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/Main works.

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, eg modifying $PATH .

Answer 5

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 6

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 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

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 9

Put the following line in your myscript

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

In the terminal use

source myscript
cd $myFold