goto – Working Directory Shortcuts

You sit down, log in to your computer, open a terminal window, and get to work. But first you need to change directories. If you work on a large project, you probably end up doing that a few times before you’re close to the thing you’re working on.

$ cd projects/current_project/src/com/example/thing/components
# aw shoot, what was it called again?
$ ls
... lots of stuff ...
$ cd frobnicator
$ ls
... more stuff ...
$ cd lib
# etc.

Even if you remember exactly where it is in the tree you’re going, it’s a lot of typing, right?

cd ~/projects/current_project/src/com/example/thing/components/frobnicator/lib

A common workaround is to set up a handful of alias-es in your .bashrc or
other shell init script that go to commonly-used locations.

Enter goto, a more flexible solution.

goto is a context-sensitive set of shortcuts to your working directories. By context-sensitive, it means what it does depends on where your current directory is. You can configure a default working subdirectory (and any number of named alternates) for each of the projects you work on. Simply cd to anywhere in those projects, and type goto, and it brings you to that working directory.


goto is configured by a simple plain text file in your home directory, ~/.goto.toml. It uses the TOML format to express structure in an easy-to-read way. (TOML is a lot like the well-known “INI” format, but better defined and more flexible.)

A sample:

proj = "projects/current_project"
dl = "downloads"
pk = "packages"

"*" = "src/com/example/thing/components/frobnicator/lib"
comps = "src/com/example/thing/components"
test = "tests/thing"

The top of the file defines a few named shortcuts. These are available from everywhere; simply goto <name> to invoke them.

The line in brackets begins a context. It’s only active when you’re in a subdirectory of the path given. It then defines some more shortcuts specific to that context. The * shortcut is special: it is the default, used when you don’t call goto with any arguments.

Paths are relative to your home directory, and the paths inside the context are relative to the path of the context itself.

So in this case, a common flow might be:

$ goto proj # or: cd projects/current_project
$ goto comps
$ ls
$ cd <something>

A lot less typing.

Advanced Configuration

Contexts can overlap too! goto matches contexts from the most precise one first, out to the global context. A more-specific context can name shortcuts the same as less-specific ones, and they will override them. So goto test could bring you to project-wide UI tests in a project-wide context, but inside some sub-component’s directory, it could be configured to bring you to that component’s unit tests instead.



  1. rust compiler
  2. a Unix-based OS (Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, etc., but not Windows 😓)

To download, build, and install:

  • git clone
  • cd goto.git
  • cargo build --release
  • echo "function goto() { eval \$($(pwd)/target/release/goto \$*) }" >> ~/.bashrc
  • . ~/.bashrc

(adjust the last two lines as needed to suit your shell)

Note that goto is meant to be used with your shell’s eval function, because that’s the only way to change your shell’s current directory. It prints pushd <directory>, which the shell must evaluate itself.

Future Plans

  1. Currently goto is very Unix-centric. It would be nice to make a Powershell or cmd.exe compatible version.
  2. Add some testing around the .goto.toml configuration parser :)
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