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

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.

Solution 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

Solution 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).

Solution 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

Solution 4:

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$