Find a file and open it for editing. How to do it fast in a bash shell?

Question

I face many times this simple and repetitive task configuring the LAMP or some stuff in Ubuntu or Drupal:

I have to edit a config file (php.ini, httpd.conf, ... whatever) so quite frequently, if I don't remember the path by heart, I run these 2 commands:

locate php.ini
------- typing manually one of the paths that are shown in the list...
nano /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini

I'm sure this can be improved (without having to memorize the paths). Is there a better approach?

I like the way how this was solved with the command history: you can execute one of the previous commands in history with !32 (for example). Is there a similar way with locate or find commands?

Answer 1

This won't work if files or directories have spaces in their names, but it wouldn't be too hard to make a version that would.

choose () {
    local PS3="Choose a file to edit: "
    select opt in $(locate "$1") quit
    do
        if [[ $opt = "quit" ]]
        then
            break
        fi
        ${EDITOR:-nano} "$opt"
    done
}

Demo:

$ choose php.ini
 1) /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
 2) /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini.ucf-old
 3) /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini~
 4) /etc/php5/cli/php.ini
 5) /etc/php5/cli/php.ini~
 6) /home/dennis/Downloads/php.ini
 7) /usr/share/doc/php5-common/examples/php.ini-dist
 8) /usr/share/doc/php5-common/examples/php.ini-paranoid
 9) /usr/share/doc/php5-common/examples/php.ini-recommended
10) /usr/share/php5/php.ini-dist
11) /usr/share/php5/php.ini-dist.cli
12) quit
Choose a file to edit: 12