A command that lets you replace a word with another string. This let's you rename anything in your system and even lets you "make your own commands".
Well if you like writing the same string of commands over and over and you like to see your time just fly by just retyping commands then I suspect that you wouldn't care. But if you're like me and hate this then aliases are for you.
Let's seen some examples so you can see what I mean...
On many, if not all, *nix flavours one uses the alias command to create aliases:
$> alias prevDir="cd .."
$> alias apt-get="sudo apt-get install"
On Windows I'm assuming that you are using Powershell. If this isn't the case please visit this link for installation instructions, it will make your life much easier.
For Windows using Powershell the Set-Alias command is used:
PS C:\Users\winUser> Set-Alias excel "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Excel.exe"
PS C:\Users\winUser> Set-Alias d Get-Date
$> alias gpush='git push origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'
$> alias gfetch='git fetch origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'
$> alias gpull='git pull --rebase origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'
$> alias gboom='gpull && gpush && echo BOOM!'
As you can see you can string together a number of commands and give them an alias. This can cut time for these tasks and reduce typing errors. So lets see how a workflow with these aliases would look like.
Assume you just edited some code I want to push to the repo what would your workflow look like:
$> git commit -am 'Your message here.'
$> git pull origin master
$> git push origin master
Now what you this look like using our new aliases?
$> git commit -am 'Your message here.'
$> gboom
Damn that's much better! Now think how many times a day you might be doing this same thing, I don't know about you but I prefer the second one.
On *nix systems (Linux, Mac, Unix) you just have to edit one of these files, assuming that your running Bash as your shell:
- ~/.bashrc -> this will only set the aliases to your user on the system
- /etc/bash.bashrc -> this will set the aliases for all users on the system
- ~/.bash_profile -> use this file if your terminal session is a login shell (default mode for Terminal and iTerm). This will set all aliases in the file for your user only
- ~/.bashrc -> use this file if your terminal session is a non-login shell. An example of this is tmux and the shell mode in Emacs.
- ~/.profile -> use this file if you're using a shell that isn't bash, for example ksh. Again this will only set the aliases for your user.
The following should work from Windows XP up but was tested on a Windows 8 machine. I am also assuming that you're using Powershell and not the regular cmd.exe.
Like in Linux and Mac Os Powershell has a profile file which it runs every time you execute it. This profile file is not a simple text file but a Powershell script. The problem is that it may not exist the first time you run Powershell. Follow theses steps to get this set up.
Disclaimer: I'm by no means an expert on the Windows platform. For more detailed information go to:
Verify is the profile file exist with the Test-Path command. If the file exist the command will return True
PS C:\Users\winUser> Test-Path $profile
If the profile doesn't exist then here is we create it. Run the following command:
PS C:\Users\winUser> New-Item -path $profile -type file -force
What does this command do?
- -path $profile We’re passing the full path, stored in the $profile variable, of the item we want to create.
- -type file This tells New-Item what type of item we’re creating, in this case a file.
- -force This parameter tells New-Item to create the full path and file no matter what.
Open the file using your favourite text editor to start adding your alias commands.
PS C:\Users\winUser> notepad $profile
Lets add a couple of aliases. To do this you just user the Set-Alias command we discussed earlier. One per line.
PS C:\Users\winUser> Set-Alias excel "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\Excel.exe"
PS C:\Users\winUser> Set-Alias d Get-Date
I'm by no means an expert on the Windows platform. All command examples were taken from the following links, please visit them for more detailed information:
Here's a challenge try to get it even shorter. How would we do this?
Well we already have this:
$> alias gpush='git push origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'
$> alias gfetch='git fetch origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'
$> alias gpull='git pull --rebase origin $(git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD)'
$> alias gboom='gpull && gpush && echo BOOM!'
That lets us do this:
$> git commit -am 'Your commit message here.'
$> gboom
So our logical next step is to eliminate that git commit -am 'Your commit message here.'. So here's what we're going to do:
$> alias gcommit='git commit -am $1'
$> alias gcommitBoom='gcommit $1 && gpush && echo BOOM!'
With this we can now run:
$> gcommitBoom 'My awesome commit message!'
And that's the power of aliases!