You should instead

    pushd /my/path && command && popd

Both in bash AND in fish!

the problem with that is I ended up in the wrong directory if I press ctrl+c, or in the exact examples you give, if command fails.

If it's just make you're doing that for "make -C mydir" does that and puts you back in the original directory when it's done.

I do this too (in zsh), but maybe writing a function callable like this would work:

  with mydir make

Although you'd want to be able to write things like

  with mydir make && ./bin/myprog

and parse everything to the right of `mydir' as a shell pipeline. That might be the sticking point in fish.

I use this a lot in my scripts - handy when you want to capture the output or execute a command in a different directory.

    set output (echo captured)
    echo $output
    > captured

And if you wanna run a command in another dir:

    pushd other_dir
    run_command
    popd