windows-cds

Initiative

Linux bash has its pushd and dirs tool to easily switch to a history directory. dirs -v can be used to list history directory with index. pushd +n can be used to switch to that directory.

In Windows command line also has its pushd, but there is no dirs available. Only popd can be used to restore history directory one by one.

The purpose of this project is to provide facility on Windows with similar functionality of Linux pushd and dirs. The name cds can be interpreted as cd with stack or cd super.

The Script

Script File	Description
pythonScript\cds.py	python script to change to a dir with the old dir saved in a stack it also provide functionality to list the dir stack, select one of the dir in the stack, and clean the stack
pythonScript\cdg.py	python script change to a parent directory with grep functionality
batchScript\cds.bat	batch script invoking cds.py
batchScript\cdg.bat	batch script invoking cdg.py

Installation

Copy batchScript and pythonScript to your Windows. In environment settings, add batchScript to %path%, create a new environment variable %pythondir% point to pythonScript.

Usage

Open a command window. cds can be used just like cd, but it maintains a dir history file in %userprofile%\dirstack.txt.

cds -l list entries in the history file with index. This is also the default behaviour of cds if no argument is given

cds -g <regex> list entries which match the regular expression

cds -s <n> select the nth entry in the directory history

cds -c clean the history file

cdg <regex> go to a parent directory match the regex

Please see the following example:

C:>cds Windows\

C:\Windows>cds System32\

C:\Windows\System32>cds drivers\

C:\Windows\System32\drivers>cds "%programfiles%"

C:\Program Files>cds d:\Temp

D:\Temp>cds -l
1 : c:\
2 : c:\Windows
3 : c:\Windows\System32
4 : c:\Windows\System32\drivers
5 : D:\Temp

D:\Temp>cds
1 : c:\
2 : c:\Windows
3 : c:\Windows\System32
4 : c:\Windows\System32\drivers
5 : D:\Temp

D:\Temp>cds -g sys
3 : c:\Windows\System32
4 : c:\Windows\System32\drivers

D:\Temp>cds -s 2

C:\Windows>cds -s 4

C:\Windows\System32\drivers>cds -c

C:\Windows\System32\drivers>cds -l

C:\Windows\System32\drivers>cds -h
usage: cds.py [-h] [-l] [-s SELECT] [-c] [path]
positional arguments:
path                  path to to switch to
optional arguments:
-h, --help            show this help message and exit
-l, --list            list directory stack
-g GREP, --grep GREP  grep in directory history
-s SELECT, --select SELECT
select a dir in stack
-c, --clean           clean directory stack database

C:\Windows\System32\drivers>cdg win

C:\Windows>

To replace the default cd. Just use the alias with the following command

>doskey cd = cds $*

Note

If the directory path contains space ( ), it must be added with double quote, and must delele the trailing \. This is because of the limitation of batch script language

For example

cds C:\Program Files (x86) will fail because double quote is not there

cds "C:\Program Files (x86)\" will fail because trailing \ is not removed

cds "C:\Program Files (x86)" OK

License

© Eric Sun

License under MIT License