Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1193794
In Process
cerebrou
Asked: 2019-12-05 07:28:02 +0800 CST

Loading and modifying an alias in command line [duplicate]

  • 772

In order to speed up typing of a long command, we can make an alias of a command, e.g.

alias remcopy='scp [email protected]:/home/file.txt /home/user/'

And we type user this exact command will be run.

However, is it possible only to load the command and then modify it according to the current need, e.g.

scp [email protected]:/home/file.txt /home/user/addeddir/
command-line

2 Answers

  1. There are two ways you can start various modifications of the command.

    • an alias can have a parameter, for example

      alias remcopy='scp [email protected]:/home/user/file.txt'

remcopy targetname

      where targetname is selected a run time.

    • a function is more flexible than an alias. It can be a single line or big like a whole shellscript file.

      function remcopy () { scp [email protected]:/home/user/file.txt /home/user/"$1" ; }

remcopy
remcopy addeddir

      which can be used without a parameter and with a parameter (in order to change the name of the target file.

      You can store a small function in ~/.bashrc like you store aliases.

    • 1

  2. You can use variables to accomplish this.

    For example:

    alias something='nano ${1}'
something test.txt

    Will open test.txt in nano for writing

    • 0