How can I create an alias for cd and ls?

I frequently run the ls command after running the cd command. How can I create an alias (like cs) for this operation?

6 Answers

From Bash Tips and Tricks: 'cd' with style:

Finally, I want to show you how to write your own custom replacement for the 'cd' command.

Do you find yourself always typing the same thing upon changing into a directory? You probably at least list the files there every time, perhaps so much that your hands automatically type 'ls' after every 'cd'.

Well, by trying every way I could think of, it turns out there's only one way to properly accomplish the goal we're seeking. We have to create a shell function.

Shell functions are part of shell programming. Like in compiled programming languages, functions provide a sort of procedural modularizability. One can create a generic function to perform an often-used bit of logic or computation with different parameters. In this case, the parameter is the current working directory.

Here's a simple one:

function cs () { cd $1 ls } 

As @geirha corretly notes, the above function will fail if you try to switch to a directory with a space in its name:

$ cs A\ B/ -bash: cd: A: No such file or directory <current directory listing> 

You should instead use the following function:

function cs () { cd "$@" && ls } 

Once you add that code to your ~/.bashrc, you should be able to do this:

hello@world:~$ cs Documents/ example.pdf tunafish.odt hello@world:~/Documents$ 

You can use the builtin command in bash :

function cd() { new_directory="$*"; if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then new_directory=${HOME}; fi; builtin cd "${new_directory}" && ls } 

Use a function instead of an alias:

cs() { cd "$1" && ls; } 

Thanks Florian Diesch for the tip of using a function. I can't use cs as the name because there is a cs command in the csound package, so I used lc.

I added this to ~/.bash_aliases (nano ~/.bash_aliases):

function lc () { cd $1; ls } 

The terminal needs to be reset for this to come into effect.

As an expansion to this function: cs() { cd "$1" && ls; }, you may want to pass all of the function's arguments to cd by using $@ instead of "$1" as such: cs() { cd $@ && ls; }.

I had problems redefining cd because rvm changes my cd definition too. See . I didn't really want to use builtin because that would skip whatever rvm is doing.

I added the following to my .bashrc:

# cdd allows you to cd to the directory of the given file or directory function cdd() { if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then cd elif [[ -d "$*" ]]; then cd "$*" elif [[ -f "$*" ]]; then echo "WARNING: file given, cd to file's dirname" 1>&2 local dir=$(dirname "$*") cd "$dir" else cd "$*" fi } function cs() { cdd $* && ls } 

And then after the rmv line in the .bashrc:

alias cd='cdd' # Use bash built in completion for cd to allow for filenames to be used complete -r cd