AmigaAssign

A bash script to provide Amiga style assign command to Linux.

What is this thing

This script adds an Amiga like ASSIGN command to Linux (using a bash script). It allows paths to be referenced by a short, convenient name instead of the full path string. It is like an alias for paths instead of commands.

A quick example.

/home/user$ assign docroot /var/www/html
/home/user$ ls $docroot
index.html
/home/user$ cp website.html $docroot
/home/user$ chmod a+r $docroot/website.html

History

A long time ago there was this computer call the Amiga. On the Amiga you accessed different drives using a name followed by a colon (:). This is similar to how Windows uses a letter followed by a colon (for example "C:"). On the Amiga drives where not limited to a single letter but used a name. For example DF0: was the first disk drive.

The interesting thing was you could also make up new device names and set them a path on another drive. So for example you could setup WORK: to be on HD0:MyWork/Current. You could then access it using commands like "dir WORK:" or "copy file WORK:new_name". This was done with the assign command.

This is something like it for the bash shell. It adds an assign command that you "assign" a path name to a bash variable that can then be used as a shortcut for that path.

How to install

Take the "bash_assigncmd" script and copy it to your home directory under the name ".bash_assigncmd" (cp bash_assigncmd ~/.bash_assigncmd). Next source this script from one of your bash startup scripts. I suggest adding it to your .bashrc file (add the line "source ~/.bash_assigncmd").

Run this command to add the line.

echo "source ~/.bash_assigncmd" >>~/.bashrc

Usage

After you have installed the assign command and source it (but typing ~/.bash_assigncmd or opening a new term window) you can start using it.

Usage:
assign [OPTIONS] var [path]

Options:
   -d -- Delete assignment

Adding a new assign

To add a new assignment the first argument is the new assignment name you want to add. This is a bash variable and has the same rules that all bash variables have. The second argument is the path you want to assign to this variable.

So for example "assign test /home/user/test" is the same as "export test=/home/user/test". The difference between exporting the var and using the assign command is that the assign command remembers the var between sessions (and is also available to all future sessions).

Add examples

Here are some examples of adding vars using assign.

Example	Use	Expands to
`assign c /`	`ls $c`	`ls /`
`assign doc /home/user/Documents`	`cp instructions.pdf $doc`	`cp instructions.pdf /home/user/Documents`
`assign down ~/Downloads`	`cat $down/AscIITable.txt`	`cat ~/Downloads/AscIITable.txt`
`assign docroot /var/www/html`	`chmod 777 $docroot/site1/index.html`	`chmod 777 /var/www/html/site1/index.html`

Deleting an assignment

You delete an assignment using the -d option followed by the assignment to delete. It will be freed from this point on.

Showing existing assignments

If you type in assign without any arguments you will get a list of assignments with what they are set to.

NOTE When the assign's are listed they will also be reloaded. This will allow you to update new assigns from another shell to your current one.

TheBeef / AmigaAssign