What I want to do is basically
cp long/directory/path/file long/directory/path/file-copy
This or similar operations are pretty common. Typing out the whole path twice is obviously awkward, even with auto-completion or copy-paste. There are a couple of simple ways to do it, but none seems ideal:
cd into the directory, then simply cp file file-copy. Least keystrokes, but I end up in the directory, which I didn't really want.sh -c 'cd dir-path; cp file file-copy', to make the cp local. Fair enough, but that means I have to type the commands in a string literal, which disables auto-completion and isn't overall nice.cp "$dir/file" "$dir/file-copy". Can work nicely, but I'm kind of paranoid about namespace pollution...echo dir-path | while read p; do cd "$p"; cp file file-copy; done. Basically combines subshell-wrapping with variable definition, by emulating a lambda-calculus stype let-binding with read. I quite like it, but it's just a bit weird, and involves a lot of extra characters.sed 's/file/file-copy/' needs even more boilerplate around it.Is there a more elegant alternative? Ideally one that works with mv as well, analogously.
As per this question, you can use:
cp /long/path/to/file{,-copy}
This a shell expansion done by bash (not sure about others), so it will work with any command.
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