Why I can't change directories using “cd”?

Question

I\'m trying to write a small script to change the current directory to my project directory:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/tree/projects/java

I save

Answer 1

In your ~/.bash_profile file. add the next function

move_me() {
    cd ~/path/to/dest
}

Restart terminal and you can type

move_me 

and you will be moved to the destination folder.

Answer 2

You can combine an alias and a script,

alias proj="cd \`/usr/bin/proj !*\`"

provided that the script echos the destination path. Note that those are backticks surrounding the script name. 

For example, your script could be

#!/bin/bash
echo /home/askgelal/projects/java/$1

The advantage with this technique is that the script could take any number of command line parameters and emit different destinations calculated by possibly complex logic.

Answer 3

You can create a function like below in your .bash_profile and it will work smoothly.

The following function takes an optional parameter which is a project. For example, you can just run

cdproj

or

cdproj project_name

Here is the function definition.

cdproj(){
    dir=/Users/yourname/projects
    if [ "$1" ]; then
      cd "${dir}/${1}"
    else
      cd "${dir}"
    fi
}

Dont forget to source your .bash_profile

Answer 4

You can use . to execute a script in the current shell environment:

. script_name

or alternatively, its more readable but shell specific alias source:

source script_name

This avoids the subshell, and allows any variables or builtins (including cd) to affect the current shell instead.

Answer 5

You need no script, only set the correct option and create an environment variable.

shopt -s cdable_vars

in your ~/.bashrc allows to cd to the content of environment variables.

Create such an environment variable:

export myjava="/home/tree/projects/java"

and you can use:

cd myjava

Other alternatives.

Answer 6

The cd in your script technically worked as it changed the directory of the shell that ran the script, but that was a separate process forked from your interactive shell.

A Posix-compatible way to solve this problem is to define a shell procedure rather than a shell-invoked command script.

jhome () {
  cd /home/tree/projects/java
}

You can just type this in or put it in one of the various shell startup files.