How can I have term.el (ansi-term) track directories if using anyhting other than bash

Question

When using eshell or ansi-term and bash emacs changes the default-directory variable depending on what directory you are in.

So if I move to /home/user/code/pr

Answer 1

There are a number of solutions to this problem. I happen to prefer my implementation which changes the prompt to contain the current path, which Emacs recognizes and uses to get the behavior you want. Additionally, my solution hides the portion of the prompt which contains the path because I find it ugly.

My solution can be found in the blog post: Emacs Tip #25 Shell Dirtrack By Prompt.

However, there are a number of other solutions which can be found on the Emacs Wiki or other places:

• Shell dirtracking again
• Emacs Wiki Shell Dirtrack By Prompt

Answer 2

Put this in your .zshrc:

chpwd() { print -P "\033AnSiTc %d" }

print -P "\033AnSiTu %n"
print -P "\033AnSiTc %d"

The chpwd() function is run every time the pwd changes. The line ending in %d is the one that allows you to track the current directory--I repeat it outside the function to make sure it is run when zsh first initializes. But Emacs requires us to first tell it who the current user is (the line ending in %n).

This is actually explained in term.el, which should be inside /usr/share/emacs//lisp, if you're using Ubuntu.

Hope this helps.