Named Folders for MacOS/Unix

May 26th, 2014

So, the idea is pretty easy. Having a folder 'path/to/my/local/folder' we usually have to type cd /path/to/my/local/folder to get there in the console. That's not really fast.

What Named Folders offers is that you can say that /path/to/my/local/folder is mapped to a shortcut mylocalfolder, and then type cd :mylocalfolder to get there.

Well, actually, FAR extention was even better - you could go to any folder, type cd::shortcutto make a shortcut, and then in any place type cd:shortcut to get there.

I'm not that good in Bash scripting to make the exact copy, but here what I could come up in a couple of minutes, mostly copy-pasting code from Stackoverflow answers.

1. Make a folder to store shortcuts

  • first of all make a bin folder by calling 
mkdir ~/bin
chmod a+rwx ~/bin
  • then make a shortcuts file
touch ~/bin/shortcuts

You will use this file the following way to make a new shortcut:

"echo mylocalshortcut:/path/to/my/local/shortut" >> ~/bin/shortcuts

2. Make a 'cd' command wrapper to use you shortcuts

  • create a wrapper file
touch ~/bin/cd_wrapper
  • use your favourite editor to add these lines inside:
# format: [semicolon] shortcut colon destination [semicolon] ...

IFS=$'\n' read -d '' -r -a lines < $HOME/bin/shortcuts
cdataexports=$(printf '%s;' "${lines[@]}")

echo "Applying shortcuts: " ${lines[@]}

export CDDATA=$cdataexports

cd () {
    local dest=$1
    if [[ $dest == :* ]]
    then
        [[ $CDDATA =~ (^|;)${dest:1}:([^;]*)(;|$) ]]
        dest=${BASH_REMATCH[2]}
    fi
    if [[ -z $dest ]]
    then
        echo "cd_wrapper >> " $dest
        cd
    else
        builtin cd "$dest"
    fi
}
  • Add created wrapper as a source, you can add these lines in your ~/.bash_profile file
source $HOME/bin/cd_wrapper

Usage

To make a shortcut type: "echo mylocalshortcut:/path/to/my/local/shortut" >> ~/bin/shortcuts

To use a shortuct type: cd :mylocalshortcut

Anton Averin