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z – jump around the filesystem

z is a shell script that maintains a jump-list of the directories you actually use. It tracks your most used directories, based on ‘frecency’. Frecency is any heuristic that combines the frequency and recency into a single measure. In other words, it is the idea of blending frequency (the amount of time you spend in a directory) with recentness (how recently you were in a directory).

After a short learning phase, z will take you to the most ‘frecent’ directory that matches ALL of the regexes given on the command line, in order. Frecency is a portmanteau of ‘recent’ and ‘frequency’. It is a weighted rank that depends on how often and how recently something occurred.

It is released under an open source license. It is not intended as a substitute for the cd command.

Features include:

  • Option to restrict matches to subdirectories of the current directory.
  • Option to match by rank only.
  • Option to match by recent access only.
  • Remove the current directory from the data file.
  • Support for tab completion.

Website: github.com/rupa/z
Support: Wiki
Developer: Rupa Deadwyler
License: WTFPL license

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