I wish I’d discovered this about three years ago when I first started learning the bash command line – it would have saved a lot of remembering paths and typing them.
Bash provides the alias function which allows you to save commonly typed commands with a shortcut reference so you don’t have to type the whole command. This will be particularly useful for me when I log into my VPS as root and need to change directory to my development site (something I do several times daily).
Normally I might log in and type a command like this:
# cd /home/myDomain/myDevProjectFolder
.. which takes me a few seconds even when using the tab key to automatically complete paths. Now I can just type:
# mydev
and bash will run the alias I set for this folder, changing directory to dev folder.
How to configure it?
Edit your .bash_profile file
# vi ~/.bash_profile
Add the following line
alias mydev="cd /home/myDomain/myDevProjectFolder"
Save the file and reload the bash profile:
# source ~/.bash_profile
Now the alias should be active. How cool is that?