Dhop reimplemented in Rust 🔗

I recently spent some time updating an old friend with new language skills!

A bit of context 🔗

Dhop is a program that I wrote in around 2013 to fulfill a desire that I had to more easily manage commonly-used directories from the command-line. It allows you to save paths in a trio of ways:

set a filesystem-wide name for a path which you can use to refer to it later. In its simplest (and most useful) form, you can name the directory you're currently in:
```
$ dhop set website
Set location 'website' to '/home/eron/src/abstrys-web'.
```
Then, wherever you are in the filesystem later, this returns you there:
```
$ dhop website
Moving to '/home/eron/src/abstrys-web'.
```
You can pre-plan a journey by assigning the path explicitly:
```
$ dhop set website ~/src/abstrys-web
Set location 'website' to '/home/eron/src/abstrys-web'.
```
mark a path so that you can recall to it later. Yes, fellow nerds, this is a specific reference to the similarly-named magic spells in Morrowind, and it works exactly the same way:
```
$ dhop mark
Path '/home/eron/src/games/madblox/src/media' is now marked.
```
There can only ever be one marked location. I tend to use this command to mark the place I'm currently working, making it easy to return there from anywhere:
```
$ dhop recall
Moving to '/home/eron/src/games/madblox/src/media'.
```
A mark is permanent until a new path is marked. So recall can be used many times to keep returning to the same spot.
push and pop paths from a stack. While using this, you can specify either a previously-named location or just submit a directory path:
```
$ dhop push website
Added '/home/eron/src/games/madblox/src/media' to stack.
Moving to '/home/eron/src/abstrys-web'.
```
Later, you can use pop to return to the last-pushed directory:
```
$ dhop pop
Moving to '/home/eron/src/games/madblox/src/media'.
```

All of these places—named locations, marked locations, and the location stack—are persistent across command-line sessions.

There are also a few other commands used to provide info about these saved locations:

path reveals the path associated with a named location without taking you there:
```
$ dhop path blog
/home/eron/src/abstrys-web/source/blog
```
I use this command, for example, to inject the path associated with a name without having to type it:
```
$ cp -r source_files `dhop path cur-work`/source
```

list catalogs all of the known locations, including the marked path and the location stack:

$ dhop list
{
   "locations": {
      "dhop": "/home/eron/src/dhop",
      "blog": "/home/eron/src/abstrys-web/source/blog",
      "website": "/home/eron/src/abstrys-web"
   },
   "stack": [],
   "mark": "/home/eron/src/games/madblox/src/media"
}

It's one of those generally-useful programs that I use wherever I'm working.

The Rust reimplementation 🔗

The original implementation of Dhop was written in Python. Both because I was learning it at the time, and also because I hate typing long pathnames and wanted a simpler way to navigate in my usual computing environment, which has been primarily the command-line (ssh much?).

Fast-forward to 2026, and although I still write code in Python (and even C/C++ for that matter), I've learned enough Rust, and also about CLI design in general, that I wanted to revisit this old workhorse and reimplement it as a static binary with some interface and functionality refinements.

Some of the changes from the old Python version include:

Better accessibility. Every command now provides some type of confirmation, instead of silently succeeding (or failing).
Removal of the cp, mv and rm commands. The implementation of these in the original Python version wasn't as good as I imagined. I tended to just pipe dhop path <name> to the actual os-level cp, mv, and rm commands.
dhop is much faster now!

Any future updates will target this version of dhop. The Python version still exists for reference, but I recommend using the Rust version. It's a better experience overall.

Installing Dhop 🔗

If you're a command-line citizen and think you might find it useful, have a look at the installation instructions on GitHub.

More information 🔗

See dhop on GitHub for more information, or if you're interested in poking through the source.

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