Change directories verbosely?

Question

I am logging every action performed in a bash script to a logfile. I would like to have cd verbosely change directories so I can record the output to the log.

Kind of like this:

iMac:~ leetbacoon$ cd -v /new\ path
cd: /Users/leetbacoon -> /new path
iMac:new path leetbacoon$

Sadly cd lacks a verbose flag. Any idea on how to get something like this to work?

Answer 1

You may find the shell $OLDPWD shell variable useful (defined by POSIX). For example, you could define a shell function overriding the original cd command:

cd() { command cd "$@" && printf '%s -> %s\n' "${OLDPWD}" "${PWD}"; }

Excerpt from the Unix man page you should read:

If, during the execution of the above steps, the PWD environment variable is set, the OLDPWD environment variable shall also be set to the value of the old working directory (that is the current working directory immediately prior to the call to cd).