Setting up an alias for a command

After you have used the shell for a while, you will probably find that there are some commands that you use frequently. Rather than typing them over and over, you can set up an alias for these commands. An alias is a personalized name that stands for all or part of a command. You can create an alias by entering:

alias name="string"

in response to the shell's usual prompt for input. This is not a normal command; it is an instruction to the shell itself.

For example, suppose you have a hard time remembering that the mv command actually renames files. Instead, you could set up a simple alias by entering this on your command line:

alias renam="mv"

From this point onward in your session, whenever the shell sees the command renam, the renam is replaced with mv. The alias facility lets you create more usable commands.

Clearly, you could use an alias to save yourself some typing too. You could define c as an alias for cat. Then you would enter:

c file

to get the effect of:

cat file