UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi there,

I'm new to Unix and wondered whether there is some command which allows me to search for a directory and directly go there if it exists. My problem is that I've got quite a lot of directories nested into each other. If I want to quickly get to a file which is nested 5 times, it is cumbersome. Also, if I'm not 100% sure about a file-name and I search for it with wild-cards, I want to get to the document directly without having to use the mouse to copy paste the address of the file. In fact I want to first search sth, i.e.

Code:

find . -name "myfile" -type f

but directly cd into it. In fact I want to do something like this:

Code:

find . -name "myfile" -type f -cd

which unfortunately doesn't work.

An alternative would perhaps be to be able to know the command of copy pasting something from the last output such that it can be used as new input when using the cd command.

I didn't find anything in the internet.. Can anybody of you help me? Thanks!

If you're running bash, then this should work.

Code:

FCD() { dir="$(find . -name "$1" -exec dirname {} \; | gawk 'NR == 1 { print }')"; if [ "${dir}" != "" ]; then echo "change to '${dir}'"; cd "${dir}"; fi; }

Then whenever you type "FCD filename" it will run the script and change directories to the first place it finds something by that name.

Obviously, you'd want to define that shell function in a login script rather than typing it.