kuda.ai | code. guitar. life.

If you write code, chances are high that you use Visual Studio Code as your code editor. And if you do, you might use code . to open the current directory.

This models a typical workflow:

# change into the directory with your code:
cd ~/code/repos/core_services

# open the directory with visual studio code:
code .

# alternatively, open the repo directly without changing into it:
code ~/code/repos/core_services

In any case, you always have to either change the directory or type the directory.

There is a shortcut: zoxide, a better cd. Zoxide remembers the directories you visit, and enables you to go right into them, without browsing parent directories first.

# first things first: install zoxide
brew install zoxide

# and init zoxide
echo 'eval "$(zoxide init zsh)"' >> $HOME/.zshrc

# many people alias cd to zoxide, but I don't; instead:
echo 'alias z=zoxide' >> $HOME/.zshrc

# now activate the changes
source $HOME/.zshrc

Once you have done that, you can use a shortcut to roam around your filesystem:

alias z="zoxide"

# zoxide keeps a sqlite3 data base with known directories that were visited,
# so we need to visit a directory at least once:
z ~/code/repos/core_services

# instead of typing out the whole thing,
# you can abbreviate and use the last dir:
z core_services

# pro tip: you do not even have to spell the whole name:
z core # enough to get the right result; at this point, c would be enough, too

# now we can print that directory with "zoxide query <word>":
z query core
# prints the absolute path "/Users/david/code/repos/core_services"

# "zoxide query" will search the database for any directory 
# that matches the given <word>

Now we can use code with zoxide in a subshell:

code $(zoxide query core)

Of course, this is longer than the original way, so let's pack the logic into a function.

# note: cz stands for "code zoxide"
function cz {
  # $1 stands for first argument passed to cz
  path=$(zoxide query $1)
  code $path
}

# once you sourced that function, you can simply type:

cz core

# and this is going to open your repository in visual studio code :)