How do I perform commands in another folder, without repeating the folder path?

Question

Is there a clever way to do copy and move operations or a command to duplicate a file, without having to do a cd, then mv after, at the same folder?

For example, I have to run the following:

mv /folder1/folder2/folder3/file.txt /folder1/folder2/folder3/file-2013.txt

Note that the directory to where I'm moving the file is the same, but I have to put the whole path again and sometimes it gets annoying. I'm curious to know if there's another way to do that without having to put the whole path again, because the operation would be done in the same path.

Answer 1

Simply use brace expansion:

mv /folder1/folder2/folder3/{file.txt,file-2013.txt}

This is equivalent to writing:

mv /folder1/folder2/folder3/file.txt /folder1/folder2/folder3/file-2013.txt

Brace expansion lets you supply more arguments, of course. You can even pass ranges to it, e.g. to create a couple of test folders, you can run mkdir test_{a..z}, and starting with Bash 4, you can create zero-padded sequences as well, as in touch foo{0001..3}, which creates foo0001, foo0002 and foo0003. The Bash Hackers Wiki has an article with a couple of examples for you.

If you have to use two different commands, use a subshell and cd there first, as in @Ignacio's answer.

Answer 2

Run the operation in a subshell.

( cd /folder1/folder2/folder3 && mv file.txt file-2013.txt )

The change of working directory won't be propagated to the parent shell.

Answer 3

If you want clever, here's bash history expansion

mv /folder1/folder2/folder3/file.txt !#:1:h/file-2013.txt

I wouldn't use this myself since I find it impossible to memorize. I do occassionally use the vim equivalent, but have to look it up almost every time.

Answer 4

You can set a variable. Of course this has the side-effect of leaving the variables around.

D=/folder1/folder2/folder3; mv $D/file.txt $D/file-2013.txt

Answer 5

I like the other solutions, but here is another, implemented as a script with bash arrays, pushd, popd:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
# from http://stackoverflow.com/a/246128/178651
script_path="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" && pwd )"

# paths relative to the script
relative_paths=( \
path1 \
path2 \
path3 \
path4
)

for relative_path in "${relative_paths[@]}"
do
  pushd "$script_path/$relative_path" > /dev/null 2>&1
  pwd
  mv filename1 filename2
  # could do other stuff in this directory...
  popd > /dev/null 2>&1
done

pushd "$script_path" > /dev/null 2>&1
# could do other stuff in same directory as script...
popd > /dev/null 2>&1

Answer 6

Slhck directly answers the question in the simplest possible way, but Valter also likes the autopop answer, so here's one that's along the same lines;

pushd /folder1/folder2/folder3/; mv file.txt file-2013.txt; popd