I tried to make an "alias" for a path that I use often while shell scripting. I tried something, but it failed:
myFold="~/Files/Scripts/Main"
cd myFold
bash: cd: myFold: No such file or directory
How do I make it work ?
However, cd ~/Files/Scripts/Main
works.
Since it's an environment variable (alias has a different definition in bash
), you need to evaluate it with something like:
cd "${myFold}"
or:
cp "${myFold}/someFile" /somewhere/else
But I actually find it easier, if you just want the ease of switching into that directory, to create a real alias (in one of the bash
startup files like .bashrc
), so I can save keystrokes:
alias myfold='cd ~/Files/Scripts/Main'
Then you can just use (without the cd
):
myfold
To get rid of the definition, you use unalias
. The following transcript shows all of these in action:
pax> cd ; pwd ; ls -ald footy
/home/pax
drwxr-xr-x 2 pax pax 4096 Jul 28 11:00 footy
pax> footydir=/home/pax/footy ; cd "$footydir" ; pwd
/home/pax/footy
pax> cd ; pwd
/home/pax
pax> alias footy='cd /home/pax/footy' ; footy ; pwd
/home/pax/footy
pax> unalias footy ; footy
bash: footy: command not found
Put the following line in your myscript
set myFold = '~/Files/Scripts/Main'
In the terminal use
source myscript
cd $myFold
The preceding answers that I tried do not allow for automatic expansion (autocompletion) of subdirectories of the aliased directory.
However, if you push the directory that you want to alias onto the dirs
stack...
$ pushd ~/my/aliased/dir
...you can then type dirs -v
to see its numeric position in the stack:
0 ~/my/aliased/dir
1 ~/Downloads
2 /media/usbdrive
and refer to it using that number for most if not all commands that expect a directory parameter:
$ mv foo.txt ~0
You can even use Tab to show the immediate subdirectories of the "aliased" directory:
$ cd ~0/<Tab>
child_dir1 child_dir2
Maybe it's better to use links
Symbolic or soft link (files or directories, more flexible and self documenting)
# Source Link
ln -s /home/jake/doc/test/2000/something /home/jake/xxx
Hard link (files only, less flexible and not self documenting)
# Source Link
ln /home/jake/doc/test/2000/something /home/jake/xxx
How to create a link to a directory
Hint: If you need not to see the link in your home you can start it with a dot . ; then it will be hidden by default then you can access it like
cd ~/.myHiddelLongDirLink
You can add any paths you want to the hashtable of your bash:
hash -d <CustomName>=<RealPath>
Now you will be able to cd ~<CustomName>
. To make it permanent add it to your bashrc script.
Notice that this hashtable is meant to provide a cache for bash not to need to search for content everytime a command is executed, therefore this table will be cleared on events that invalidate the cache, e.g. modifying $PATH
.
Another option would be to use a symbolic link. ie:
ln -s ~/Files/Scripts/Main ~/myFold
After that you can perform operations to ~/myFold
, such as:
cp some_file.txt ~/myFold
which will put the file in ~/Files/Scripts/Main
. You can remove the symbolic link at any time with rm ~/myFold
, which will keep the original directory.
but an actual alias for a dir is also possible, try
myScripts="~/Files/Scripts/Main"
alias myScripts="cd $myScripts"
This way you have a common naming convention (for each dir/alias pair), and if you need to copy something from the current dir to myScripts, you don't have to think about it.
IHTH
First, you need the $
to access "myFold"'s value to make the code in the question work:
cd "$myFold"
To simplify this you create an alias in ~/.bashrc
:
alias cdmain='cd ~/Files/Scripts/Main'
Don't forget to source the .bashrc
once to make the alias become available in the current bash session:
source ~/.bashrc
Now you can change to the folder using:
cdmain
First off, you need to remove the quotes:
bashboy@host:~$ myFolder=~/Files/Scripts/Main
The quotes prevent the shell from expanding the tilde to its special meaning of being your $HOME
directory.
You could then use $myFolder
an environment a shell variable:
bashboy@host:~$ cd $myFolder
bashboy@host:~/Files/Scripts/Main$
To make an alias, you need to define the alias:
alias myfolder="cd $myFolder"
You can then treat this sort of like a command:
bashboy@host:~$ myFolder
bashboy@host:~/Files/Scripts/Main$
There is a shell option cdable_vars
:
cdable_vars
If this is set, an argument to thecd
builtin command that is not a directory is assumed to be the name of a variable whose value is the directory to change to.
You could add this to your .bashrc
:
shopt -s cdable_vars
export myFold=$HOME/Files/Scripts/Main
Notice that I've replaced the tilde with $HOME
; quotes prevent tilde expansion and Bash would complain that there is no directory ~/Files/Scripts/Main
.
Now you can use this as follows:
cd myFold
No $
required. That's the whole point, actually – as shown in other answers, cd "$myFold"
works without the shell option. cd myFold
also works if the path in myFold
contains spaces, no quoting required.
This usually even works with tab autocompletion as the _cd
function in bash_completion
checks if cdable_vars
is set – but not every implementation does it in the same manner, so you might have to source bash_completion
again in your .bashrc
(or edit /etc/profile
to set the shell option).
Other shells have similar options, for example Zsh (cdablevars
).
Source: Stackoverflow.com