Uses for Aliases
This section describes various ways you can put aliases to work, making it easier to issue commands.
Aliases Save Typing
One of the principal benefits of aliases is that they save typing. They can achieve this end in many different ways, as shown below:
To provide shorter names for commands:
alias m more Map m to more alias j jobs Map j to jobs
To string commands together in a pipeline:
alias wsm 'who | sort | more' Define wsm as sorted, paged who command alias print 'pr \!* | lpr' Print files
To execute a sequence of commands:
alias cl 'cd \!* ; ls' Change to directory, then list it
To construct commands that supply default arguments to other commands:
alias askrm rm -i Define safer rm command alias gora gopher gopher.ora.com Connect to gopher.ora.com
To move into commonly used directories:
alias .. cd .. Move to parent directory alias mq cd /usr/spool/mqueue Move to mail queue directory
Aliases Can Redefine Commands
An alias name can be the same as the command invoked by the alias definition. This is a special case that's not a loop. Instead, it effectively changes the normal meaning of the command. For instance, if you usually do case-insensitive searches when you use grep, you can alias grep to supply the -i argument by default:
alias grep grep -i
To use the command name with its original meaning, precede it with a backslash, or invoke the command using its full pathname:
%\grep hognose *.ms
%/bin/grep hognose *.ms
It's not a good idea to redefine the meaning of dangerous commands, ...
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