Make a Bash alias that takes a parameter?

bash alias
Hello picture Hello · Aug 20, 2011 · Viewed 577.9k times · Source

I used to use CShell (), which lets you make an alias that takes a parameter. The notation was something like

alias junk="mv \\!* ~/.Trash"

In Bash, this does not seem to work. Given that Bash has a multitude of useful features, I would assume that this one has been implemented but I am wondering how.

Answer

arunkumar picture arunkumar · Aug 20, 2011

Bash alias does not directly accept parameters. You will have to create a function.

alias does not accept parameters but a function can be called just like an alias. For example:

myfunction() {
    #do things with parameters like $1 such as
    mv "$1" "$1.bak"
    cp "$2" "$1"
}


myfunction old.conf new.conf #calls `myfunction`

By the way, Bash functions defined in your .bashrc and other files are available as commands within your shell. So for instance you can call the earlier function like this 

$ myfunction original.conf my.conf

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