(s)witch (d)irectory

sd is a program that allows you to navigate in the file system just like the native cd (change directory) command but with extra functionalities. It consists of

a binary executable that constructs the directory path to switch to based on the provided arguments,
a shell script that changes the directory.

Installation
Usage
Directory Matching Rules
Options

Installation

To install the program on your machine, go to the latest release and download the zip file for your specific OS.

On Windows, you cannot use this program in Powershell. Instead, use a Unix-like shell like Git Bash.

After downloading, copy or move both files inside the folder into a separate directory on your disk. A great place for it could be something like a ~/.sd directory.

cd to the new directory with the files and check permissions for the sd executable (sd.exe on Windows, __sd on Linux and MacOS):

ls -l

If the file lacks the execute permission (x), add it with the chmod command:

On Windows (git-bash):

chmod +x sh.exe

On Linux and MacOS:

chmod +x __sh

Next, to make the sd function available globally, you need to source the sd.sh file on each shell startup. Open the .bashrc or .bash_aliases file (or similar, depending on your shell) and add the following line:

source ~/.sd/sd.sh

Change the file path if you saved it in a different directory.

After restarting your shell, the command should be available.

Usage

The command accepts a list of arguments separated by whitespace and performs a directory lookup for each one starting from the current directory and cd-ing to the found directory represented by each subsequent argument.

sd dir1 dir2 dir3 ...

For example, assuming we have the following folder structure:

~/
 |-dev
   |-projects
     |-nodejs
       |-apis
       |-clis
     |-react
     |-deno
   |-practice

 |-personal
   |-photos
   |-spreadsheets

and would like to switch to the ~/dev/projects/nodejs/clis folder from ~/, we could do the following:

sd dev proj node cli

See directory matching rules to learn how directory names are matched.

Paths

You can also use a single relative or absolute path argument (same as cd):

sd ./dir1/dir2/dir3

sd ../../../

sd ~/di1/dir2/dir3

sd /

Directory Matching Rules

The way that the program constructs the final path is as follows:

For each provided argument, it searches a directory name that should match that argument.
The search starts at the current directory or at the directory specified by the -root option.
If a directory name is found, the program adds it to the final path and does the same lookup inside of that found directory for the next argument in the list.
The process continues until the last argument or until an argument could not be matched.

The directory lookup for each argument is done in the following order:

a directory fully matches the argument
a directory starts with the argument
a directory ends with the argument
a directory includes the argument

Following our example from above (switching to ~/dev/projects/nodejs/clis), we could achieve the same result by typing the following:

sd ev ojec dejs li

Note that the program will grab the first found directory matching the provided argument. So, if we were to supply is as the last argument, then both apis and clis could potentially be matched, but since apis comes up first, the program will use that directory.

Each argument is allowed to be at least 1 character, so it is important to remember the above rule since there could be multiple directories that start or end with, or (especially) include that 1 character.

And lastly, if an argument cannot match any of the directories, the program will stop at the last found directory without going any further and will display a message telling you which argument could not be matched.

Options

There are a few useful options you can supply to the command.

`-root` `-r`

This option specifies the starting directory from which to begin the switching process. For example, if you are located in the ~/ directory but want to start from C:\Program Files (on Windows), you can do the following:

sd -r=Program\ Files dir1 dir2 ...

This option is useful when you want to create aliases that could quickly switch and start sd-ing from a pre-defined directory. For example:

alias dev='sd -r=~/dev'
alias pf='sd -r=/c/Program\ Files'

The option value must be provided with an = sign, otherwise it won't work properly.

The above allows you to use the dev and pf commands to move and start navigating from the ~/dev and C:\Program Files (on Windows) directories, respectively, no matter where you are currently in the file system.

`-i`

Performs case-insensitive directory lookups.

sd myDirectory -i

This would match directories like mydirectory, MYDIRECTORY, MyDiReCtOrY, and so on...

LexBorisoff/switch-directory