Open a new tab in the same directory

Question

Say you are in /very/cool/and/deeply/nested/folder . And you want to open a new terminal tab in the same folder.

How would you do that?

I use Mac OS and Zsh.

Answer 1

Use Oh-My-Zsh and add the 'osx' plugin in your ~/.zshrc like:

plugins=(osx)

If you use OSX's Terminal App, you also need to add the terminalapp plugin too: credit

plugins=(osx terminalapp)

If you use iTerm you need to set a configuration option (Note that you may not need the zsh plugins for this to work): credit

Preferences > Profiles > Default > General > Working Directory > Reuse previous session's directory option

That's all you need to do!

Answer 2

Another option now available in Mac OS X Lion is using the built-in feature. It uses 'escape sequences' to find out the current directory. For me it works if I use these commands in my .zshrc:

precmd () {print -Pn "\e]2; %~/ \a"}
preexec () {print -Pn "\e]2; %~/ \a"}

it is also possible to use PS1 (for Bash, from this wiki):

export PS1="\[\e]2;\u@\H \w\a\e[32;1m\]>\[\e[0m\] "

where \e]2; is the escape sequence to print things in the titlebar. It seems that Terminal.app is getting its information from there.

More information:

• http://networking.ringofsaturn.com/Unix/Bash-prompts.php
• http://www.funtoo.org/wiki/Prompt_Magic
• http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/xterm-title-bar-manipulations.html

Answer 3

This is a very simple version which I used in bash and also works in zsh. It saves the current folder in a file, after every command (Doesn't hurt too much IMO) and opens a new terminal in the saved current folder.

add the following to .zshrc

# emulate bash PROMPT_COMMAND (only for zsh)
precmd() { eval "$PROMPT_COMMAND" }
# open new terminal in same dir
PROMPT_COMMAND='pwd > "${HOME}/.cwd"'
[[ -f "${HOME}/.cwd" ]] && cd "$(< ${HOME}/.cwd)"

Answer 4

gdirs seems like a way to almost do it: new tab, then gdirs to select the deep directory and voila. My first idea was to make the directory stack shared among all tabs and do cd ~1 after the new tab, but I cannot find how to do that, as it seems each instance of zsh keeps its own. History sharing goes via a common file, so maybe that could be done here too...

Answer 5

Adding terminalapp to .zshrc didn't work for me so I looked for the plugin ~/.oh-my-zsh/plugins/terminalapp and it tells me:

# This file is intentionally empty.
#
# The terminalapp plugin is deprecated and may be removed in a future release.
# Its functionality has been folded in to the core lib/termsupport.zsh, which
# is loaded for all users. You can remove terminalapp from your $plugins list
# once all your systems are updated to the current version of Oh My Zsh.

Answer 6

New tabs already open in the same folder (Cmd+T). For new windows (Cmd+N) the solution from Pieter is right:

Preferences > Profiles > Default > General > Working Directory > Reuse previous session's directory option

Answer 7

This is how you do it in bash.

This shell script will tell (quiet literally, using Applescript) Terminal.app to open a new tab then switch to the current directory:

#!/bin/bash
osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal"' \
-e 'tell application "System Events" to tell process "Terminal" to keystroke "t" using command down' \
-e "do script with command \"cd `pwd`;clear\" in selected tab of the front window" \
-e 'end tell' &> /dev/null

… put the above shell script in a directory in your $PATH (i.e. /usr/local/bin) and make sure it’s executable:

$ chmod +x /usr/local/bin/nt

(source)

Answer 8

If you need to open this new tab right now, without changing your config files or installing new plugins, run this:

pwd | pbcopy

Then open a new Terminal tab manually (with ⌘T), and in the new tab:

cd "`pbpaste`"

Warning: this will overwrite the contents of the system clipboard.

---

An alternative, longer method that does not overwrite the clipboard:

pwd > $TMPDIR/wd

Open your new tab.

cd "$(cat $TMPDIR/wd)"
rm -f $TMPDIR/wd

Answer 9

Per Pieter's comment above, once the plugins=(git osx) plugins are installed, you can just type tab and it will open a new tab in your current directory.

Answer 10

If you want the directory to change automatically when a new tab is opened use the dirpersist plugin.

The osx plugin only does save the last directory but you have to run the command tab to open a new tab, which is not always possible (if, say, you're running something in your current tab).