1

My school homework files are on the Windows file system at /mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents, and it's a hassle to cd ../.. from home then cd mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents each time.

How can I set a shortcut so I can cd to that Windows file system from home (which means I can skip the cd ../.. which takes me to root).

Or if that is not possible at least from root after I cd ../..

NotTheDr01ds
  • 17,888
mLstudent33
  • 739
  • 1
  • 11
  • 33
  • You can always do something like in https://askubuntu.com/questions/613079/access-a-directory-using-its-alias where you could set homework=/mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents then accessing it by typing in cd $homework to take you right there. You can always add the homework= line to the bottom of your ~/.bashrc file. – Terrance Jan 13 '23 at 05:53
  • @Terrance that worked perfectly, thanks but with quotations around the path in ~/.bashrc – mLstudent33 Jan 13 '23 at 09:04

1 Answers1

1

There are a few possibilities, but in all cases, keep in mind that accessing files on the Windows drive from WSL/Ubuntu is drastically slower than having them in the virtual ext4 filesystem. If you experience performance issues, consider moving the files into your Ubuntu home directory (~).

Also, there's no need to cd ../.. from your home directory. Just start the path with /, as in cd /mnt/c/Users/nyck33 to make it an absolute path rather than a relative one. Do this at least once "manually" in order to make it repeatable using some of the history-search options below.

With that in mind, here are a few (perhaps too many) ways to simplify access to your Windows Documents directory from inside WSL/Ubuntu. My recommendation is the fzf option (second below), with the symlink option (third) as a close second. There's no reason you can't use both:

  • Option 1: Reverse History Search

    You can use the reverse history search in Bash (and other shells) to quickly repeat the cd /mnt/... command.

    Advantage: No additional configuration required.

    First press Ctrl+R to bring up the reverse history search. You'll see:

    (reverse-i-search)`':

    Start typing Doc and Bash will find the most recent command with Doc in it. If this isn't the cd command, then continue to press Ctrl+R to cycle backward in the search results until you find it, then press Enter to repeat it.

  • Option 2: Reverse history search with fzf

    fzf, the "command-line fuzzy finder" is a popular utility for "filtering lists". In this case, the list is your shell command history.

    sudo apt install fzf
source /usr/share/doc/fzf/examples/key-bindings.bash
# Add the source line above to your ~/.bashrc for future use

    Pressing Ctrl+R will now bring up a search/filter of your history. Typing cd Doc will narrow down the list, likely to the exact cd mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents you want. Simply hit Enter to repeat it.

  • Option 3: Symlink in your home directory

    You can create a symlink in your Ubuntu home directory leading to your Windows home directory:

    ln -s /mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents/ ~/windocs

    With this in place, you can simply cd ~/windocs/ to get to that location. There is no need for any ~/.bashrc modification since the symlink is simply permanently stored in your home directory.

  • Option 4: A shell alias:

    You can create a Bash (or other shell) aliases to easily move to that directory:

    alias windocs="cd '/mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents/'"

    Executing windocs as a command from Bash will then take you to that location.

    You can, of course, add the alias to your ~/.bashrc to have it always available.

  • Option 5: A shell variable

    As mentioned in the comments, you can define your Windows Documents directory as a shell variable and then cd to it:

    windocs="mnt/c/Users/nyck33/Documents"
cd $windocs

    The variable declaration can be made permanent by adding it to ~/.bashrc

NotTheDr01ds
  • 17,888