Command line to go in directory passed by which command

Question

I want use a command such as this :

 which node && cd $_

to jump in the directory when the binary file reside, but the which command return all the path + name of binary ,so i get an error :

 bash: cd: node: No such file or directory

I'm looking for new command move me in the right place.

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

3

Don't use which (unless you're in csh or tcsh variants), it's broken. Using command -v node instead.

POSIX offer dirname command to get the directory portion of pathname:

cd "$(dirname -- "$(command -v node)")"

or using a variable to store the pathname, prevent you from calling dirname:

nodepath=$(command -v node)
cd "${nodepath%/*}"

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:37

Community

answered Aug 29 '15 at 12:11

cuonglm

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 29 '15 at 15:31

1

Meanwhile, in ZShell, this requires the quite ugly and awkward construct:

cd -- $commands[node]:h

This even works when there's directories with spaces in their name (unless for unfathomable reasons you enabled the shwordsplit option).

answered Aug 29 '15 at 15:31

thrig

Shorter: cd =node(:h) (you only need the -- here if you have a relative directory starting with - or + in your PATH). – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Aug 29 '15 at 16:32

score -1 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 31 '15 at 14:21

-1

cd $(dirname $(which bash))

Good luck :)

edited Aug 31 '15 at 14:21

Archemar

answered Aug 31 '15 at 13:56

user1950676

3 Answers3