For this Tip of the Week, I'd like to present something that took me a while to figure out why it was useful. That something is bash aliases, and I'll now walk you through how to create aliases, and the two main ways in which I use them (although I'm sure there are more use cases).

Using aliases

I think the bash manpage has a very good and concise description of what an alias is:

Aliases allow a string to be substituted for a word when it is used as the first word of a simple command

In other words, I can define a command that is substituted for some other command. Creating an alias is very simple. The syntax looks like this:

alias <NAME>=<COMMAND>

So for example, if I want to have a command hellofile that creates a file with the text "Hello, world!", I can achieve that with the following alias.

$ alias hellofile='echo "Hello, world!" > hellofile.txt'

Note the single quotes around the command definition. Without them, bash would interpret the alias as being only echo, and the rest of the line as another command. Now, if I run the command hellofile, it fill be substituted with echo "Hello, world!" > hellofile.txt. You should think of aliases as pure text substitution: precisely what you put in the alias definition will be put on the command line when you invoke it. You can view all of your current aliases by running alias without any options. Now, let's have a look at some common use cases!

Specifying "default" options for commands

This is probably the most common use case for aliases, and it's likely that you already have some in play. A common one is to have ls aliased to ls --color=auto. That is to say, the following alias is defined:

$ alias ls='ls --color=auto'

So if I now run e.g. ls /etc, the resulting command is actually ls --color=auto /etc. Note how the alias does not have to be the only word I type for the command, it just has to be the first one. Another command that I use an alias for is xclip, which is a small utility for copying stuff. I use it almost exclusively to copy file contents to the clipboard, but that's not the default functionality. In order to copy to the clipboard, I must write this rather cumbersome command.

$ xclip -selection clipboard <FILEPATH>

So I have an alias for it so I can just type xclip <FILEPATH> to copy to the clipboard.

$ alias xclip='xclip -selection clipboard'

As a side note, it may not be the best style to clobber an existing command with an alias, but I still tend to do that for some of my most commonly used commands. If you want to use the vanilla command, simply put it within single quotes, which will hinder the alias from expanding (e.g. type 'ls' to run ls without --color=auto). Note that just defining an alias in a bash session will not persist: it needs to be defined anew for each session. To have it permanently defined, put the definition in a startup script (e.g. .bashrc or .bash_profile).

Creating throwaway commands

Now, the aliases I described above are useful to have defined permanently, and should be defined in a startup script. The second use case I have for aliases is when I have a repetitive command that I need to type over and over in the same session, but isn't useful in general. An example would be when I need to run some specific Java class in a project. Let's say I need to run the class se.slar.awesome.project.Main over and over. Instead of typing java se.slar.awesome.project.Main over and over, I define an alias for it.

$ alias runmain='java se.slar.awesome.project.Main'

And then, instead of writing all of that out, or having to do some reverse searching or history lookups, I can just type runmain. As defining an alias is so effortless, I tend to do it even if I know I'm just gonna use the complex command a couple of times.

And that's all I wanted to cover, hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned for the next TOTW coming next week!