Compact Path

Reduce path elements to one character save the last element, like vim buffer names.

❯ pwd
/Users/tupton/code/compact_path
❯ python compact_path.py $(pwd)
/U/t/c/compact_path
❯ python compact_path.py $(pwd | sed "s:$HOME:~:")
~/c/compact_path

Pass the --trigger or -t option to specify the length at which compaction will take place. Any paths that are less than this length will not be compacted.

❯ pwd
/Users/tupton/code/compact_path
❯ python compact_path.py $(pwd) --trigger 35
/Users/tupton/code/compact_path
❯ python compact_path.py $(pwd) -t 10
/U/t/c/compact_path

You can use this in your shell prompt.

function compact_path() {
    local cp="/usr/local/bin/compact_path"
    if [[ -e "$cp" ]]; then
        echo $("$cp" "$1" --trigger 20)
    else
        echo "$1"
    fi
}

PROMPT='$(compact_path "${PWD/#$HOME/~}") %# '

In zsh, that would result in a prompt that looks like the following.

~/code/compact_path % cd /usr/local/Library/Homebrew/
/u/l/L/Homebrew % cd ~/code/compact_path
~/code/compact_path %

See my zshrc for the actual compact_path function and how I use it in my prompt.