By typing a manually specified command in terminal I want to execute some other command.
How could add an alias to a command? Can i do that with the help of the terminal or should I edit some kind of file?
18 Answers
alias new_name='old command'To create a permanent alias you have to edit the .bashrc file in your home directory.
More info here
More .bashrc files here
2On the bash command line it is simply a case of typing:
alias my_command="Command to run"For example to create a short command run a long listing you could do:
alias ll="ls -l"The quotes are not required if you are not adding switches to the aliased command.
To make permanent changes you can put your aliases separetely in ~/.bash_aliases
You can either use the alias built-in command in the shell you're using, or you can write a script which does what you want. Assuming you are using bash as the shell (which is the default), you can type man bash and skip down to the ALIASES section, for documentation on aliases in bash.
I write a GUI for adding/editing alias commands. You can also use it from commandline like this:
addalias -add "sinstall" "sudo apt-get install"To learn about aliasing: visit
To make the changes permanent (i.e. to be read everytime you start a shell) add the alias commands you typed in the terminal to the file ~/.bashrc file.
1You can directly create a file in your home for collecting all the aliases .bash_profile by writing nano ~.bash_profile and simply write on the file the commands/shortcuts you want to create, for example:
alias edbp='nano ~/.bash_profile'and then validate it sourcing the file, so running
source ~.bash_profileRemember that every time you modify your document you have to run again source ~.bash_profile
Aliases' File
Add aliases to the file ~/.bash_aliases and create it if it doesn't exist. For example, I have:
$ more ~/.bash_aliases
alias trop='tree --dirsfirst -L 1'
(...)Alias Help
$ alias --help
alias: alias [-p] [name[=value] ... ] Define or display aliases. Without arguments, `alias' prints the list of aliases in the reusable form `alias NAME=VALUE' on standard output. Otherwise, an alias is defined for each NAME whose VALUE is given. A trailing space in VALUE causes the next word to be checked for alias substitution when the alias is expanded. Options: -p print all defined aliases in a reusable format Exit Status: alias returns true unless a NAME is supplied for which no alias has been defined.
