How to add aliases for frequently used commands

go back to Main Page, Computational Resources, Information & Help, Chemistry & More, Linux & Unix

An Alias is a word that represents a command in your computer. Aliases allow you to define shortcuts and synonyms for commonly used shell commands. You can write aliases in your own PC or in your account on a cluster.

You can add aliases by just typing

alias newcommand='yourcommand -arguments'

examples:

alias q='qstat -u username'

by doing this everytime you tipe q you will obtain the result of a qstat -u username, so you will have to type less letters to obtain the same output.

alias B='cd /home/username/directoryA/diretoryB/'

with this alias you will go from any directory in your PC to directoryB, just typing B.

alias rm='rm -i'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias cp='cp -i'

This three alias are very popular and are useful to make sure you don't loose important information, by asking for it prior to remove, move and copy.

A good option is to write the alias on your .bashrc or .bash_profile (in your home/username/), so you won't need to type it every time you open a new ssh session. (They will become active after executing the modified file: . .bash_profile)