Adding search and replace to the "cd" command

Question

I'm trying to figure out a way to search and replace in the command line. Preferably the solution would work in tcsh. Here's what I want to do.

$ echo $PWD
/projects/apples/001/0440/my/files/are/here/
$ cd 0999
/projects/apples/001/0999/my/files/are/here/
$ cd oranges
/projects/oranges/001/0999/my/files/are/here/
$ cd were
/projects/oranges/001/0999/my/files/were/here/

The script would search from the end of the line and find the first occurrence of a matching directory structure and then cd into that directory.

I'm fluent in python and this script woulds be easy to write in this language but python runs in a process so changing the current directory of one process has no effect on the current work directory of other existing processes.

What is the best way to write such a script? What is the most efficient way of accomplishing this task? My directory structures can get quite large with many thousands of folders so it needs to be quick.

Answer 1

Let example.py be a script that outputs some shell commands.

#!/usr/bin/python
# example.py
print("cd foo/bar/baz")

Then you can execute the output of that script, in the current shell, with backticks or the $(...) notation.

mob ~ $ $(./example.py)
mob ~/foo/bar/baz $ echo $PWD
mob ~/foo/bar/baz $ /home/mob/foo/bar/baz