Bash Aliases (aka part 1 of 2000 of how to get more done in less time)

#programming #timemanagement #bash #shortcuts

Speed.

It’s one of the most important things in life. Don’t get me wrong, some things must be done slow to be done right. You want to carefully consider choices and decisions but what about the inbetween?

What if you just wanted to know if the internet was down (again) ?

ping 8.8.8.8

What if you wanted to see what your debug key signature is for the millionth time?

keytool -list -v -keystore ~/.android/debug.keystore -alias androiddebugkey -storepass android -keypass android

Fond embracers of the terminal will be the first to snort approval that the fastest way to do most things, is via the terminal.

However, for the very common commands, you’d hardly want to keep typing them out every time.

Enter the bash aliases,

The most used of my aliases are:

alias e=‘exit’

This tells bash that whenever you type e by itself and press enter, you want it to run the command ‘exit’.

Pretty much anything that can be written in bash, an alias can made for.

TLDR;

Save this file to your home folder and thank me later. The letter after alias, is what you type to run the command after equals.

What will you be putting in your aliases file? Comment below or reach out to me on twitter at @AniketSMK

Top comments (2)

brandon_wallace • Dec 26 '21

Here are some of the aliases and functions I have in my .bashrc.

# View dd progress.
alias dd='dd status=progress '

# Long list almost all files with classification and a humanly-readable size.
function ll(){ 
    ls --color=auto -A -F -l -h --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"; 
}

# Long listing with the newest files last.
function lt(){ 
    ls --color=auto -A -F -l -h -t -r --time-style=+"%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"; 
}

# Find the biggest files or folders in current directory.
function biggest(){ du -sk * | column -t | sort -nr | head -20; }

# Show current time.
function t(){ date +%H:%M:%S; }

# Grep through history.
function hg(){ history | grep $1; }

alias tree='tree -F --dirsfirst'

alias jan='cal -m 01'
alias feb='cal -m 02'
alias mar='cal -m 03'
alias apr='cal -m 04'
alias may='cal -m 05'
alias jun='cal -m 06'
alias jul='cal -m 07'
alias aug='cal -m 08'
alias sep='cal -m 09'
alias oct='cal -m 10'
alias nov='cal -m 11'
alias dec='cal -m 12'