Ubuntu – Why is the alias now not working

aliascommand line

So before I reformatted (to get rid of Windows), I simply used this command to open documents by putting it at the end of the ~/.bashrc file:

alias commandless= 'gnome-open ./Documents/the-linux-command-line.pdf; gnome-open ./Documents/linux.odt'

But now everytime I start the terminal, it says:

bash: alias: gnome-open ./Documents/the-linux-command-line.pdf; gnome-open ./Documents/linux.odt: not found

before even typing anything in, and when I run the command nothing happens, not even error messages.

Best Answer

Use double quotes instead of single quotes:

alias newcommand="full path of the binary to be executed"

and not:

alias newcommand='full path of the binary to be executed'

No space near equal either on the left or on the right.

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – use cd../.. as an alias name

/ and \ are among the characters which cannot appear in a Bash alias name. From man bash:

The characters /, $, `, and = and any of the shell metacharacters or quoting characters listed above may not appear in an alias name.

As a workaround, you can switch to Zsh, which allows both:

% grep 'alias.*cd' .zshrc 
alias cd../..='cd ../..'
alias cd..\\..='cd ../..'
% pwd
/Users/firas
% cd../..
% pwd
/ 
% cd
% pwd
/Users/firas
% cd..\..
% pwd
/

Ubuntu – Something has set up an alias I don’t understand “alert”

There's an unclosed quote in It's raining. bash is waiting for you to close the quote behind the scenes so it appears it's not working. Try a single word without an apostrophe or even "CamelCase" or close the quote like alert It's raining'

Another possibility that might make you think the alert alias isn't working is a window with the always-on-top modifier over the upper right quadrant of your desktop.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – use cd../.. as an alias name

Ubuntu – Something has set up an alias I don’t understand “alert”

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