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Roelof Jan Elsinga
Roelof Jan Elsinga

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What are your favorite bash aliases?

#bash #linux #discuss #terminal

What are your favorite bash aliases?

I use a lot of bash aliases on a daily basis! I love the fact that you can bundle commands and actions behind a single alias and improve your productivity with such simple steps!

Here are my favorites:

# ------------- MAINTENANCE ALIASES ----------------
alias update='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade -y && sudo apt autoremove -y'

# --------------- PHP/NPM ALIASES ------------------
alias artisan='php artisan'
alias serve='php artisan serve'
alias unit='./vendor/bin/phpunit'
alias unitwatch='./vendor/bin/phpunit-watcher watch'
alias coverage='php -d pcov.enabled=1 ./vendor/bin/phpunit --coverage-html coverage'
alias cov-watcher='php -d pcov.enabled=1 ./vendor/bin/phpunit-watcher watch --coverage-html coverage'
alias prod='npm run prod'
alias dev='npm run dev'
alias watch='npm run watch'

# ----------------- GIT ALIASES --------------------
alias status='git status'
alias add-all='git add .'
alias gpm='git pull origin master'
alias push='git push origin'
alias pull='git pull origin'
alias switch='git checkout'
alias remove='git branch -d'
alias branches='git branch'
alias tags='git tag'
alias create-tag='git tag -a'

# ----------------- FILE ALIASES -------------------
alias editrc='nano ~/.bashrc'
alias applyrc='source   ~/.bashrc'
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What are yours?

Top comments (26)

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whusterj profile image
William Huster • • Edited

I use Ubuntu -- I have a ~/scripts directory, where I put useful scripts. I then alias these for quick use.

Here's a shortcut to open any VSCode workspace saved in ~/workspace/vscode-workspaces/

#!/bin/bash
#
# Author: William Huster
# Description: Shortcut to open a VSCode workspace
#
code $HOME/workspace/vscode-workspaces/$1.code-workspace

In ~/.bashrc:

alias workspace="bash $SCRIPTS_DIR/vscode-workspace.sh"

I also have a git-versioned folder for notes in markdown. I like to create a file for daily notes, so I have note alias and script to create/open that file:

#!/bin/bash
#
# Author: William Huster
# Description: Shortcut to launch an editor with my today's notes.
#
WORKSPACE_DIR=~/workspace
NOTES_DIR=~/notes

cd $NOTES_DIR

# Make the filename
NOW=$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")
NOTE_TITLE="__Notes.md"
todays_notes="$NOW$NOTE_TITLE"

# Open it!
code $WORKSPACE_DIR/vscode-workspaces/notes.code-workspace "$todays_notes"

In ~/.bashrc:

alias note="bash $SCRIPTS_DIR/take-note.sh"
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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

That's definitely something I should do! Such great ideas, thank you for these!

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker •

This one is my favorite. I use conda environments and switch between them many times per day. It pipes a list of available environments into fzf, trims out just the name then runs source activate on it.

a() {source activate "$(conda info --envs | fzf | awk '{print $1}')";}
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dak425 profile image
Donald Feury • • Edited

Some generic aliases I use often

alias poweroff="systemctl poweroff"
alias reboot="systemctl reboot"
alias v="vim"
alias sv="sudo vim"

For updating xrdb resource definitions quickly

alias xup="xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources"

For navigating to common directories

alias gtproj="cd ~/projects"
alias gtconf="cd ~/.config"

For quickly editing configs I touch frequently

alias exr="vim ~/.Xresources"
alias evim="vim ~/.vimrc"
alias ezsh="vim ~/.zshrc"
alias esxhkd="vim ~/.config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc"
alias ebspwm="vim ~/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc"
alias edunst="vim ~/.config/dunst/dunstrc"
alias epolytop="vim ~/.config/polybar/top.ini"
alias epolybot="vim ~/.config/polybar/bottom.ini"
alias epolycol="vim ~/.config/polybar/colors.ini"
alias epolyuser="vim ~/.config/polybar/user_modules.ini"
alias epolysys="vim ~/.config/polybar/system_modules.ini"
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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

Those are different than mine, but definitely have the same idea! I haven't posted them here, but I have a lot of "cd" like aliases and "edit file" commands in there as well! Very useful aliases, nice!

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mediumrowdy profile image
medium-rowdy •

Not too many, as I move around between systems quite a lot. The couple I can't do without are:

alias ll="ls -l"
alias la="ls -la"

And to help with finding large directories/files:

alias du1="du -k -d 1 | sort -n"
alias ll5="ls -la | sort -k 5 -n"
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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

100% adding those to my list!!

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gianpaj profile image
Gianfranco • 
alias run="npm run"

alias cat='bat'
alias ping='prettyping --nolegend'
alias top="htop" # alias top and fix high sierra bug
alias du="ncdu --color dark -rr -x --exclude .git --exclude node_modules"

# requires brew info grep
alias grep="ggrep  --color=auto --exclude-dir={.bzr,CVS,.git,.hg,.svn}"
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alexanderalemayhu profile image
Alexander Alemayhu • • Edited

I use git-amn a lot to reword the last commit or append some hunks

alias git-amn='git ci -v --amend'

My favourite function which I use a few times a year to study codebases for fun and profit 😉

# Clone a whole github organization.
orgclone() {
  mkdir -p $1
  cd $1
  curl -s https://api.github.com/orgs/$1/repos?per_page=200 | ruby -rubygems -e 'require "json"; JSON.load(STDIN.read).each { |repo| %x[git clone #{repo["ssh_url"]} ]}'
  cd -
}
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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

I'm adding that amend alias to my list too, that's great! That method is really cool and takes care of so much manual work! Productivity 😅

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aetherunbound profile image
Madison Swain-Bowden •

Good topic Roelof!

I've got some similar ones, with one minor difference:

alias ebrc='vim ~/.bashrc && source ~/.bashrc'

This makes it so that my .bashrc is sourced right after I finish editing it!

I've also got a few convenience functions for common operations:

cdl_function () {
    cd $1 && ls -lah
}

mkdirc_function () {
    mkdir $1 && cd $1
}

alias cdl=cdl_function
alias mkdirc=mkdirc_function

And some conda specific ones:

# Tab completed virtual environments
# e.g. `vact <tab>`
vact () {
    conda activate ${1}
}
__vact()
{
    local cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
    IFS=$'\n'
    tmp=( $(compgen -W "$(ls ${CONDA_PREFIX}/envs/ )" -- $cur))
    # COMPREPLY=( "${tmp[@]// /\ }" )
    COMPREPLY=( "${tmp[@]}" )
}
complete -F __vact vact

# List environments
alias le="conda info --envs"
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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

Oh I'm definitely adding those first three! They cover about 99% of my manual actions automatically, great aliases!

The tab completion I'm not familiar with, but that does look like some amazing productivity hacks!

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mzaini30 profile image
Zen •

alias? I use bash files to run commands like alias.

Example:

  • Create file in ~/bin/ (eg: hello file)
  • Run sudo chmod +x hello
  • Type command in hello
  • Then, if I'll run the command, I type hello (like alias)

And these're my fav:

github 

git clone --depth=1 user:pass@github.com/user/$1

upload 

git status
git add -A .
git commit -m "upload"
git push
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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

That's a good idea as well! Perhaps a cleaner solution as well. I like aliases because I can add them to my setup bash script for new systems, append them to the .bashrc, source it and I'm good to go! I'll definitely look into your solution though, because that sounds very clean and allows for much more complex workflows as well.

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker •

I have replaced a few of my aliases with forgit. a package of several really good fuzzy git commands.

ga -> git add

git add

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roelofjanelsinga profile image
Roelof Jan Elsinga •

That's a cool solution! I've seen many people use the ga command as well and always assumed it was manually done through aliases. This takes the manual work out of it, very exciting!

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waylonwalker profile image
Waylon Walker •

I actually had a set of fzf commands that I had made personally that this replaces as it is way more engineered and robust than what I came up with.

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akkis profile image
Akis Laoutaris •

Your idea for alias sharing is great! Thank you all of you!
I personally use:

alias l='ls -lah'
alias brewup='brew update && brew upgrade && brew cleanup && brew doctor'
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