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Comment by tyingq | Hacker News Reader

tar -cf - ./somedir | ssh remote '(cd /whatever;tar -xvf -)'

I use that enough that I didn't need to look it up. Works the other direction as well. Was common with rsh before ssh existed.

It's not as efficient as rsync, but I can tell where files will end up without re-reading a man page.

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tar -cf - ./somedir | ssh remote tar -xvf - -C /whatever

I still wonder why `cd` doesn't have a form `cd dir command...`, as in `cd dir tar xf -`.

You could quite easily write a script that does this:

    #!/bin/sh
    cd $1
    shift
    exec "$@"

It's a shame "in" is a reserved word, because that'd be a good name for it. Maybe "cde" for "cd-exec":

    tar c files | ssh dest cde /some/dir tar x

Mine is called cdx and includes 'env' functionality and a bit more. (https://github.com/apk/c-utils/blob/master/aenv.c)

The form I usually use is (cd TARGET && COMMAND), including the parentheses to make it a subshell. That seems close enough to not be worth adding features to something as simple as cd, given the basic shell philosophy of composability.

I mean, I'd encourage you to use && instead of ;...

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