CDPATH in Bash

Published

2025-08-07

Modified

2026-07-21

What is CDPATH?

CDPATH is a bash environment variable that defines search paths for the cd command. When you run cd dirname, bash searches through each directory in CDPATH to find a matching subdirectory.

You can set it in your .bashrc file.

The Critical Details: Leading Colon and No Export

To prioritize the current working directory, you must put : at the beginning of CDPATH:

CDPATH=":${HOME}:${HOME}/Projects/"

Without the leading colon, bash will search CDPATH directories first, potentially jumping to unexpected locations (don’t ask how I know).

Also, avoid exportng it. It would certainly break scripts with unwanted consequences…

Practical Usage

# From anywhere, these will work:
cd myproject    # Finds ~/Projects/myproject
cd Documents    # Finds ~/Documents
cd local-dir    # Finds ./local-dir (thanks to leading colon)
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