Iam not able to use aliases in my script...

[Pawan Sangal]

Hi,
Iam not able to use aliasas in my script. below alias "ll" is for "ls -l"....is working fine on command promt, but not if Iam using the same in my script.

Please have a look at below output....Kindly help me, why it is not giving me the output.


[pawan@gfmdatabase pawan]$ ll | tail
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 1152 Mar 13 2006 uptolow.sh
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 550 Mar 6 2006 usecase.sh
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 635 Mar 13 2006 usefunc.sh
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 120 Oct 18 2006 usewhile.sh
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 43 Apr 4 2006 uuu.sh
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 274 Mar 29 2006 vowel.pl
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 242 Mar 16 2006 whileuse.pl
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 273 Mar 21 2006 wrdcnt.pl
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 957 Mar 21 2006 wrdsrch.pl
-rw-rw-r-- 1 pawan pawan 339 Feb 13 2006 xyz
[pawan@gfmdbase pawan]$ cat aks.sh
ll | tail
[pawan@gfmdbase pawan]$ ll aks.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 pawan pawan 10 May 18 16:43 aks.sh
[pawan@gfmdbase pawan]$ ./aks.sh
./aks.sh: line 1: ll: command not found
[pawan@gfmdbase pawan]$


Please share, if anyone have a idea to get this working in a simple bash script.

Thanks
Pawan Sangal

[Sivel]

There are inherent problems with using aliases in bash scripts. I suggest just using the full command. If the reason you want to use the alias is because you are having issues executing the command because it has spaces then include the full command inside of $()

Example: $(ls -l)

[drl]

Hi.

The bash manual page suggests using functions instead of aliases. Aliases are not exported, so you need to arrange to place those in a file, and then you tell bash to load that file for non-interactive shells. This becomes complicated because bash tries to perform actions that useful for you, that conform to older shells like sh, and to conform to POSIX standards.

Here is a a script that illustrates how you could get aliases into child processes:

#!/bin/bash

# @(#) s2       Demonstrate (non)-inheritance of aliases in bash.

echo " bash version: $BASH_VERSION"

echo
echo " This is process $$, main script."
echo " Aliases are:"
alias

echo
echo " Define an alias, and print list of aliases"
alias e=vi
alias

echo
bash <<'EOF'
echo " This is process $$, subordinate script."
echo " Aliases are:"
alias
EOF

echo
echo " Place an alias in an rc file:"
export BASH_ENV=t1
cat >t1 <<EOF
alias my-editor=vim
EOF

echo
echo " Current aliases:"
alias

echo
bash <<'EOF'
echo " This is process $$, subordinate script."
echo " Aliases are:"
alias
EOF

exit 0

Which produces:

$ ./s2
 bash version: 2.05b.0(1)-release

 This is process 6130, main script.
 Aliases are:

 Define an alias, and print list of aliases
alias e='vi'

 This is process 6131, subordinate script.
 Aliases are:

 Place an alias in an rc file:

 Current aliases:
alias e='vi'

 This is process 6133, subordinate script.
 Aliases are:
alias my-editor='vim'

See man bash for details on files that bash reads for new processes and for aliases and functions. Best wishes ... cheers, drl