Is it possible to create a Bash alias that upon running, enters a string of my prior choosing, into Terminal?
Let's pretend this is in my ~/.bash_profile:
alias start_youtube="cd ~/Video/Youtube; **[PASTE: youtube-dl URL]**"
Imagine that: the alias would change directory to Video/Youtube and then [PASTE] the string: youtube-dl URL. It could either do Return ⏎ or preferably just leave the string youtube-dl URL in the Terminal prompt so that I could swap the placeholder URL for a real URL.
If I try actually running the alias below;
alias start_youtube="cd ~/Video/Youtube; youtube-dl URL"
it will run the command as entered by which youtube-dl will return an error like "Could not parse URL" – which could've been fine. But pressing the ↑ key will not show the last input of the alias (youtube-dl URL) but rather shows the invoking of the alias (start_youtube) [which I'm sure is usually preferable].
So the requested solution is to paste a placeholder string into the Command Prompt, or somehow access the history of the alias command via the Shell.
Best Answer
Here's how I would approach it. Use this related question to write the function that would reside in your
bashrcorbash_profile. Then add a line in the function that would delete the most recent line in your bash history using this