Print selected folder/file to stdout when quitting gdu

[pglira]

I'd like to cd into a selected folder when quitting gdu, e.g. to copy/move/delete large files. This would probably be a new feature of gdu, since I haven't found indications that this is currently possible.

[dundee]

This is unfortunately not possible due to how process environments work. You cannot change environment of parent process.

I can implement the "Spawn shell in current directory" feature of ncdu though. Would that be benefitial for you?

[pglira]

IMO it is not necessary that gdu changes the directory itself. It would be sufficient if gdu prints the selected directory/folder to stdout after quitting. Changing directory would then be possible with:

cd $(gdu)

I think this would be much more flexible than the "Spawn shell in current directory" feature of ncdu.

(My use case would be to call gdu directly from vifm, navigate in gdu to a folder/file and on quitting goto that folder/file in vifm so that I can copy/move/delele files there.)

[pglira]

Thank you for implementing this!

However, I'm not able to use it as described above.

If I call simply gdu and quit with Q the last directory is printed to std out.

However, if I run cd $(gdu) the interactive mode of gdu does not start. Instead a file+folder listing with sizes is printed immediately to std out.

Example:

cd ~/Music
GDU_DIR=$(gdu) && echo $GDU_DIR
12.0 KiB /mp3 8.0 KiB /wav

[dundee]

I am afraid this use case won't be possible. You cannot access stdin and stdout of the terminal in a sub-shell. Thus you cannot start interactive mode.