Directory path shortening ????

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

As it was a new topic i started a new thread.

There are different Directories under

"$HOME/rsh/Desktop/at/bin/bellhop/ and $HOME/rsh/Desktop/at/examples/"

i want to perform some operation like cp or mv

Is it possible to do

R=$HOME/rsh/Desktop/at/bin/bellhop/
P=$HOME/rsh/Desktop/at/examples/
S=$HOME/rsh/Desktop/at/results

(assuming there is a directory 'x' under bellhop/x/file1 and similarly 'y' under /examples/y/file2)

cat  $R/x/file1 $P/y/file2 >$S/xy/file3

as i will be executing several commands of this fashion, i would try to avoid writing such big lines, is there an alternative way to achieve this.

2

The way you've got it will actually work. However I'd change it just a little bit:

R="${HOME}/rsh/Desktop/at/bin/bellhop/"
P="${HOME}/rsh/Desktop/at/examples/"
S=${HOME}/rsh/Desktop/at/results"

cat  "${R}/x/file1" "${P}/y/file2" > "${S}/xy/file3"

The double quotes let it properly handle directory names containing spaces, which might otherwise be split into multiple arguments unexpectedly. The brackets around the variables let it identify variables in otherwise-ambiguous situations like $R_not_a_variable.