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Changing a directory of the parent shell

I 'm wondering of any mechanism that one could use to change the directory of a parent shell from sub-shell. For ex., I 'm running the script "settings.sh" in my $HOME. My $HOME has a directory $HOME/TEST/run. If my "settings.sh" scripts is as below

    #!/bin/bash

    # some shell related code
    # some shell related code

    cd $HOME/TEST/run

    exit 0

I execute the above script at command prompt at $HOME. After the execution, I expect my command prompt in directory $HOME/TEST/run. I do understand that in sub-shell, it is being cd'd to $HOME/TEST/run, but at the end of the execution, it's back in $HOME.

Is there any elegant way of doing the above, using a single script. One way is to modify the script "settings.sh" to generate another script and then use ". $HOME/generatedScript.sh"

Solution

  • Nope, you can't. That's by design. Parent processes should never be affected by the results of a child without them wanting to be affected (otherwise sub-shells could do all sorts of nasty tricky things to the parent).

    What you can do is have the shell save the information into a file or print the directory or ... Such that the parent at least can use it to change directories if the parent wants to.