Question

Is there a way in unix/linux to execute a command when you cd to it?

I am thinking of something like

• create a file ‘autcd.cmd’ inside /a/b/c with a set of commands
• the moment someone does ‘cd /a/b/c’ , autocd.cmd should be executed.

Is there a simple way to do this other than hacking the filesystem?

Answer 1

You could globally alias cd, and have that alias check the path being cd’d to. But otherwise, there’s no standard method for triggering something when someone enters into a directory. There’s never been a standard “autorun” type thing in Unix as there is on Windows (which is a good thing).