whi

whi is a smarter which that also lets you rearrange your current shell's PATH safely.

Whi is path-only again.

Deprecation notice for 0.7.0 whi is intentionally dropping whifile activation, environment-variable management, and virtual-environment support so the project can stay focused on PATH management.

• If you still need those features, stay on whi 0.6.x.
• Legacy profile and saved PATH files may still contain !env.*, !whi.extra, or ENV! sections; whi will keep reading them for compatibility, but those directives are ignored and never rewritten.
• The follow-up project for the removed functionality will be envy.

• Managed features: prefer, add, move, switch, clean, delete, undo, redo, reset, diff, apply, save, load, list, rmp, shorthands
• Removed features: environment-variable management, whifile activation, and virtual environment management

Install shell integration

eval "$(whi init bash)"      # add to the end of ~/.bashrc
eval "$(whi init zsh)"       # add to the end of ~/.zshrc
whi init fish | source        # add to the end of ~/.config/fish/config.fish

Common commands

whi cargo                     # find cargo on PATH
whi --all cargo               # show all matches
whi prefer cargo 2            # make PATH entry 2 win for cargo
whi prefer ~/.cargo/bin       # prepend a path to PATH if needed
whi add ~/.local/bin          # add one or more paths
whi move 5 2                  # move PATH entry 5 to 2
whi switch 2 3                # swap PATH entries
whi clean                     # remove duplicate PATH entries
whi delete 7                  # delete PATH entry 7
whi delete cargo              # delete PATH entries matching pattern/path
whi undo                      # undo last PATH change
whi redo                      # redo last PATH change
whi reset                     # reset to initial PATH for this shell session
whi diff                      # show PATH changes since session start

Persist PATH

whi apply                     # save current PATH for this shell
whi apply fish                # save for a specific shell
whi apply all                 # save for bash, zsh, and fish

whi save work                 # save current PATH as profile "work"
whi load work                 # load profile "work"
whi list                      # list saved profiles
whi rmp work                  # remove profile "work"

File format

Saved PATH files and profiles use a path-only directive format:

!path.replace
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin

Supported directives:

• !path.replace
• !path.prepend
• !path.append
• legacy PATH!
• legacy colon-separated PATH strings

Deprecated directives are still parsed for compatibility and ignored:

• !env.set
• !env.replace
• !env.unset
• !whi.extra
• legacy ENV!

Shorthands

whip   -> whi prefer
whim   -> whi move
whis   -> whi switch
whic   -> whi clean
whid   -> whi delete
whia   -> whi --all
whiad  -> whi add
whin   -> whi -n
whiu   -> whi undo
whir   -> whi redo
whil   -> whi load
whish  -> whi shorthands

Storage

• Saved PATH files: ~/.whi/saved_path_bash, ~/.whi/saved_path_zsh, ~/.whi/saved_path_fish
• Profiles: ~/.whi/profiles/
• Config: ~/.whi/config.toml
• Protected paths: ~/.whi/protected_paths
• Session history: ${XDG_RUNTIME_DIR:-/tmp}/whi-<uid>/session_<pid>.*

Notes

• Mutating commands require shell integration because they must update the current shell's PATH.
• whi apply preserves protected paths by default. Use --no-protect to skip that safety behavior.