Change cd default directory (bash) [closed]

Question

I'm looking for a way to change the default directory of cd, and I'm wondering if this is possible. I tried adding

alias "cd=cd ~/Documents/Github" 

to .bashrc, but this obviously doesn't work because it breaks the cd command so that you cannot use cd for anything but going to that directory. Is there some export that I could put in .bashrc to do this? I do not want to change my home directory, just the default directory cd goes to. I ask because I regularly use cd to change to my default directory that I am programming in and would like to not have to type cd ~/workspace or cd and then cd workspace every time I want to change to the directory ~/workspace.

Answer 1

Here's a simpler alternative using an alias:

alias cd='HOME=~/Documents/Github cd'

• While this redefines $HOME, it does so ONLY for the cd command, so should be safe(*).
• This also obviates the need for any custom parameter pre-parsing.

If you place this in ~/.bashrc, you should get the desired behavior.

Note that, by default, this alias will NOT be in effect in scripts (non-interactive shells), as alias expansion is by default disabled there (use shopt -s expand_aliases to explicitly enable).

---

(*) @chepner points out one restriction: with the alias in place you won't be able to do HOME=/somewhere/else cd, i.e., you won't be able to redefine (override) $HOME again, ad-hoc. As he further states, though, it's hard to imagine why anyone would want to do that.

Answer 2

You can shadow the builtin cd command with a shell function. Add the following to your .bashrc file.

cd () {
    if [ $# = 0 ]; then
        builtin cd ~/Documents/Github
    else
        builtin cd "$@"
    fi
}

This isn't perfect, as it assumes you will never call the function as

* cd -L
* cd -P
* cd -LP
* etc

(that is, using one or more of the supported options without an explicit directory.)

---

UPDATE

This might be a little more comprehensive, but I haven't tested it.

cd () {
    local -a args
    while getopts LP opt "$@"; do
        case $opt in
          -*) args+=( "$opt" ) ;;
        esac
    done
    shift $((OPTIND-1))
    # Assume at most one directory argument, since
    # that is all cd uses
    args+=( "${1:-~/Documents/Github}" )

    builtin cd "${args[@]}"
}