Creating Command Line Aliases

I learned about this last fall. I was working on a web application with a team for a software engineering class and was tired of opening up terminal and changing to the same directories so often.

This is when I discovered command line aliases, more specifically, bash shell aliases. These are one word shortcuts to regular terminal commands.

To create new a new alias, open your ./bash_profile or ./bashrc file and use the following syntax:

alias name=value 
alias name='command' 

examples:

	alias gith='cd ~/GitWorkspace/'
	alias jflap='java -jar ~/Documents/JFLAP.jar'

Then use source ~/.bash_profile to execute the changes.

This page has more syntax examples, like how to add a command with arguments, as well as 30 handy aliases.