如何在bashrc文件中为别名命令动态设置路径的一部分

Question

I'm trying to have a alias command and the part of its path keeps changing. Eg:

/var/mywork/swag/wsnew/
/var/mywork/swag/ws/
/var/mywork/swag/wsold/

and my alias command to achieve is something link this

alias cws='cd /var/mywork/swag//

since last directory in the path is keep changing. I wanted to get automatically update in alias command. Is there anyway ?

I tried something like

alias cws='cd /var/mywork/swag/getenv("WSP")/

so whenever I set WSP to required path it automatically takes. But it didn't help.

Answer 1

Like most problems with aliases, this is easier to solve with a shell function:

cws() {
    cd /var/mywork/swag/"$WSP"
}

Answer 2

Like melpomene said, you are better off using a function, but if you, for whatever reason, want to stick with an alias, you can do

alias cws='cd /var/mywork/swag/$WSP'

But note that this differs from using a shell function in one point, which is related to setting a variable for just one command: If you write

WSP=aaa
...
WSP=xxx
...
WSP=yyy cws

and cws is defined as a function, this would cd to yyy, but if it is an alias, it would cd to xxx.