Directory Alias in Bash

Frequently I work with long paths from the terminal and typing them is tiresome and time-consuming. So I started to search for a solution to this problem. I thought that if I could create an alias for the path I could just type $cd path_alias instead of the tiring and error-prone $cd /a/very/long/path/to/write/ .

After a trip to the usual search engine this is what I found.

The guy that asked the question was trying to make an alias for a path by assigning it to a variable and then cd-ing to such variable, this way:

myFold="~/Files/Scripts/Main"  
cd myFold 

This fails because by default cd thinks that myFold is a folder, not a variable to be expanded. The correct command to run is:

cd $myFold 

But what if we want to get rid of the annoying $ ?

Enter Shell Options

There is a shell option called cdable_vars . When it 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".

As a result to make an alias to your favourite directory and make it permanent you could add the following lines to your .bashrc :

shopt -s cdable_vars # enable cdable_vars  
export myFold="/a/very/long/path/to/write/" 

After reloading your .bashrc either by closing and reopening the terminal or by entering the command . ~/.bashrc no $ is required any more.

You can issue cd myFold and you will be redirected automagically to the directory of choice.

Caveat

The only caveat is that subdirectories within the alias do not work. For example the following command will result in:

cd myFold/subfolder  
bash: cd: myFold/subfolder: No such file or directory 

Whereas cd $myFold/subfolder works as expected.