How to create bash alias on Ubunth WSL when username has space and apostrophe

Question

I'm trying to create the following alias in Ubuntu WSL:

alias windocs='cd /mnt/c/Users/Firstname L'astname/Documents/'

My username is unfortunately Firstname L'astname, including the space and apostrophe.

I've tried using backslashes:

alias windocs='cd /mnt/c/Users/Firstname\ L\'astname/Documents/'

But bash still interprets the apostrophe as the end of the string, resulting in the following error:

-bash: .bash_aliases: line 11: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `''
-bash: .bash_aliases: line 12: syntax error: unexpected end of file

I've also tried encapsulating the username in double-quotation marks:

alias windocs='cd /mnt/c/Users/"Firstname L'astname"/Documents/'

And I get the same error.

How can I write this alias so that it works? It's a pain having to cd all the way to the Documents folder every time.

Answer 1

Single quotes in a single-quoted string aren't escapable, but luckily, you can just use double quotes around the alias definition and then (escaped) double quotes around the directory name:

alias windocs="cd \"/mnt/c/Users/Firstname L'astname/Documents/\""

Alternatively, you could symlink that directory into your Linux home directory:

ln -s "/mnt/c/Users/Firstname L'astname/Documents/" ~/docs

And then, simply cd docs (or cd ~/docs, if you're not in your home dir) will take you there.

Answer 2

Well, I should have looked this up first. I put the entire string in double-quotation marks as per this stackoverflow answer:

alias windocs="cd /mnt/c/Users/Firstname\ L\'astname/Documents/"

and it works now. This is because there is no escape mechanism from single-quote strings, but there is for double quote strings (as per the other answer).

Answer 3

For Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) only, Windows side environment variables can be mapped into $WSLENV environment variable in WSL side. For example, the /mnt/c/Users/username/ in Windows side is saved as %USERPROFILE% environment variable.

To do this, first add the variable in Windows by running this command as administrator in Command Prompt

setx WSLENV USERPROFILE

Then add the alias in .bashrc (or similar files). For example,

alias windocs='cd $(wslpath $USERPROFILE/Documents)'

Here wslpath translates Windows style path (backward slash) to *NIX style path (forward slash). In schematics,

   Windows        <--->      WSL
C:\Users\username <--->  /mnt/c/Users/username
USERPROFILE       <--->  WSLENV

Read Share Environment Vars between WSL and Windows blog for further information.