bash - how to pipe result from the which command to cd
You use pipe in cases where the command expects parameters from the standard input. ( More on this ).
With cd
command that is not the case. The directory is the command argument. In such case, you can use command substitution. Use backticks or $(...)
to evaluate the command, store it into variable..
path=`which oracle`echo $path # just for debugcd $path
although it can be done in a much simpler way:
cd `which oracle`
or if your path has special characters
cd "`which oracle`"
or
cd $(which oracle)
which is equivalent to backtick notation, but is recommended (backticks can be confused with apostrophes)
.. but it looks like you want:
cd $(dirname $(which oracle))
(which shows you that you can use nesting easily)
$(...)
(as well as backticks) work also in double-quoted strings, which helps when the result may eventually contain spaces..
cd "$(dirname "$(which oracle)")"
(Note that both outputs require a set of double quotes.)