alias(1p) — Linux manual page

PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT

ALIAS(1P)               POSIX Programmer's Manual              ALIAS(1P)

PROLOG         top

       This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual.  The
       Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
       corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior),
       or the interface may not be implemented on Linux.

NAME         top

       alias — define or display aliases

SYNOPSIS         top

       alias [alias-name[=string]...]

DESCRIPTION         top

       The alias utility shall create or redefine alias definitions or
       write the values of existing alias definitions to standard
       output. An alias definition provides a string value that shall
       replace a command name when it is encountered; see Section 2.3.1,
       Alias Substitution.

       An alias definition shall affect the current shell execution
       environment and the execution environments of the subshells of
       the current shell. When used as specified by this volume of
       POSIX.1‐2017, the alias definition shall not affect the parent
       process of the current shell nor any utility environment invoked
       by the shell; see Section 2.12, Shell Execution Environment.

OPTIONS         top

       None.

OPERANDS         top

       The following operands shall be supported:

       alias-name
                 Write the alias definition to standard output.

       alias-name=string
                 Assign the value of string to the alias alias-name.

       If no operands are given, all alias definitions shall be written
       to standard output.

STDIN         top

       Not used.

INPUT FILES         top

       None.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES         top

       The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
       alias:

       LANG      Provide a default value for the internationalization
                 variables that are unset or null. (See the Base
                 Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
                 Internationalization Variables for the precedence of
                 internationalization variables used to determine the
                 values of locale categories.)

       LC_ALL    If set to a non-empty string value, override the values
                 of all the other internationalization variables.

       LC_CTYPE  Determine the locale for the interpretation of
                 sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for
                 example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte
                 characters in arguments).

       LC_MESSAGES
                 Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
                 format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
                 standard error.

       NLSPATH   Determine the location of message catalogs for the
                 processing of LC_MESSAGES.

ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS         top

       Default.

STDOUT         top

       The format for displaying aliases (when no operands or only name
       operands are specified) shall be:

           "%s=%s\n", name, value

       The value string shall be written with appropriate quoting so
       that it is suitable for reinput to the shell. See the description
       of shell quoting in Section 2.2, Quoting.

STDERR         top

       The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.

OUTPUT FILES         top

       None.

EXTENDED DESCRIPTION         top

       None.

EXIT STATUS         top

       The following exit values shall be returned:

        0    Successful completion.

       >0    One of the name operands specified did not have an alias
             definition, or an error occurred.

CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS         top

       Default.

       The following sections are informative.

APPLICATION USAGE         top

       None.

EXAMPLES         top

        1. Create a short alias for a commonly used ls command:

               alias lf="ls -CF"

        2. Create a simple ``redo'' command to repeat previous entries
           in the command history file:

               alias r='fc -s'

        3. Use 1K units for du:

               alias du=du\ -k

        4. Set up nohup so that it can deal with an argument that is
           itself an alias name:

               alias nohup="nohup "

RATIONALE         top

       The alias description is based on historical KornShell
       implementations. Known differences exist between that and the C
       shell. The KornShell version was adopted to be consistent with
       all the other KornShell features in this volume of POSIX.1‐2017,
       such as command line editing.

       Since alias affects the current shell execution environment, it
       is generally provided as a shell regular built-in.

       Historical versions of the KornShell have allowed aliases to be
       exported to scripts that are invoked by the same shell. This is
       triggered by the alias -x flag; it is allowed by this volume of
       POSIX.1‐2017 only when an explicit extension such as -x is used.
       The standard developers considered that aliases were of use
       primarily to interactive users and that they should normally not
       affect shell scripts called by those users; functions are
       available to such scripts.

       Historical versions of the KornShell had not written aliases in a
       quoted manner suitable for reentry to the shell, but this volume
       of POSIX.1‐2017 has made this a requirement for all similar
       output. Therefore, consistency was chosen over this detail of
       historical practice.

FUTURE DIRECTIONS         top

       None.

SEE ALSO         top

       Section 2.9.5, Function Definition Command

       The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8,
       Environment Variables

COPYRIGHT         top

       Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
       form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
       Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
       Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
       (C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics
       Engineers, Inc and The Open Group.  In the event of any
       discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and The
       Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group
       Standard is the referee document. The original Standard can be
       obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .

       Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
       are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
       the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
       https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .

IEEE/The Open Group               2017                         ALIAS(1P)

Pages that refer to this page: unalias(1p)