This is probably a very simple thing but I can’t find an answer, possibly because I don’t know what terms to use in search.
How do I use an alias of a path with mv or cp? Or even cd?
In /etc/bash.bashrc I have:
alias docs=‘/media/docs
cd docs
Gives “No such file or directory”
Yet:
docs
Gives “Is directory”
With alias docs=‘cd /media/docs’ and by typing docs I get into the directory. Obviously I can’t use that alias with mv or cp though.
Maybe this isn’t even an intended use of alias but still. Why doesn’t it work?
You should be using a variable not an alias.
Variables in bash have a few sharp edges; one of which is that spaces act as a delimiter and turn the variable into a list.
The other being that sometimes escaping and unescaping the contents of a variable can be stupidly tricky. This is why a lot of people who use bash do not like spaces in directory or file names.
Thanks for the tip, but escaping and unescaping sounds tedious, since I use spaces in both directory and file names.
What I like about aliases here is that I have one central location to set them up and change them. If I ever were to forget what aliases I have it’s just about opening the file and looking.
eh, it’s mostly automagic but the first few times you encounter it makes for some fun debugging.
Play around with the
var=$(ls -A)construction a bit and see what is happening with your files.