BASH feature: directory jumping w/o 'cd'

[Walsh, Matt]

This improvement will save you three keystrokes, but they're 3
keystrokes you type a whole lot for no reason at all.  Yes, I'm talking
about the keystrokes 'c-d-(space)'

I was a big fan of the old '4DOS' utility for DOS.  One of my favorite
features was where from a command line you could simply type a
directory, and it would go there.  I.e., instead of typing

cd \Windows

You, in 4DOS could just type

\Windows

In BASH, if you try this, it simply complains that "___ is a directory".
In other words, it's a distinct unhandled case.  Why not use this case
for something useful?

So, I made some mods to bash to make this in fact work like it did in
4DOS.  You only have to patch one file,  'execute_cmd.c'

I threw together this web page with more details.
http://www.mattwalsh.com/twiki/bin/view/Main/BashDirectoryJumpPatch

I think users will find it addictive; I did with 4DOS and now it's like
falling in love again.  

If it you find a hole in this scheme please let me know.  The only thing
I can think of is that some scripts might be sloppy and simply check to
see if a directory exists in this really backwards way.  The code
changes were actually very simple.  If it looks ok I'll submit a patch
to the BASH mailing list.

--matt Walsh

 
 <<bash_dirchange.patch>>

bash_dirchange.patch
Description: bash_dirchange.patch