this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by laverabe to c/linux
 

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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[–] kometes 29 points 4 months ago (3 children)

alias more="less -cX"
alias moer=more
alias meor=more
alias meor=more
alias mroe=more
alias More=more

alias grpe=grep
alias gerp=grep
alias gpre=grep

[–] model_tar_gz 14 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

In a big fan of the ‘fuck’ package for this. Try it out. Sudo apt install thefuck.

edit: oops got the name wrong; been a while since I installed it. Fuck.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

@model_tar_gz @kometes "yay fuck" sounds better I believe

Does it *work*? IRL?

[–] model_tar_gz 2 points 4 months ago

Yes it’s for real. I type fuck, it fixes my prompt, I accept and move on.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

The what, now?

googles hastily

Oohhhhh mmmmmyyyyyyy…

[–] laverabe 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Have tou heard of the sl command?

[–] laverabe 3 points 4 months ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

alias g=grep -i

[–] fr_mg 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

A humble and simple "c" for "clear" in the terminal.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago (1 children)

CTRL+L works on most I've used

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

But c and ENTER is even quicker. No need to reach out for ^L.

This kinda feels like Vim vs Emacs now.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

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:

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.:

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:

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):

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

alias save_aliases='alias > ~/.bash_aliases'

[–] JASN_DE 7 points 4 months ago

Certain aliases related to docker compose, just because it saves 2-3 words which never change.

[–] recapitated 5 points 4 months ago

Don't overlook functions, they're more versatile.

[–] whats_all_this_then 5 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Oh boy, my time to shine:

  • mkd - Create directory and immediately cd into it
  • dei - docker exec -i
  • dps - docker ps
  • mdocker - Switch to minikube's docker context
  • n - nvim
  • n. - nvim .

Node package managers

Exampes use pnpm but I have them for yarn, npm, and bun too

  • pi - pnpm install
  • pd - pnpm run dev

fzf stuff

  • sdh - Search home directory (directories, recursive)

Meme

  • fuckyou - git push --force
  • nano - nvim

Misc

createpgdb - Create a postgres db on the given container with the given name

Usage: createpgdb "postgres container" "db name"

I have similar ones for dropdb and pg_dump. Here's the command:

f() { local __user; if [ -z $3 ]; then __user=postgres; else __user=$3; fi; docker exec -i $1 createdb -U $__user $2; unset -f f; }; f'
[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

There's not enough storage space on the Internet to list all my aliases.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

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

[–] victorz 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I don't know about your other questions but here's my current list of aliases:

  • g: git, also several git aliases in my global gitconfig, so I can type "g s" for git status e.g.
  • y: yarn
  • b: bun
  • fu: flatpak update
  • cu: checkupdates
  • lg: lazygit
  • n: nnn
  • e: kak
  • shutup: an hdparm incantation to spin down my noisy hard drive.

Also various forms of ls, like ll, la, just l, etc. (I made ls a function wrapping eza in fish shell as well. I like eza over standard ls.)

[–] packetloss 4 points 4 months ago

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.

[–] surewhynotlem 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

hgrep

history | grep

Because I can never remember what parameters to use for things so my history is a quick reference.

[–] whats_all_this_then 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Have you tried fzf and it's history integration? Ctrl+R and youre fuzzy finding through your history. I don't know how I lives without it

[–] surewhynotlem 1 points 4 months ago

That sounds fantastic. Thanks!

[–] Quazatron 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

alias ll = 'ls -l'

alias kk = 'ls -l'

alias jj = 'ls -l'

Dyslexia sometimes hits hard.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

no, i make shell scripts for everything in /usr/local/bin/ . i find it more easy to manage and transfer. one liners can become bigger real quick, so i start with a script right away. also, since they have the shell in the hash bang line, they work in multiple shells.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I use a few, but this one is the best and most used:

gg = "git log --branches --remotes --tags --graph --pretty='%C(yellow)%h %C(cyan)%cd %Cblue%aN%C(auto)%d %Creset%s' --date=relative";
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I don't use aliases but I use bash to do common things.

"bash update" will run apt update and upgrade

[–] squid_slime 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yes, when I type $installed

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

I use aliases to streamline some of my git workflows

[–] ohlaph 2 points 4 months ago
[–] gmhh 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

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

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"
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Slightly.

These are the aliases I set manually:

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'
[–] jelloeater85 1 points 4 months ago

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

[–] macattack 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I've got a ton, most are already listed or along the same vein.

The two suggestions I have are not actual aliases but worth remembering:

  • Ctrl + Alt + E - turn your alias into its original command
  • \ - Place before your alias to run the original command's meaning. Useful if you overwrite a default command (overwriting default commands is not recommended though... often the alias will ignore any options passed through and so let's say you overwrite rm with another app that deletes files, then you forget that, and then try to delete some files using rm-i to get a prompt for each removed file. Often the alias will just operate as normal w/o a prompt saying that it ignored -i completely)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Only for typos alias bim="vim"

[–] s4if 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

me:
wgup="sudo wg-quick up wg0"
wgdown="sudo wg-quick down wg0"
and some pacman cleaning command..
edit: forgot that it is markdown

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 months ago (1 children)

My aliases all involve updating Docker containers or managing VPN and SSH connections to the laptop that hosts them.

I'm a bit confused as to what you mean by "I’ve used them in the past and on specific programs but never on command line utilities". What's an example of an alias you used outside CLIs?

[–] laverabe 2 points 4 months ago

CAD programs that have command line utilities, old text based games in the 90s had aliases and they were used a lot. I had just never thought to use them in BASH for some reason.