How to create alias for – minus sign

aliasbashunix

I want to map the - to cd -

I've tried escaping it, w/ and w/o single/double quotes but neither of them seems to work.

alias \-='cd -' or alias '-'='cd -'
=>
bash: alias: -=: invalid option alias: usage: alias [-p] [name[=value] ... ]

So the problem is that bash thinks I want to define an option for alias. (What would be a | Is there any) workaround for this?

Best Answer

You must tell the alias command that you are not using - to specify an option. You do this by using -- to indicate end of options, any following text is then treated as arguments to the command.

  alias -- -=cd

Related Solutions

Bash – How to Use Spaces in a Bash Alias Name

The Bash documentation states "For almost every purpose, shell functions are preferred over aliases." Here is a shell function that replaces ls and causes output to be piped to more if the argument consists of (only) -la.

ls() {
    if [[ $@ == "-la" ]]; then
        command ls -la | more
    else
        command ls "$@"
    fi
}

As a one-liner:

ls() { if [[ $@ == "-la" ]]; then command ls -la | more; else command ls "$@"; fi; }

Automatically pipe output:

ls -la

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – How to Use Spaces in a Bash Alias Name

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