This is part two of the ‘Customizing the Terminal’ series. Part one is ‘Customizing the Terminal: The Prompt‘. In this part, we’ll see how to create aliases to make working in the console easier.
How To Create an Alias
You can create a temporary alias using this command…
alias new_name='old command'
This will stop working when you exit the terminal. If you want to make the alias permanent, put the same command in your
There is another way to create an alias – create a executable file and place it in a folder in your path. This is not technically an alias – but it works the same way. I use this for alias that tend to change often. Its easier to find a file in a folder and edit it. YMMV.
This is a incomplete list of the aliases I use. Feel free to copy them to your .bashrc file.
Quick Directory Jumps
Create an alias to jump to folders you have to visit often. This is my list…
alias www='cd /var/www/html' alias e='cd /mnt/x'
The above jumps are absolute jumps – relative jumps are possible too…
alias ..='cd ..' alias ...='cd ../..' alias ....='cd ../../..' alias .....='cd ../../../..'
Some prefer this syntax…
alias ..='cd ..' alias ..2='cd ../..' alias ..3='cd ../../..' alias ..4='cd ../../../..'
Often Used Commands
If you use some commands a lot, create smaller alternative for it…
alias x='exit' alias q='exit' alias rmdir='rm â€“rf'
Many of my own scripts are also alias’ed this way…
alias bk='perl "/home/binnyva/Scripts/Perl/Maintenance/Rsync Backup/RsyncBackup.pl"' alias rbk='perl "/home/binnyva/Scripts/Perl/Maintenance/Rsync Backup/RsyncRemoteBackup.pl"' alias nbk='perl "/home/binnyva/Scripts/Perl/Maintenance/Rsync Backup/RsyncNetworkBackup.pl"' alias bdb='perl "/home/binnyva/Scripts/Perl/Maintenance/Database Backup/Dbbackup.pl"'
Create a short version of long and complex command using alias…
alias gitstat='git status | perl -pe "exit if(/Untracked files\:/)"' alias ra='ruby script/server' alias wikipedia='cd /mnt/x/Data/Wikipedia/mywiki; firefox "http://localhost:8001/"; python manage.py runserver 8001; ' alias sup='svn update'
When I came from Windows to Linux, I was used to the dos commands – but not to the linux’s mv,cp commands. So I used to have aliases for those(I don’t have these now)
alias move='mv' alias copy='cp' alias ren='mv' alias del='rm'
If you go from Red Hat/Fedora to Debian/Ubuntu(or vise versa), you can set up a few alias to make the change easier…
You can get a lot of ideas for more aliases by looking at others .bashrc files.
Now tell me you aliases…