This is a shell scripting question really, but relates to rails. I create a

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Editorial Team

Asked: June 16, 20262026-06-16T15:41:27+00:00 2026-06-16T15:41:27+00:00

This is a shell scripting question really, but relates to rails.

I create a Rails migration like this:

~/dropbox/rails/f6$ rails g migration ModifyWord

Rails then creates the migration script, and reports the name back on the console:

~/dropbox/rails/f6$ rails g migration ModifyWord
      invoke  active_record
      create    db/migrate/20121231080052_modify_word.rb

I then edit the migration file using vi, like this:

~/dropbox/rails/f6$ vi db/migrate/20121231080052_modify_word.rb

I’d like to be able to do the vi filename as a single command, perhaps via a shell script that can have an alias to it added to my .bash_rc.

That is, I would run the command after the migration and it would look at the filename reported.

Any suggestions on how I should approach this?

SOLUTION

Based on per Michaël Witrant’s suggestion, I have added to aliases to my bash profile.

cm to cat the last created migration file
vm to vi the last created migration file

alias cm=’cat ls db/migrate/*.rb | tail -n 1‘

alias vm=’vi ls db/migrate/*.rb | tail -n 1‘

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Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-06-16T15:41:29+00:00

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Since it starts with a time stamp, it should always be the last file alphabetically so I’d simply do something like this:

vi `ls db/migrate/*.rb | tail -n 1`

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