If you have an inconsistent naming convention in your directory structure, this could speed things up/save some memorization.

I'm not a fan of adding features that make poor choices less painful, but I could see using it for a little while as I'm getting to know a non-ideal environment.

I don't have any file or folder name starting with a dash, while underscores are pretty common. Treating dashes and underscores as equivalents saves you one keystroke (i.e. you can type `cd -folder<tab>` instead of `cd _folder<tab>`).

Is this really the reason? One keystroke? That just borders on bloat...

Just put "set -o vi" if you want to remove keystrokes, which this doesn't include.

I've used `set -o vi` for a while but found that emacs-like keybindings are much, much better for inline editing.

And yes, even one keystroke saved matters.

Oh no, I totally understand - typing this on a happy hacker keyboard ;).

I'm just somewhat of a cynic, since my workflow tends to fall on its face when I'm on a server that uses special snowflake rc files. Furthering that cynicism.. these days I'm just using plain /bin/sh for any shell scripts just because of the amazing level of bloat that exists within bash.

The shift press doesn't count as keystroke? :)

Most keyboards only emit an underscore while a shift button is depressed.