gno/bin/gsh/man/alias.1
gdr-ftp d2efd0151f Initial checkin of man pages for some of the gsh builtin commands.
Not all builtins are represented here.  Some information (such as
a dependancy on the 31/ prefix) is probably out of date, too.
1998-04-28 05:18:13 +00:00

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.TH ALIAS 1 "31 August 1996" GNO "Commands and Applications"
.SH NAME
.LP
alias - define alternate command name (gsh builtin)
.SH SYNOPSIS
.LP
.B alias
[ name command ]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.LP
The shell maintains a list of aliases that you can create, display,
and modify using the
.B alias
and
.B unalias
commands.
The shell checks the first word in each command to see if it matches
the name of an existing alias.
If it does, the command is reprocessed
with the alias definition replacing its name; the history
substitution mechanism is made available as though that command
were the previous input line.
This allows history substitutions,
escaped with a backslash in the definition, to be replaced with
actual command-line arguments when the alias is used.
If no
history substitution is called for, the arguments remain unchanged.
.LP
Aliases can be nested.
That is, an alias definition can contain
the name of another alias.
Nested aliases are expanded before any
history substitutions is applied.
This is useful in pipelines such as
.IP
alias lm "ls \-l | more"
.LP
which when called, pipes the output of
.BR ls (1)
through
.BR more (1).
.LP
Except for the first word, the name of the alias may not appear in its
definition, nor in any alias referred to by its definition.
Such loops are detected, and cause an error message.