr/bin

CommandLine = cd /usr/bin ; CDORGCMD="cdl bin$"; history -s cd /usr/bin

[/usr/bin] $ cdl bin$

1 ----> /usr/bin <--- 1

2 ----> /usr/local/bin <--- 2

Enter directory Option/Command : ln -s $1/customapp $2/myapp

ln -s /usr/bin/customapp /usr/local/bin/myapp

CommandLine = ln -s /usr/bin/customapp /usr/local/bin/myapp ; CDORGCMD="cdl bin$"; history -s ln -s /usr/bin/customapp /usr/local/bin/myapp

[/usr/bin] $

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLE

CDLOG contains the name of the log file where it saves the visited directories. The schell function cd set's it to default ~/tmp/cdsave/cdlog`hostname`.txt. You can set it to /tmp/cdlog.txt for simplicity.

PREREQUISITES

Currently used under bash.

COREQUISITES

any

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