Quickly navigate through a cascade of otherwise empty directories in helm

Question

I'd like to be able to quickly skip to the bottom of a cascade of otherwise empty directories. Consider the following directory structure:

foo/
  bar/
    baz/
      a.txt
      b.txt

If I were in foo/ with helm-find-files, I'd like to get to baz/ quickly. I can think of two possible solutions.

1. Somehow configure helm to provide a shortcut to baz/ when in foo/, so the find file buffer might look like:

   .
   ..
   bar/baz
   bar
   

   And bar/baz is maybe marked in a different color.

2. Have the active selection automatically set to the first member of the current directory instead of ., i.e.

   .      <-- selection is usually here after entering a new directory
   ..
   one/   <-- instead, automatically highlight this
   two/
   three.txt
   

   That way, baz/ is two keypresses from foo/.

If I could implement both of these then I'd really be flying. I tried helm-ff-auto-update-initial-value but did not find it useful. You still have to type the first three letters of the directory to enter it automatically. Actually typing even just one character of the directory is not satisfactory. Hiding . and .. has been proposed but is a hack and not supported by the developers, see here and here.

Answer 1

I figured out how to do #2.

(defun tsj/helm-ff-skip-past-dots ()
  (if (and (equal "Find Files" (assoc-default 'name (helm-get-current-source)))
       (s-ends-with? "/." (helm-get-selection)))
  (with-helm-window
    (forward-line 2)
    (helm-mark-current-line))))

(with-eval-after-load 'helm-files
  (advice-add 'helm--update-move-first-line
      :after #'tsj/helm-ff-skip-past-dots))