Passing argument to alias in bash

Question

Is it possible to do the following   I want to run the following   mongodb bin mongod   In my bash profile I have  alias      path to mongodb  1

User · Accepted Answer

An alias will expand to the string it represents. Anything after the alias will appear after its expansion without needing to be or able to be passed as explicit arguments (e.g. $1).

$ alias foo='/path/to/bar'
$ foo some args

will get expanded to

$ /path/to/bar some args

If you want to use explicit arguments, you'll need to use a function

$ foo () { /path/to/bar "$@" fixed args; }
$ foo abc 123

will be executed as if you had done

$ /path/to/bar abc 123 fixed args

To undefine an alias:

unalias foo

To undefine a function:

unset -f foo

To see the type and definition (for each defined alias, keyword, function, builtin or executable file):

type -a foo

Or type only (for the highest precedence occurrence):

type -t foo

User · Answer

Usually when I want to pass arguments to an alias in Bash  I use a combination of an alias and a function like this  for instance   function   t2d                                                                            if     1x      x     then                                                           date -d    1                                                                  fi                                                                          alias t2d    t2d

User · Answer

to use parameters in aliases  i use this method   alias myalias  function   myalias     echo  Hello      unset -f   myalias       myalias    its a self-destructive function wrapped in an alias  so it pretty much is the best of both worlds  and doesnt take up an extra line s  in your definitions    which i hate  oh yeah and if you need that return value  you ll have to store it before calling unset  and then return the value using the  return  keyword in that self destructive function there   alias myalias  function   myalias     echo  Hello      myresult     unset -f   myalias  return  myresult       myalias    so    you could  if you need to have that variable in there  alias mongodb  function   mongodb       path to mongodb  1  unset -f   mongodb       mongodb    of course     alias mongodb    path to mongodb     would actually do the same thing without the need for parameters  but like i said  if you wanted or needed them for some reason  for example  you needed  2 instead of  1   you would need to use a wrapper like that  If it is bigger than one line you might consider just writing a function outright since it would become more of an eyesore as it grew larger  Functions are great since you get all the perks that functions give  see completion  traps  bind  etc for the goodies that functions can provide  in the bash manpage    I hope that helps you out

User · Answer

This is the solution which can avoid using function   alias addone    num   cat -   echo  input   num   echo  result     num 1       lt  lt  lt     test result  addone 200 input  200 result 201

User · Answer

To simplify leed25d s answer  use a combination of an alias and a function  For example    function   GetIt       cp   path to stuff         alias GetIt    GetIt

User · Answer

In csh  as opposed to bash  you can do exactly what you want   alias print  lpr     -Pps5  print memo txt   The notation     causes the argument to be inserted in the command at this point   The   character is preceeded by a   to prevent it being interpreted as a history command   You can also pass multiple arguments   alias print  lpr     -Pps5  print part1 ps glossary ps figure ps    Examples taken from http   unixhelp ed ac uk shell alias csh2 1 html

[bash] Passing argument to alias in bash

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