Is there any shortcut for go back to previous folder?
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wei zhang
on 23 May 2020
Commented: Walter Roberson
on 12 Jul 2021
Sometimes I need to navigate among some folders. I need the "go back" in a convenient way, like "cd -". But, this is not supported in Matlab. Is there any way to achieve this? If not, a keyboard shortcut to pop up the recent directory list is OK,too.
Thank you very much.
8 Comments
Accepted Answer
Cris LaPierre
on 24 May 2020
There is a Back button in the Current Folder toolbox. That takes be back to the folder that was previously the current folder. Does that help or are you specifically looking for a keyboard shortcut?
![](https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/298998/image.png)
2 Comments
Walter Roberson
on 12 Jul 2021
support for . and .. is present because NTFS and all Unix filesystems literally have entries named . and .. inside them. MATLAB does not need to do any special parsing for either one: it can just ask the operating system to change directory (and then query to find out where it ended up.)
There is special processing for ~ as that is not handled by the operating system. It is, however, only necessary to construct the mapping of ~ to a folder name once at startup time using environment variables HOME, or USERDRIVE and USERPATH, as changes to those are ignored (iirc).
Supporting cd - would require that cd keeps history, which it does not do at the moment. I don't think it would be a difficult change to support one level of history, but it would be different in character than what is already implemented.
More Answers (1)
soon kiat
on 29 May 2020
cd ..
can also help to go back to previous folder
6 Comments
omid zandi
on 12 Jul 2021
Does anyone have any suggestion about doing the same thing, but this time for going forward in folders ??
Walter Roberson
on 12 Jul 2021
cd does not keep any kind of history. It has no idea that you used to be in a folder inside the current folder and want to go back there.
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