How do I create a symbol to represent a path to easily cd into a directory?

Question

In the same way that cd ~ directs you to your home directory, is it possible to create another symbol, @ for example, such that cd @ would take me to /my/working/directory?

Related - https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/31161/quick-directory-navigation-in-the-bash-shell/31345#31345. This Q&A has a whole host of tools to help navigate directories via CLI. — slm, Jul 05 '18 at 19:06
Put this to your .bashrc: [[ ! -e ~/@ ]] && ln -s /my/working/directory ~/@; CDPATH=~ — Cyrus, Jul 05 '18 at 19:08

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 12 '18 at 16:14

You can use the CDPATH variable to simulate it. Just create a directory with soft links to the destination paths, e.g.

mkdir ~/dir_aliases
ln -s /path/to/alias ~/dir_aliases/@
ln -s /another/path ~/dir_aliases/%
...

Then add this dir to CDPATH (probably in .bashrc or similar)

CDPATH=~/dir_aliases

Typing

cd @

will take you to ~/dir_aliases/@. (Unfortunately, the link path will be shown, you'll have to

cd $(readlink -f .)

to see the real path.)

cd -P is a simpler way than using readlink to use the real path. — jamesdlin, Jul 18 '18 at 07:54

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 12 '18 at 16:11

1

Two options come to mind:

Use a variable:
```
w="/my/working/directory"
cd "$w"
```

Use an alias:

alias cdw='cd /my/working/directory'
cdw

edited Jul 12 '18 at 16:11

Kusalananda

333,661

answered Jul 05 '18 at 18:58

nohillside

3,251

How do I create a symbol to represent a path to easily cd into a directory?

2 Answers2