push/pop current directory?

Solution 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

Solution 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 )

Solution 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.")

Solution 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'