push/pop current directory?

Question

With bash is there a way to push and pop the current working directory? I tried writing bash;cd dir; ./dostuff;exit; but the current directory is now dir.

Answer 1

There is pushd and popd

Bash will keep a history of the directories you visit, you just have to ask. Bash stores the history in a stack and uses the commands pushd and popd to manage the stack.

More to read

Example:

$ pwd; pushd /tmp; pwd; popd; pwd
/home/me
/tmp ~
/tmp
~
/home/me

Answer 2

Calling bash starts a new subshell, which has its own input; none of the other commands will run until it exits. Surrounding the commands to be run with parens will also start a new subshell, but it will run the commands within it.

( cd dir ; ./dostuff )

Answer 3

If you don't need multiple levels of directory history, you can also do:

cd foo
# do your stuff in foo
cd -

Compared to pushd/popd, this has the disadvantage that if cd foo fails, you end up in the wrong directory with cd -.

(Probably cd - is more handy outside scripts. "Let's go back where I just was.")

Answer 4

I use alias for keeping track of my directory changes so to 'cd' somewhere I can just go back to where I was using 'cd.', or go back two using 'cd..', etc.;

alias pushdd="pushd \$PWD > /dev/null"
alias cd='pushdd;cd'
alias ssh='ssh -A'
alias soc='source ~/.bashrc'
#below to go back to a previous directory (or more)
alias popdd='popd >/dev/null'
alias cd.='popdd'
alias cd..='popdd;popdd'
alias cd...='popdd;popdd;popdd'
alias cd....='popdd;popdd;popdd;popdd'
#below to remove directories from the stack only (do not 'cd' anywhere)
alias .cd='popd -n +0'
alias ..cd='popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0;popd -n +0'

Answer 5

pushd add on to a directory stack

popd remove off of a directory stack

dirs view directory stack

dirs -p "display directory entries one per line"

dirs -c "clear the directory stack"