How do I redirect output to cd?

Question

Is it possible to redirect a command's output to cd? For example, I searched for a directory using locate and got the path to it. Now, instead of writing a cd path, can I redirect the locate output to cd?

I tried this:

$ locate Descargas | grep Descargas$
/home/oliver/Descargas
$ locate Descargas | grep Descargas$ | cd
$ locate Descargas | grep Descargas$ > cd
$ locate Descargas | grep Descargas$ < cd
/home/oliver/Descargas
$ 

No luck. This probably isn't particularly useful, but I'm curious.

Answer 1

You want command substitution, not redirection:

cd "$(locate Descargas | grep -F 'Descargas$')"

The bits between the $( and the ) are run as a command and the output (stripped of any final newline) is substituted into the overall command.

This can also be done with ‘back ticks’ (“`”):

cd "`locate Descargas | grep -F 'Descargas$'`"

The dollar-paren syntax is generally preferred because it is easier to deal with in nested situations:

# contrived
cd "$(grep '^dir: ' "$(locate interesting-places | head -1)" | sed 's/^[^ ]*//')"