A good place to start is to list all of your shell aliases with the alias command.
When passed no parameters it will list the current aliases as defined in your configuration or explicitly defined in the shell.
Aliases in zsh share the common alias builtin command from other shells.
Aliases are handy for saving time when typing commands.
If they are not "global aliases" then they only work at the beginning of a command prompt (more below).
Typical aliases are used for commands such as:
alias g=gitAliases can be single commands or expand to multiple words.
alias gc='git commit'If you define your alias with a space after the definition it will allow the following word to be interpreted as an alias.
# notice the space inside the quotes
alias ss='sudo 'This will allow you to use an alias after ss.
# Without the space you would receive an error that the `g` command is not found
ss g
^^ runs `sudo git`If an alias conflicts with the name of a command you can escape it with quotes ''.
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
echo foo | grep fo
# ^^^^ uses grep --color=auto alias
echo foo | 'grep' fo
# ^^^^ will not colorize matchAliases don't have to only be letters and numbers.
alias :q=exit
alias ..='cd ..'
alias ....='cd ../..'
alias --='cd -'You can also alias escape special characters such as
\so be careful
zsh has an additional option for global aliases with the -g option which allows aliases at any part of the command line.
Without the -g option aliases will only be matched at the beginning of a line or after an alias ending with a space.
Global aliases can be helpful for aliasing any text you frequently write at the command line.
# pipe output to grep
alias -g G='| grep'
# pipe output to less
alias -g L='| less'
# pipe output to `wc` with option `-l`
alias -g W='| wc -l'
# convert multiline output to single line and copy it to the system clipboard
alias -g C='| tr -d ''\n'' | xclip -selection clipboard' Because global aliases can be used anywhere in the command line they can also be chained together.
echo -e 'zsh\nis\n\great\nhello\ngoodbye' G -A1 hello C
# grep for hello and include 1 line after ^^^^^^^^^ ^
|
# trim new lines and copy 'hello goodbye' to the ---|
# system clipboardAliases can also be used inside definitions of other aliases!
alias -g G='| grep'
alias -g W='| wc -l'
alias -g GfooW='G foo W'Aliases are great for typing but sometimes they can be confusing to remember what aliases you have defined or when searching your command history.
Trying to remember if you ran a command with git or g can make it hard to find the command you need.
It's also helpful to show full commands if you are pair programming or giving a presentation.
For that you can use a function that will automatically exand your aliases on your current command line after you press space.
# don't worry about zle. We'll go over it later in the zle section.
globalias() {
zle _expand_alias
zle expand-word
zle self-insert
}
zle -N globalias
# space expands all aliases, including global
bindkey -M emacs " " globalias
bindkey -M viins " " globalias
# control-space to make a normal space
bindkey -M emacs "^ " magic-space
bindkey -M viins "^ " magic-space
# normal space during searches
bindkey -M isearch " " magic-space
Because aliases expand to any text they can get quite complex. The expanded text can include subshells, variables, and additional quoted text.
Advanced aliases can also be implemented as shell functions or widgets.
Here are a few examples
# Search through your command history and print the top 10 commands
alias history-stat='history 0 | awk ''{print $2}'' | sort | uniq -c | sort -n -r | head'
# Use `which` to find aliases and functions including binaries
which='(alias; declare -f) | /usr/bin/which --tty-only --read-alias --read-functions --show-tilde --show-dot'
Aliases are great for replacing text at an interactive shell. For more options on powering up your interactive shell check out functions and widgets.