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dirs — List the directory stack built up by pushd and popd across all 5 shells

Equivalents in every shell

Bashunix
dirs -v

Builtin. `-v` shows the indexed (vertical) form — the indices are what you pass to `pushd +N` / `popd +N`. `dirs -c` clears the stack.

Zshunix
dirs -v

Same as bash. With `setopt auto_pushd`, `dirs` effectively becomes a recent-cd history.

Fishunix
dirs

Builtin. No `-v` flag — fish prints the stack one entry per line by default, oldest first.

PowerShellwindows
Get-Location -Stack

No `dirs` alias. `Get-Location -Stack` returns a stack of `PathInfo` objects (with `.Path` per entry), not plain text — project with `| ForEach-Object Path` to get bash-style output.

cmd.exewindows
pushd

`pushd` with no arguments lists the current stack — same output format `pushd` would print after a push. There is no separate `dirs` keyword in cmd.

Worked examples

Show the directory stack with indices

Bash
dirs -v
Zsh
dirs -v
Fish
dirs
PowerShell
Get-Location -Stack | ForEach-Object Path
cmd.exe
pushd

Clear the directory stack

Bash
dirs -c
Zsh
dirs -c
PowerShell
while (Get-Location -Stack) { Pop-Location }

Print just the depth of the directory stack

Bash
dirs | wc -w
Zsh
echo ${#dirstack[@]}
PowerShell
(Get-Location -Stack).Count

Gotchas

  • `dirs` always prefixes the listing with the current `$PWD` — so a single-entry stack still shows two paths if you've been `cd`-ing manually. To see only the explicit pushes, use `dirs -v` and ignore index 0.
  • Zsh's `auto_pushd` makes `dirs` essentially a directory history, but DUPLICATES pile up unless you also `setopt pushd_ignore_dups`. Untuned, `dirs` becomes useless after a busy session.
  • PowerShell `Get-Location -Stack` returns OBJECTS, not strings — string concatenation (`"current: " + (Get-Location -Stack)`) silently produces `Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.PSCommandLocationStack`. Always project a property.
  • Cmd has no way to clear the directory stack other than repeatedly calling `popd` until the stack is empty (which errors at the bottom). Closing the cmd window is the only sure reset.
  • Fish `dirs` prints in oldest-first order — the OPPOSITE of bash `dirs` which is newest-first. Scripts that parse the output need to know which shell they are running under.

WSL & PowerShell Core notes

pwsh`dirs` is NOT an alias on pwsh — `Get-Location -Stack` is the only built-in equivalent on both Windows and Unix. Add `Set-Alias dirs "Get-Location -Stack"` (or a wrapper function for projection) in `$PROFILE` if you want bash muscle-memory; PSReadLine ships no such alias by default.
WSLWSL bash `dirs` lists the WSL session's stack only — it cannot see pushes made by the parent Windows pwsh/cmd. To inspect both, run `dirs` inside WSL and `Get-Location -Stack` in pwsh separately and concatenate the output yourself.

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