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Do you use aliases?

command line aliases to make repeated processes quicker. I've used them in the past and on specific programs but never on command line utilities.

like for instance with Debian, I'm repeatedly typing sudo apt-get install, so I aliased it: alias sagi="sudo apt-get install" and it works pretty good.

Are there any best practices or aliases to avoid when using them? Other than known commands obviously. Are there popular alias lists out there?

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  • For a few basic things, yes. For a couple of others, I've set up a shell function or a script instead.

    Obligatory warning before I list a few of my aliases - overriding commands by an alias with the same name can be dangerous, as it can mean that expected behaviour can become destructive behaviour on a foreign system without those aliases. e.g. a common error is aliasing rm to rm -i so that rm always asks if the user is sure. Until that user is on a different machine without the alias and the files vanish without warning, anyway. Oops.

    Some of mine are arguably questionable in that regard, but I don't think any will result in anything particularly destructive if I expect them in the wrong place.

    These two override the default which command to deliver slightly more useful output, especially when the command is itself an alias (or an alias override). command is a bash builtin:

     undefined
        
    alias Which='command -V'
    alias which='command -v'
    
    
      

    The obligatory ls config override. long-iso formatting ensures that ls's output is consistent, which is tidy, and also useful for further processing. That said, use of stat is probably a better choice for that sort of thing.). LC_ALL=C setting is so that things sort in "ASCIIbetical" order. My locale mixes upper and lowercase filenames and I'm too old-school for that sort of thing.:

     undefined
        
    alias ls='LC_ALL=C ls --color=auto --group-directories-first --time-style=long-iso'
    
    
      

    Some versions of mtr start in GUI mode. -t prevents that. And of course, Windows muscle memory dies hard:

     undefined
        
    alias mtr='mtr -t'
    alias tracert='echo '\''Use mtr, you ninny.'\'''
    
    
      

    Hex dump using the ancient and nearly always present od command (the incantation is right out of the od manual):

     undefined
        
    alias odx='od -A x -t x1z -v'
    
    
      

    Process control. Give either a PID and the process will do as it's told. Usually. :

     undefined
        
    alias pause='kill -TSTP'
    alias resume='kill -CONT'
    
    
      

    How many times do I type the wrong thing? Too many:

     undefined
        
    alias quit='exit'
    
    
      

    Setup for fortune. The first one is self-explanatory. The second one shows which of the fortune files the fortune came from (-c) but does some shenanigans to send that header to STDERR rather than STDOUT. This makes the header vanish when fortune is piped into fun things like cowsay.

     undefined
        
    alias bofh='fortune bofh-excuses'
    alias fortune='fortune -c | while read -r line ; do [[ ! "$A" ]] && echo $line >&2 || echo $line ; [[ "$line" == "%" ]] && A=1; done'
    
    
      

    I have a load of silly text cipher filters as scripts, but this one came for free with the bsdgames package

     undefined
        
    alias rot='caesar'
    alias rot13='caesar 13'
    
    
      

    And of course, every time I create a new alias (which isn't very often, I admit), I run this one, which dumps all current aliases into a file that some distros set up by default.

     undefined
        
    alias save_aliases='alias > ~/.bash_aliases'
    
    
      
  • I use Nala for package management in my Debian systems. I've created aliases for 'apt' & 'apt-get' to use Nala instead.

    Also 'll' alias for 'ls -lah'.

    That's about it though.

  • I alias most common git commands because they're so frequent. Like co for git checkout.

  • alias ll = 'ls -l'

    alias kk = 'ls -l'

    alias jj = 'ls -l'

    Dyslexia sometimes hits hard.

  • I recently set up an alias since I do some hardware stuff and need to run programs not in my default path as sudo.

    ’alias sudop='sudo env PATH=$PATH'’

    And that's pretty much the extent of my aliasing. I'm interested to see what other people do

  • Some of these demand that the terminal you use them with is kitty:

     undefined
        
    alias ipc='curl icanhazip.com'
    # btop is *pretty* bloat!
    alias htop='btop'
    # I'm kinda proud of this oneliner. It's pointless, but it was fun. It displays a random square image when you run
    # neofetch rather than the default ansi art
    alias neofetch='filarr=(~/Media/Images/1x1/*.*) && fil=${filarr[$RANDOM % ${#filarr[@]}]} && neofetch --kitty $fil' 
    # comics are an important part of my life
    alias gd='cd ~ ; gallery-dl'
    alias gde="cd ~ ; gallery-dl --chapter-filter 'lang == (\"en\")'"
    alias yd='yt-dlp --sub-langs all --embed-subs --embed-chapters --progress --paths home:~/Downloads'
    alias subl="/opt/sublime_text/sublime_text"
    #exa is currently unmaintained. eza is a maintained fork. It installs a link to exa, but...
    alias ls="eza --icons --hyperlink --group-directories-first --git"
    alias lsblkv="lsblk -o \"NAME,KNAME,SIZE,TYPE,VENDOR,MODEL,MOUNTPOINT\""
    alias icat="kitty +kitten icat"
    alias mem="grep -e Dirty: /proc/meminfo; grep -e Writeback: /proc/meminfo"
    alias flush="sync"
    alias links="links https://www.duckduckgo.com"
    alias q="qalc"
    alias hf="history 1 | fzf"
    # tile the first two kitty windows and resize all kitty windows to 915x945, redirecting any errors to /dev/null
    alias tk="xdotool search --class kitty windowmove %1 30 105 windowmove %2 975 105 windowsize %@ 915 945 2>/dev/null"
    # only ask for password once on long updates
    alias yay="yay --sudoloop"
    
      
  • Yes, when I type $installed

    Come back with all installed packages with version removed. I use this for a system back up script

  • Slightly.

    These are the aliases I set manually:

     undefined
        
    alias :q='exit'
    alias kgpg='gpgconf --kill gpg-agent'
    alias battery='upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT1 | grep -wE "percentage:|time to empty:|state:|energy:|energy-rate:|voltage:"'
    alias park='sudo hdparm --idle-unload'
    
      
  • me:
    wgup="sudo wg-quick up wg0"
    wgdown="sudo wg-quick down wg0"
    and some pacman cleaning command..
    edit: forgot that it is markdown

  • OMZsh has some powerful auto complete if you care to look around. Their plugins are amazing for saving time.

40 comments