pushd popd global directory stack?

Question

I do not know if there is a valid way to do this. But, have always wanted to see if its possible.

I know that pushd, popd and dirs are useful for a number of things like copying between directories you have recently visited.

But, is there a way in which you can keep a global stack? So that if I push something (using pushd) in one terminal it gets reflected in another (maybe only the terminals in that login session).

Answer 1

You should be able to do this with a pair of shell functions and a temporary file.

Your temporary file would be named something like '/home/me/.directory_stack' and would simply contain a list of directories:

/home/me
/etc
/var/log

Your 'push_directory' function would simply add the current directory to the list. The 'pop_directory' function would pull the most recent off of the list and switch to that directory. Storing the stack in a file like this ensures that the information exists across all open terminals (and even across reboots).

Here are some example functions (warning: only lightly tested)

directory_stack=/home/me/.directory_stack
function push_dir() {
    echo $(pwd) >> $directory_stack
    cd $1
}
function pop_dir() {
    [ ! -s $directory_stack ] && return
    newdir=$(sed -n '$p' $directory_stack)
    sed -i -e '$d' $directory_stack
    cd $newdir
}

Add that to your .bashrc and they'll automatically be defined every time you log into the shell.

Answer 2

You'll probably want to write a few shell functions and use them in place of pushd and popd. Something like the following (untested) functions might do the job:

mypushd() { echo "$1" >> ~/.dir_stack ; cd "$1" }
mypopd() { dir=`tail -1 ~/.dir_stack` ; cd "$dir" ;
           foo=`wc -l ~/.dir_stack | egrep -o '[0-9]+'` ;
           ((foo=$foo-1)) ;
           mv ~/.dir_stack ~/.dir_stack_old ;
           head -n $foo ~/.dir_stack_old > ~/.dir_stack }

You could get rid of some of the uglier bits if you write a small program that returns and removes the last line of the file.