ohmyzsh/plugins/dircycle

dircycle

Plugin for cycling through the directory stack

This plugin enables directory navigation similar to using back and forward on browsers or common file explorers like Finder or Nautilus. It uses a small zle trick that lets you cycle through your directory stack left or right using Ctrl + Shift + Left / Right . This is useful when moving back and forth between directories in development environments, and can be thought of as kind of a nondestructive pushd/popd.

Enabling the plugin

1. Open your .zshrc file and add dircycle in the plugins section:

   plugins=(
       # all your enabled plugins
       dircycle
   )

1. Restart the shell or restart your Terminal session:

   $ exec zsh
   $

Usage Examples

Say you opened these directories on the terminal:

~$ cd Projects
~/Projects$ cd Hacktoberfest
~/Projects/Hacktoberfest$ cd oh-my-zsh
~/Projects/Hacktoberfest/oh-my-zsh$ dirs -v
0       ~/Projects/Hacktoberfest/oh-my-zsh
1       ~/Projects/Hacktoberfest
2       ~/Projects
3       ~

By pressing Ctrl + Shift + Left, the current working directory or $PWD will be from oh-my-zsh to Hacktoberfest. Press it again and it will be at Projects.

And by pressing Ctrl + Shift + Right, the $PWD will be from Projects to Hacktoberfest. Press it again and it will be at oh-my-zsh.

Here's a example history table with the same accessed directories like above:

Current $PWD	Key press	New $PWD
oh-my-zsh	Ctrl + Shift + Left	Hacktoberfest
Hacktoberfest	Ctrl + Shift + Left	Projects
Projects	Ctrl + Shift + Left	~
~	Ctrl + Shift + Right	Projects
Projects	Ctrl + Shift + Right	Hacktoberfest
Hacktoberfest	Ctrl + Shift + Right	oh-my-zsh
oh-my-zsh	Ctrl + Shift + Right	~

Note the last traversal, when pressing Ctrl + Shift + Right on a last known $PWD, it will change back to the first known $PWD, which in the example is ~.

Here's an asciinema cast demonstrating the example above:

Functions

Function	Description
insert-cycledleft	Change $PWD to the previous known stack, bound to Ctrl + Shift + Left
insert-cycledright	Change $PWD to the next known stack, bound to Ctrl + Shift + Right
insert-cycledup	Change $PWD to the parent folder, bound to Ctrl + Shift + Up
insert-cycleddown	Change $PWD to the first alphabetical child folder, bound to Ctrl + Shift + Down

Rebinding keys

You can bind these functions to other key sequences, as long as you know the bindkey sequence. For example, these commands bind to Alt + Shift + key in xterm-256color:

bindkey '^[[1;4D' insert-cycledleft
bindkey '^[[1;4C' insert-cycledright
bindkey "\e[1;4A" insert-cycledup
bindkey "\e[1;4B" insert-cycleddown

You can get the bindkey sequence by pressing Ctrl + V, then pressing the keyboard shortcut you want to use.