In terminal, how can I define a key to go to the previous directory which I was in when changing directory with the cd command?
For example, I’m in /opt/soft/bin and I cd into /etc/squid3 and I want to get back to the first directory.
Answers:
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Method 1
You can use
cd -
or you could use
cd "$OLDPWD"
Method 2
The other answers are definitely complete in the direct answer sense. cd - and cd $OLDPWD are definitely the main choices for this. However, I often find that getting into a workflow with pushd and popd works better.
Long story short, if you are moving into a directory with the ultimate intent of coming back to where you started, use pushd/popd.
Extended example
The major difference is easily shown by an example.
$ cd dir1 $ pushd dir2
At this point, you have a directory stack that is dir2, dir1. Running pushd with no arguments will put you back in dir1 with the stack now as dir1, dir2. popd would do the same, but would leave you with an empty directory stack. This is not much different than how you would have been with the cd - workflow.
However, now you can now change directories multiple times and get back to dir1. For example,
$ cd dir1 $ pushd dir2 $ cd dir3
If you run popd at this point, you will go back to dir1.
Method 3
You should use:
cd ~-
it does the same as cd - (from the currently accepted answer) without the annoying echo of the directory and is easier to type than cd "$OLDPWD" or cd - > /dev/null.
Method 4
$ cd -
will change to the previous working directory.
Method 5
You can “define a key” for cd - by editing your ~/.bashrc file and including an alias for the command. For example you could add cdc to make it cd - which would provide you with a shorter way to get to the last directory by adding:
alias cdc='cd -'
This way you would simply type cdc and it would put you in your last working directory.
Method 6
cd .. goes to the precedent folder in the folder’s tree.
cd - goes to the folder which it was before. This command didn’t work on some distros (ubuntu 16.04), works in debian 9.
All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0