Define alias for a directory as an argument to cd in Bash

Question

I am using Windows 10 Linux Subsystem (Ubuntu Bash).

I want to access my Windows folder from Ubuntu Bash.

The folder I want to access is (note that there are spaces in the names):

/mnt/c/Users/some folder1/some folder2/destination - folder/

What I do now in Bash is:

~$ cd /mnt/c/Users/some\ folder1/some\ folder2/destination\ -\ folder/

Because the directory is too deep, I don't want to type the long command every time. So I want to define an alias for that folder.

In Bash, I created a file ~/.bash_aliases . And in the file ~/.bashrc there is following command:

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

Next, I want to add the following line in ~/.bash_aliases :

alias mf=<the correct format of the directory>

After mf is defined, I want to switch to the directory using the following command:

~$ cd mf

Can you help me with this?

1) How do write the <the correct format of the directory> ?

2) What else do I need to do in order to use

~$ cd mf

Answer 1

Rather than alias, you can use the cdable_vars option available in bash (documented here ). To enable, add shopt -s cdable_vars to your .bashrc and then create an environment variable that contains the directory path. For example, you might add this to your .bashrc

shopt -s cdable_vars
mydir=/really/long/dir/path

and then you will be able to use this in the shell as follows:

mike:/home/mike$ cd mydir
/really/long/dir/path
mike:/really/long/dir/path$ 

Answer 2

As this page notes, "an alias is only meaningful at the beginning of a command". So your alias can't be an argument to cd. What you can do is

alias cdmf='cd /mnt/c/Users/some\ folder1/some\ folder2/destination\ -\ folder/'

ie including the cd command in your alias, so that typing 'cdmf' takes you to your target directory.

To use cd mf , you'd normally use a symbolic link (or a bash function), not an alias. Try

ln -s /mnt/c/Users/some\ folder1/some\ folder2/destination\ -\ folder/ mf

However, the link that this produces only resides in the current directory, so you can't navigate to your target directory from anywhere.