Re: mv command usability: rename file and create dest dir

[Sergey Ponomarev]

Thank you for the fast response. Nice tricks, didn't know about the
direxpand. Probably most regular users don't know either :(
As you may see, even with a workaround this usability can be improved.
So what about having the simple solution in place?
1. Use placeholder like asterisk to refer the source dir inside of the dest
dir
2. Use -F arg to create directory if not exists

Have a nice weekend

On Sat, Jul 1, 2023 at 6:44 PM Glenn Golden <gdg@zplane.com> wrote:

>
>
> On Sat, Jul 1, 2023, at 09:03, Bernhard Voelker wrote:
> > On 7/1/23 14:12, Sergey Ponomarev wrote:
> >  > To rename a file a user need to use mv command and specify the DEST
> dir:
> >  >
> >  >      mv /some/very/long/path/file /some/very/long/path/
> >  >
> >  > This makes it not so easy to use when typing a command but also makes
> a
> >  > script line longer.
> >
> > Assuming you meant
> >
> >    $ mv /some/very/long/path/file /some/very/long/path/file2
> >
> > as in the other example - this could be done with:
> >
> >    $ cd /some/very/long/path && mv file file2
> >
> > or (with GNU coreutils' env):
> >
> >    $ env -C /some/very/long/path mv file file2
> >
> > Have a nice day,
> > Berny
>
> If you use bash and if your long paths are consistent (i.e. often referring
> to the same source or destination each time) then another approach is to
> just
> enable the bash 'direxpand' option, define some short envars in your
> .bash_profile or .bashrc, and use those to facilitate commandline (and
> script) operations, e.g.
>
>   export p1=/long/path/to/some/frequently/accessed/directory
>   export p2=/another/long/path/to/a/frequently/accessed/directory
>
> Then, for cmdline ops, just typing
>
>   $ mv $a/<tab>
>
> immediately expands $a (inline on the commandline) to
>
>   $ mv /long/path/to/some/frequently/accessed/directory/
>
> and you can then tack on "$b" (or any other destination).
>
> The 'direxpand' option provides nice immediate feedback that the envar you
> selected is the correct one (among, presumably, several 1-letter envars
> you've defined like this for various long paths of interest.)
>
> I use this approach frequently in my own workflow when dealing with
> annoyingly long but consistent paths.
>
> Glenn
>
>
>

-- 
Sergey Ponomarev <https://linkedin.com/in/stokito>,
stokito.com