upsearch.sh - a bash function to recursively crawl up a directory structure until a file or directory is found.

upsearch.sh

upsearch () {
  if test -e "$1"; then
    echo "$PWD"
  else
    if [ "$PWD" = "/" ]; then
      return 1;
    else
      pushd .. > /dev/null
      upsearch "$1"
      exit_status=$?
      popd > /dev/null
      return "$exit_status"
    fi
  fi
}