Is it possible to create a symbolic link to easier change directories? like
ln -s /Users/mles/Documents /usr/local/bin/d
so I can cd d instead of cd ~/Documents?
- Here is a generic answer to this question: apple.stackexchange.com/a/97312/22003 .athena– athena2018-02-09 17:07:10 +00:00Commented Feb 9, 2018 at 17:07
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2 Answers
The problem with creating a symbolic link in that manner is that you are limited to where the symbolic link is created. It also adds to the problem if you have a directory ../d/.. somewhere on your system.
There are a couple of ways to solve this....
Create an Alias
In terminal, you can create an alias by issuing the command
alias cdd='cd ~/Documents'
The benefit here is that it will work anywhere without having to add it to your PATH.
To make it permanent, add the command to your .bash_profile in your home directory.
Make a variable cd-able
Also, in your .bash_profile add the following
shopt -s cdable_vars export Docs=$HOME/Documents Now, when you type cd Docs it will expand out HOME to whatever your user directory is plus the directory you specified. (/Users/yourusername/Documents)
Personally, I did this with a variable called icloud as follows:
export icloud=$HOME/Library/Mobile\ Documents/com~apple~CloudDocs/ Now, I can reference my iCloud documents location without having to remember that lengthy path.
You can define variables pointing to your directories. For example:
[~]$ export d=~/Documents [~]$ ls -l $d [~]$ cd $d [~/Documents]$ In bash you can use cdable_vars option to be able to cd without preceding $:
[~]$ shopt -s cdable_vars [~]$ export d=~/Documents [~]$ cd d [~/Documents]$ But it does not allow dropping $ for other commands, so ls -l d won't work.
