How to pass command line arguments to a shell alias

Question

How do I pass the command line arguments to an alias  Here is a sample    alias mkcd  mkdir  1  cd  1     But in this case the  xx is getting translated at the alias creating time and not at  runtime  I have  however  created a workaround using a shell function  after googling a little  like below      function mkcd      mkdir  1   cd  1     Just wanted to know if there is a way to make aliases that accept CL parameters  BTW - I use  bash  as my default shell

User · Answer

You actually can t do what you want with Bash aliases  since aliases are static  Instead  use the function you have created   Look here for more information  http   www mactips org archives 2008 01 01 increase-productivity-with-bash-aliases-and-functions    Yes I know it s mactips org  but it s about Bash  so don t worry

User · Answer

Just to reiterate what has been posted for other shells  in Bash the following works   alias blah  function  blah    echo  First   1   echo  Second   2      blah    Running the following   blah one two   Gives the output below   First  one Second  two

User · Answer

This works in ksh     alias -x mkcd  mkdir   dirname  cd   dirname     alias mkcd mkcd  mkdir  dirname  cd  dirname     dirname aaa    pwd  tmp      mkcd   pwd  tmp aaa   The  -x  option make the alias  exported  - alias is visible in subshells   And be aware of fact that aliases defined in a script are not visible in that script  because aliases are expanded when a script is loaded  not when a line is interpreted   This can be solved with executing another script file in same shell  using dot

User · Answer

You cannot in ksh  but you can in csh   alias mkcd  mkdir      cd    1    In ksh  function is the way to go  But if you really really wanted to use alias   alias mkcd       mkdir  1  cd  1

User · Answer

Here s a simple example function using python  You can stick in    bashrc    You gotta have a space after the first left curly bracket    The python command needs to be in double quotes to get the variable substitution    Don t forget that semicolon at the end   function count    python -c  for num in xrange  1  print num        count 6 0 1 2 3 4 5

User · Answer

An empty alias will execute its args   alias DEBUG

User · Answer

You may also find this command useful   mkdir dirname  amp  amp  cd     where dirname is the name of the directory you want to create

User · Answer

The easiest way  is to use function not alias   you can still call a function at any time from the cli   In bash  you can just add function name     command   it loads the same as an alias   function mkcd     mkdir  1  cd  1      Not sure about other shells

User · Answer

To quote the bash man page      There is no mechanism for using arguments in the replacement text    If   arguments  are  needed   a shell function should be used  see FUNCTIONS   below     So it looks like you ve answered your own question -- use a function instead of an alias

User · Answer

I found that functions cannot be written in    cshrc file  Here in alias which takes arguments  for example  arguments passed to  find  command  alias fl  find   -name     1        Ex   gt fl abc   where abc is the argument passed as   1

User · Answer

You found the way  create a function instead of an alias   The C shell has a mechanism for doing arguments to aliases  but bash and the Korn shell don t  because the function mechanism is more flexible and offers the same capability

[shell] How to pass command line arguments to a shell alias?

Examples related to shell

Examples related to alias