tinker.ph

Re-inventing muscle memory with zoxide

Going down the rabbit hole of updating my terminal, I came across zoxide. In a nutshell, it’s a modern replacement for cd. It seems both a gift from heaven and hell.

From their README.md:

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z foo              # cd into highest ranked directory matching foo
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z foo bar          # cd into highest ranked directory matching foo and bar
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z foo /            # cd into a subdirectory starting with foo
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z ~/foo            # z also works like a regular cd command
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z foo/             # cd into relative path
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z ..               # cd one level up
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z -                # cd into previous directory
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zi foo             # cd with interactive selection (using fzf)
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z foo<SPACE><TAB>  # show interactive completions (zoxide v0.8.0+, bash 4.4+/fish/zsh only)

On the one hand, it makes digging through long directory trees faster. On the other hand, I came across a YouTube video saying they aliased cd for z. Seems like a recipe for disaster when you run bash scripts with expand_aliases, where previously working scripts would suddenly execute commands on the wrong directory.

As for me, I’m getting used to re-wiring my muscle memory around the z command and how I navigate directory trees. So far, despite the extra convenience it offers, I’m still a bit slower than using just plain cd.