Stupid Bash Tricks: Copy The Working Directory

Published 29 April 08 by Justin French

The Problem

I have a Terminal window open, I’m doing stuff and I want to open another Terminal window or tab to the same current working directory.

A Possible Solution

I recently added this to my ~/.bash_login file:

alias cwd='pwd | pbcopy'

This might be stating the obvious, but pwd outputs the current working directory, and we pipe that into pbcopy which copies that output to the paste board. I choose cwd (Copy Working Directory) as the alias, your mileage may vary.

It’s still a bit fiddly, but better than grabbing the mouse to copy the current working directory:

1. type cwd
2. type Command-T (new tab in Terminal.app)
3. type cd
4. type Command-V (Paste)

Can you better?

Ideally I’d like to get this down to one key-stroke. Automator’s “Watch Me Do” recordable action was looking promising, but it runs horribly slow. Applescript maybe? Email me or go nuts in the comments!

Update 1:

Benjamin Birnbaum writes in with this bash function. There’s still some lag (AppleScript lag I guess) but I’m suitably impressed!

Update 2:

Chap Lovejoy writes in with this AppleScript which I’m yet to try out:

tell application "Terminal"
  activate
  set wnd to the front window
  set tb to the selected tab of wnd
  -- We don't want to clobber any running process
  if not busy of tb then
    -- Clear the current command line
    tell application "System Events"
      keystroke "a" using control down
      keystroke "k" using control down
    end tell
    do script "pwd | pbcopy" in tb
    -- The make comamnd in Terminal appears to be
    -- broken so generate the keystroke as a workaround
    tell application "System Events"
      keystroke "t" using command down
    end tell
    do script "cd \"`pbpaste`\"" in the selected tab of wnd
  end if
end tell