How do I create a Bash alias?

Question

I\'m on OSX and I need to put something like this, alias blah=\"/usr/bin/blah\" in a config file but I don\'t know where the config file is.

Answer 1

On OS X you want to use ~/.bash_profile. This is because by default Terminal.app opens a login shell for each new window.

See more about the different configuration files and when they are used here: What's the difference between .bashrc, .bash_profile, and .environment?

and in relation to OSX here: About .bash_profile, .bashrc, and where should alias be written in?

Answer 2

In my .bashrc file the following lines were there by default:

# Alias definitions.
# You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like
# ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly.
# See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package.

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

Hence, in my platform .bash_aliases is the file used for aliases by default (and the one I use). I'm not an OS X user, but I guess that if you open your .bashrc file, you'll be able to identify what's the file commonly used for aliases in your platform.

Answer 3

I just open zshrc with sublime, and edit it.

subl .zshrc

And add this on sublime:

alias blah="/usr/bin/blah"

Run this in terminal:

source ~/.bashrc

Done.

Answer 4

MacOS Catalina and Above

Apple switched their default shell to zsh, so the config files include ~/.zshenv and ~/.zshrc. This is just like ~/.bashrc, but for zsh. Just edit the file and add what you need; it should be sourced every time you open a new terminal window:

nano ~/.zshenv alias py=python

Then do ctrl+x, y, then enter to save.

This file seems to be executed no matter what (login, non-login, or script), so seems better than the ~/.zshrc file.

High Sierra and earlier

The default shell is bash, and you can edit the file ~/.bash_profile and add aliases:

nano ~/.bash_profile alias py=python

Then ctrl+x, y, and enter to save. See this post for more on these configs. It's a little better to set it up with your alias in ~/.bashrc, then source ~/.bashrc from ~/.bash_profile. In ~/.bash_profile it would then look like:

source ~/.bashrc

Answer 5

1. Go to home
2. Open .bashrc

3. Create alias at bottom of the file

   alias alias_name='command to do'
   eg: alias cdDesktop='cd /Desktop'
   

4. Save the file

5. source .bashrc

   source ~/.bashrc
   

6. Open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) & type cdDesktop & press enter

Answer 6

I need to run the Postgres database and created an alias for the purpose. The work through is provided below:

$ nano ~/.bash_profile 

# in the bash_profile, insert the following texts:

alias pgst="pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start"
alias pgsp="pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres stop"


$ source ~/.bash_profile 

### This will start the Postgres server 
$ pgst

### This will stop the Postgres server 
$ pgsp