Re: Bash Feature Proposal

On Mon, Feb 09, 2026 at 10:29:53 -0500, Eric Lovejoy via Bug reports for the GNU Bourne Again SHell wrote:
> One Feature I would like to propose is an addition to the Bash shell
> builtin cd,
> 
> cd -N :: change dir by N directories.
>       $cd -3  # go up 3 directories.
>       $cd -0  # no operation
>       $cd -2  # go up 2 directories
>   Goal save some key strokes? avoid this: cd ../../../../ type of thing.
>        scripting possibilities?
> 
> 
> Potential downside:
> naming directories "-7" or any negative number might cause an issue in
> directory traversal.

You could implement this yourself with a function.  I would suggest
not overriding the "cd" name, however, precisely because of the downside
you've already mentioned.  A different name like "up" might be better.
Then you can also omit the - sign on the call.

up() {
    local i
    for ((i=0; i < $1; i++)); do cd .. || return 1; done
}