Re: some directory changing tools to share

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@candle.brasslantern.com>]

On Mar 7, 11:06am, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
} Subject: Re: some directory changing tools to share
}
} This reminds me of a useful feature of 4DOS (a shareware command.com
} replacement which I used to use) and I think also for shared drives in
} Netware. It allowed series of dots to refer to parent directories beyond
} the parent. So, ... refers to the parent of the parent, .... to the
} parent of that etc.

How about this?

  preexec() {
    setopt localoptions extendedglob
    if [[ -o autocd && $1 = ...# ]]
    then
      eval function $1 \{ cd ..${${1#..}:gs@.@/..}\; unfunction $1 \}
      alias -g $1="..${${1#..}:gs@.@/..}"
    fi
  }

Works sort of like named dirs; once you type "....." as a command, it
cd's you there and thereafter refers everywhere to "../../../..".  For
any number of dots greater than 2.  Not quite globbing.

} Would it be possible to add an option which extends the zsh filename
} generation to expand ... to ../.., .... to ../../.. etc. Would this
} conflict with any of the existing globbing system?

It probably wouldn't conflict with file globbing, but as the globbing
system is used for pattern matching in `case' and [[ ]] expressions,
I'd be leery of introducing (a) directory-hierarchy-specific expansion
and (b) yet another metacharacter, which is in effect what `.' would
become.  Perhaps (#...) or something like that.

By the way, in 3.0.7 this works:

zagzig% setopt extendedglob
zagzig% cd /usr/src/local/zsh/zsh-3.1.6
zagzig% echo (../)#
 ../ ../../ ../../../ ../../../../ ../../../../../

But in 3.1.6 it crashes the shell:

zagzig% setopt extendedglob
zagzig% cd /usr/src/local/zsh/zsh-3.1.6
zagzig% echo (../)#
BUG: statfullpath(): pathname too long
zsh: segmentation fault (core dumped)  $ZSH_NAME -f

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com