How to turn this into an alias?

Question

I frequently use this command:

grep -rnw donkey | grep market | cut -c -80

How can I change it into an alias on Linux?

I tried:

alias search='grep -rnw $1 | grep $2 | cut -c -200'

But when I run it with

search hello world

it gives me:

cut: Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
hello: No such file or directory
cut: Try 'grep --help' for more information.
world: No such file or directory
Usage: grep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...
Try 'grep --help' for more information.

Check this question: http://stackoverflow.com/q/7131670/1352083 — Frederik, Oct 26 '16 at 20:48

score 3 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

3

Unfortunately, bash alias doesn't accept parameters like some other shells.

But you can get around it by declaring search as a function which you can add to your .bashrc file

function search { grep -rnw $1 | grep $2 | cut -c -200; }
export -f search

See: Make bash alias that takes a parameter

In the link the example uses an alias which seems to be unessessary. You can put the function with export -f search directly into .bashrc and name the function as search.

If all else fails another option is to write a script called search.

e.g. create a script named search containing:

#!/bin/sh
grep -rnw $1 | grep $2 | cut -c -200;

Place this somewhere in a path defined in $PATH like /usr/bin or perhaps $HOME/bin. If using $HOME/bin put that path in your environment like.

export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

edited May 23 '17 at 12:41

Community

1

answered Oct 26 '16 at 20:49

hookenz

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THanks, but I get the same error. I am on Debian: – Ginger Oct 26 '16 at 21:14
Works on Ubuntu. I only get that error if no parameters are provided. It would be prudent to make the function more robust to missing parameters though. – hookenz Oct 26 '16 at 21:17
Sorry, my fault. In my excitement I didn't read that I had to add it to .bashrc – Ginger Oct 26 '16 at 21:20
@Matt how would you do it for Mac? I am on mac I have the same use case of grep command. – Shailesh Sutar Oct 26 '16 at 21:32
@ShaileshSutar - maybe the same way, or if it doesn't work use a script. See updated answer. – hookenz Oct 26 '16 at 21:47

How to turn this into an alias?

1 Answers1