Linux alias which file

If you want to remove a file, you should move the file to your Trash, just as you do when using a desktop. This alias uses a little-known mv flag that enables you to provide the file you want to move as the final argument, ignoring the usual requirement for that file to be listed first. Now you can use your new command to move files and folders to your system Trash:. Now the file is "gone," but only until you realize in a cold sweat that you still need it.

At that point, you can rescue the file from your system Trash; be sure to tip the Bash and mv developers on the way out. Everyone has a unique workflow, but there are usually repetitive tasks no matter what.

Largely thanks to its ability to pass arguments to hooks, Git has a rich set of introspective commands that save you from having to perform uncanny feats in Bash. This kind of alias is by no means a universally useful alias, but it demonstrates how a relatively simple alias can eliminate a lot of laborious navigation, commands, and waiting for prompts.

Now the command cg takes you to the top of your Git project, no matter how deep into its directory structure you have descended. While aliases are great for quick substitutions, Bash allows you to add local functions in your.

Functions are much more flexible than aliases, but with that flexibility comes the responsibility for you to ensure that your code makes sense and does what you expect.

Aliases are meant to be simple, so keep them easy, but useful. For serious modifications to how Bash behaves, use functions or custom shell scripts saved to a location in your PATH. Customizing your environment is what makes Linux fun, and increasing your efficiency is what makes Linux life-changing.

Get started with simple aliases, graduate to functions, and post your must-have aliases in the comments! This is a great one. I find that I need to be conservative about the number of aliases I have so I don't confuse myself.

A very important command that I sometimes need to use is 'alias' all by itself -- what this does is list all your active aliases in the current bash session.

It's also important to note that the syntax is strict. For example, in the above, you CANNOT have a space between ll and the equals sign or between the equals sign and the command. Great point about using alias directly in a shell session. I believe an article about alias is coming through the pipeline, so I think it'll get covered for people who don't know about it. It's also worth mentioning that you don't have to cram every flag you can think of into your alias.

You can create a more restricted alias and still add other flags as needed. For example, with my ll alias I could run in the bash session ll -h which would be the same as ls -lth.

Gah, great tip. Should've mentioned that. Again, I think I'll forward this tip to the author of the upcoming alias article to ensure it gets mentioned! One function I like a lot is a function that diffs a file and its backup. It goes something like. I may have gotten the if wrong, but you get the idea. I'm typing this on my phone, away from home.

My backup tool of choice rdiff-backup handles these sorts of comparisons pretty well, so I tend to be confident in my backup files. That said, there's always the edge case, and this kind of function is a great solution for those. ButtleButkus - might want to change just one user's preferences rather than the whole system. In Ubuntu the system-wide. Show 3 more comments. There are a lot of ways to create an alias. Dan Yep, using another file for aliases is much more clean, also portable between distros.

I do use that file to because some alias are not enough and a function is needed. So it's more much clean if you use a file for that task instead. Show 1 more comment. Marty Fried Marty Fried Just for completeness: The initial dot on the line.

The quoting here is slightly tricky. In this example, using double quotes is unproblematic, but if the text within the quotes contains dollar signs, backslashes, etc, you will need to understand how the shell processes them inside double quotes.

You can switch to single quotes on the outside and double quotes on the inside, but you then still need to understand how Bash processes the double quotes in the alias definition.

Good idea, but careless using of this function may lead to trashing. Your function definitely needs to implement some checkups to avoid such cluttering. This is a valid point. Do you have a suggested workaround you are willing to share Troublemaker-DV? At 1st I would grep the RC for alias commands to check, if this alias was already entered there to avoid duplicates.

Your check for an existence of an alias is not enough, because the RC could be already "contaminated" with multiple aliases of same name. You seem like a Troublemaker-DV!

I'd say that's a bit of a silly assumption and unlikely fallacy to assert. Check it out. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name.

Email Required, but never shown. The Overflow Blog. Does ES6 make JavaScript frameworks obsolete? Podcast Do polyglots have an edge when it comes to mastering programming Featured on Meta. Now live: A fully responsive profile. Linked Related Hot Network Questions. Question feed. Now I will create an alias that will override the behavior of the uptime command. From this example, you can conclude the precedence falls to bash aliases before checking and invoking the actual command.

Now remove the uptime entry from the. This is because the alias definition is loaded into the current shell session and we have to either start a new session or unset the alias definition by running the unalias command as shown in the below image. Till this point, we have seen how to set up an alias at the user level. You need to have the elevated privilege to modify bash. It will look out for any files with the.

We have seen what is alias , the configuration files involved with the alias , and different ways to set up the alias locally and globally. TecMint is the fastest growing and most trusted community site for any kind of Linux Articles, Guides and Books on the web. Millions of people visit TecMint! If you like what you are reading, please consider buying us a coffee or 2 as a token of appreciation.

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