Shell aliases

Shell aliases are woefully underused. Painfully, I frequently see people do the following:

• Type a shell command with the same 4 arguments cd into the same folders

• ssh into the same machines or devices

• Run the same sequence of commands

Aliases are super easy. Just open your ~/.bashrc file (or equivalent) and start adding them. I’ll now give a bunch of examples I use.

“ls” command

I have many variations I use on the “ls” command. I don’t even remember what the arguments mean anymore because I’ve been using these shortcuts for so long.

# default arguments I like
alias l='ls -AG' 

# Long listing
alias ll='ls -aAlGh'

# Do a grep afterwards (My most often used)
alias lg='ls -AlGOh@ | grep -i '

# Newest files at bottom (My second most often used)
alias lt='ls -AltrGhu' 

# Largest files at bottom
alias lz='ls -AlGrhS' 

# Extended attributes
alias lx='ls -aAlGh@O'

# kitchen sink
alias le='ls -aAlGh@eOR' 

Common sets of flags

When I run “du” or “top” I always use the same flags, so I have this set…