How to make an "alias" for a long path?

Question

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/Mainworks.

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

There is a shell option cdable_vars:

cdable_vars
If this is set, an argument to the cd 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).

Answer 3

Maybe it's better to use links

Soft Link

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

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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$

Answer 6

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

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

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

Answer 9

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

Answer 10

Put the following line in your myscript

set myFold = '~/Files/Scripts/Main'

In the terminal use

source myscript
cd $myFold