Quitting and changing the shell’s directory

Q or F10 quits (asking first, unless confirm_quit is off). If a program is running in the built-in terminal, Xylem always asks.

Alt+Q

A program cannot change the directory of the shell that launched it. So, as in other file managers, Alt+Q writes the current directory to a file (--cwd-file) and a small shell function does the cd. Put this in your ~/.bashrc (or ~/.zshrc):

xy() {
    local tmp dir
    tmp=$(mktemp) || return
    command xy --cwd-file "$tmp" "$@"
    dir=$(cat -- "$tmp")
    rm -f -- "$tmp"
    [ -n "$dir" ] && [ -d "$dir" ] && cd -- "$dir"
}

With it, xy works as before; only when you quit with Alt+Q does the shell end up in the directory you were in. Q and F10 quit without changing anything.

In PowerShell, put this in your $PROFILE:

function xy {
    $tmp = New-TemporaryFile
    xy.exe --cwd-file $tmp @args
    $dir = Get-Content -Raw -Encoding UTF8 $tmp
    Remove-Item $tmp
    if ($dir -and (Test-Path -LiteralPath $dir -PathType Container)) {
        Set-Location -LiteralPath $dir
    }
}