Often times, I find myself navigating very deep into a directory and wanting to open the graphical window (nautilus) for various reasons. So the question is simple:
After doing,
cd sampledirectory
cd sampledirectory2
How can I open this location in a GUI?
I assume Gnome with Nautilus:
nautilus .
To open in the current directory.
Replace nautilus with whichever File Manager you use (Dolphin, etc).
The most portable way should be using freedesktop's xdg-utils xdg-open. For example
$ xdg-open .
this has the advantage of choosing from your desktop preferences the tool to open different file types, like for example
$ xdg-open ~/Documents/mypresentation.odp
or
$ xdg-open ~/Pictures/mypic.png
I've done this a zillion times.
Here is how I do it on every system:
Mac:
#!/bin/sh
open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app ${1:-.}
Linux / BSD, if Gnome:
#!/bin/sh
nautilus ${1:-.}
Windows ... Cygwin ...
#!/bin/sh
[ $# -eq 1 ] && exec explorer "$(cygpath -w "$1")"
Similar to DigitalRoss' comment, on a Mac you can add the following to your ~/.bash_profile:
alias finder="open /System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app ${1:-.}"
then, from any Terminal window session, you can simply type:
finder
to launch the Finder at your current location.