bash directory shortcuts

Question

When I type cd ~foo, I'd like bash to take me to some directory foo as a shortcut for typing the full directory path of foo. and I'd like to be able to cp ~foo/bar.txt ~/bar.txt to copy a file from the /foo/ directory to the home directory... So basically, I want something that works exactly like ~/ does, but where I specify what the directory should be. [I'm sure I should jfgi, but I don't know what to fg]

Answer 1

The way I used to do this is to create a directory that contains symlinks to the directories you want shortcuts do, and add that directory to your CDPATH. CDPATH controls where cd will search when you switch directories, so if that directory of symlinks is in your CDPATH you can cd to any of the symlinked directories instantly:

mkdir ~/symlinks
ln -s /usr/bin ~/symlinks/b
export CDPATH=~/symlinks
cd b   # Switches to /usr/bin

The downside of course is it won't work if there's a directory in your current directory named "b" -- that takes precedence over the CDPATH

---

I normally dislike answers that say "first you need to switch shells", but this exact feature exists in ZSH, if you're willing to use that instead; it's called named directories. You export a variable foo, and when you refer to ~foo it resolves to the value of $foo. This is especially convenient because it works in commands besides cd:

echo hi > /tmp/test
export t=/tmp
cat ~t/test   # Outputs "hi"

Answer 2

You could write a wrapper function for cd and call it "cd" (ultimately the function will call builtin cd - using the builtin keyword). You could use a prefix character that Bash won't expand on the command line before your function sees it and that's unlikely to appear as the initial character in your directory names, perhaps ":". You would want to make it more robust, but here's a simple outline:

# format: [semicolon] shortcut colon destination [semicolon] ...
export CDDATA='foo:/path/to/foo;bar:/path/to/bar;baz:/path/to/baz'

cd () {
    local dest=$1
    if [[ $dest == :* ]]
    then
        [[ $CDDATA =~ (^|;)${dest:1}:([^;]*)(;|$) ]]
        dest=${BASH_REMATCH[2]}
    fi
    if [[ -z $dest ]]
    then
        cd
    else
        builtin cd "$dest"
    fi
}

cd :bar    # pwd is now /path/to/bar

Answer 3

with bash:

~foo is reserved for the home directory of the user foo. I would not recommend creating users just for that convenience.

You can make your life easier (or harder) when changing directories by setting the CDPATH environment variable (look it up in bash(1)).

Apart from that, the only way to think of would be to set environment variables for those directories you want to abbreviate.

$ FOODIR=/var/lib/misc
$ cp ~/bar.txt $FOODIR

Answer 4

An way would be creating an alias for cd which replaces ~c to the wanted path. Or just use zsh ;)

Answer 5

For changing directories, you could use wcd: Wherever Change Directory

With that, it'll be like wcd plugin_root.

Answer 6

I have the below function which will create alias on the fly,

s () {
        if [[ "x$1" != "x" ]]
        then
                alias $1="cd $PWD;pwd"
                echo "alias $1=\"cd $PWD;pwd\""
        else
                echo "Usage: s[s] <directory bookmark name>"
                return 1
        fi
}

When I want to bookmark a directory, I just type s dirName. This creates a alias like alias dirName="cd /my/current/directory/;pwd". so I can come back to this directory by just typing dirName. I have a version which saves it into bash_aliases as well. This works in any shell.