Bash aliases to enhance your productivity
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IO=ntro
You specify aliases in the .bashrc file in your home directory.
alias myalias="<my fancy command>"
Change 'my fancy command' to a real command!!
Before you can use your new aliases, you have to reload the .bashrc file. You do this by
$ source ~/.bashrc
or
$ . ~/.bashrc
Now, let's do this exercise.
Sometimes you might want to open a big text file from the end on, and start scrolling towards the top. We will create an alias for this in this exercise.
| Create an alias that starts scrolling from the bottom. Tip: it's less and the appropriate option you must configure. |
|---|
Read through the man page of less. To help you: you can search for the string "at the end". Open the man page of less
$ man less |
| Type "/at the end" and <ENTER>. Less will search in the content for "at the end". Examine the entries with the string./ Go to the following result by typing "/" followed by ENTER. |
|
The option is +G
|
Add the alias by opening .bashrc with an editor, and adding the line:
alias sell="less +G" |
When you have changed the content of .bashrc, it needs to be reloaded. Close your terminal and fire it up again. OR execute:
$ . ~/.bashrc $ source ~/.bashrc |
We now have sell to our disposal, which starts scrolling large text files from the end of the file.
$ sell /var/log/syslog |
Show all aliases on your system
Forgot an alias? To see all your aliases, run the command
$ alias
Go back to parent page Introduction to Linux for bioinformatics
