Hello,
I have a note that serves as my “lab book” where I link to various folders and files of simulation results. I would like to be able to define a variable in that note that is a path (e.g. my_dir = /complicated/long/path/to/a/folder) so it is easier for me to link to stuff, e.g. "See the results [here](file:{my_dir}/figure.png).
Thanks 
Tom
If you’re on MacOS, I have a quick and dirty solution:
“System Settings” → “Keyboard” → “Text Replacements…”
Enter your trigger phrase (eg my_dir) under ‘Replace’, and the file path under ‘With’
There isn’t a native equivalent on Windows, but here is a promising program that might add the same functionality
Along those lines, I think a text expander ( I like https://espanso.org/ ) could work well here. Then you could use the same :keyword in all apps.
Thanks guys! These sound like reasonable solutions. On the other hand, I found an unrelated solution which works well for my workflow. When in the finder I use option+cmd+c to copy the absolute path of the file or directory and can then paste it into obsidian.