Korn Shell Programming by Example

Aliases

Another shell technique that can save you a few keystrokes is using an alias. An alias is a way of doing something in shorthand. An alias is defined using a name/value pair. For example, the following alias takes the command ls -la and assigns it to the alias ll:

alias ll='ls -la'

After this alias has been created (either in a script, such as .profile, or manually at a shell prompt), the user can type ll and get a long listing:

 $ ll total 56 drwx------ 6 shell shell 4096 May 16 10:32 . drwxr-xr-x 22 root root 4096 Mar 27 14:26 .. -rw-r--r-- 1 shell shell 1422 Mar 27 14:26 .Xdefaults -rw-r--r-- 1 shell shell 24 Mar 27 14:26 .bash_logout -rw-r--r-- 1 shell shell 230 Mar 27 14:26 .bash_profile -rw-r--r-- 1 shell shell 173 Mar 27 14:26 ...