Passing argument to alias in bash

Question

Is it possible to do the following:

I want to run the following:

mongodb bin/mongod

In my bash_profile I have

alias = "./path/to/mongodb/$1"

Answer 1

An alias will expand to the string it represents. Anything after the alias will appear after its expansion without needing to be or able to be passed as explicit arguments (e.g. $1).

$ alias foo='/path/to/bar'
$ foo some args

will get expanded to

$ /path/to/bar some args

If you want to use explicit arguments, you'll need to use a function

$ foo () { /path/to/bar "$@" fixed args; }
$ foo abc 123

will be executed as if you had done

$ /path/to/bar abc 123 fixed args

To undefine an alias:

unalias foo

To undefine a function:

unset -f foo

To see the type and definition (for each defined alias, keyword, function, builtin or executable file):

type -a foo

Or type only (for the highest precedence occurrence):

type -t foo