dirswitch.el: a fish shell-style directory switcher for shell-mode

A friend of mine showed me Fish Shell, a shell replacement for Mac and Linux. One of its coolest features was a “quick directory switcher” that lets you jump to directories you’ve previously visited in that session.

Feeling left out I decided to write dirswitch.el, a directory switcher for M-x shell, Emacs’s built-in shell mode (see Running shells in Emacs: an Overview.)

Like Shell’s M-r history search functionality (which works much like isearch) dirswitch.el will record directories you visit and let you rapidly switch between them by pressing C-M-n and C-M-p.

It’s still a rough prototype but it’s a hallmark example of what a few hours of Emacs hacking can accomplish.

You can get it from my Github and it’ll probably appear in a package manager near you soon.