Custom commands

[dellthinker]

Hi all, i saw how possible it was to make custom commands for your console, for example, if you wanted to open a file or program instead of typing the full version you would type something shorter and easier to remember. Something like this:

user@shell~: open firefox

How would i go about accomplishing this? Thanx in advance!

[Geeth]

Alias is what your looking for.

[i92guboj]

As Geeth said, read about "alias" in the bash man page.

Its usage is pretty much straightforward for the most part, some examples taken from my own ~/.bashrc:

alias cp='cp -i'
alias df='pydf'
alias dvdplay='mount /mnt/dvd; mplayer /mnt/dvd/*; umount /mnt/dvd'
alias emerge='emerge -Dv'
alias grep='grep --colour=auto'
alias h='history'
alias ls='ls -h'
alias mc='mc -x'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias nano='nano -w'
alias nwn='cd ~/games/nwn; ./nwn'
alias rm='rm -i'
alias startx='startx \"$@\" & exit'
alias undying='winerun ".wine/drive_c/Archivos de programa/EA Games/undying/System/" "../Undying.exe"'
alias vbox='sudo /sbin/modprobe vboxdrv; VirtualBox; sudo /sbin/rmmod vboxdrv'

Put them into ~/.bashrc and/or ~/.bash_profile.

[dellthinker]

Thanx for you reply i92guboj, very helpful and educational. But i cant find the file bash_profile on my system. Im using Fedora 7 btw. As root im in /root dir. And i cant find those two files you mentioned. Any suggestions?

[vsemaska]

Did you include a period in front of the filename. In other words the filename is .bash_profile and .bashrc

Also these files are known as 'hidden' files so they won't show up in a 'ls -l' command. Use the command 'ls -la'.

[dellthinker]

Well i added this to .bashrc

alias mydir='pwd'

And got an error that the command doesnt exist

bash: mydir: command not found

What did i do wrong?

[vsemaska]

The file .bashrc is a script that's executed when you log in. So the new alias won't be created until you log off and back on. That or manually execute the script with the command:

. ./.bashrc

[devils casper]

You dont have to log off/on after editing .bashrc file. Just source it.

source .bashrc

[dellthinker]

HAH! Thanx devil casper, that worked

[i92guboj]

You dont have to log off/on after editing .bashrc file. Just source it.

source .bashrc

I know it's kind of an overkill, but even if it's just for the sake of not having to write the dot-file name, I often just do "exec bash", whichi just exit this shell and runs a new one. That, indeed, emulates closing the terminal and opening a new one (forcing in the way the sourcing of the rc file).

.bashrc and .bash_profile can be created if they don't exist. For the details you can check the bash man page. Basically, ~/.bash_profile is read on login shells, and ~/.bashrc is read on non-login shells (for example, when you open a terminal).