simplifying commands?

[tk4two1]

I was wondering how to go about simplifying my most used commands. Basically if I want to run a command like

ls -a -s -l

but I only want to type

list

or something like that, how do I go about this? Is it using links and what not? Please help me. Thanks!

 

[scruffy]

use the "alias" shell builtin. So, by making a file in your home dir called .bash_profile, and putting lines in it like
alias list='ls -a -s -l'
you can save some typing

Incidentally, that file is only read once when bash starts, so that will apply only to terminal windows opened since you change the file

 

[tk4two1]

thanks That was exactly what I was looking for!

By the way what other types of entries can I put in the .bash_profile?

 

[scaryfish]

Pretty much anything you can write on the command line, I believe. Oh, by the way
ls -a -s -l
can also be written
ls -asl

 

[scruffy]

Yes, you can put anything you want in there - it's just a script that gets run whenever the shell starts.

I don't actually use bash - I got set in my ways in OS X PB - 10.2 where tcsh was the default shell. I decided to try bash for a while, and made this bash_profile before I got fed up with it:

#shell behaviour

# set prompt string to something informative...
# bold seems to be messing up character wrapping in Apple's terminal. Errr
# but we can still write to the title line without problems.

#bold=`tput bold`
#plain=`tput sgr0`
bold=''
plain=''
titlebar='\[\033]0;\u@\h:\w\007\]'

PS1="${titlebar}${bold}$? \A \u@\h:\W \$${plain}"
export PS1

# make tab completion more useful
set autolist = ambiguous

##conveniences
alias ll='ls -al'
alias l='ls -FH'
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ps2pdf='pstopdf'
alias du='du -h'

# line <number> <filename>
line() {
cat $2 | sed -n "$1 p"
}

mkcd() {
mkdir $1
cd $1
}


##environmental friendliness
#why vi?
export EDITOR=nano
# set this, and manpages don't close without explicit 'q'
export PAGER=less

Should give you at least an idea of what sort of thing can go in there