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Creating Shortcuts with Aliases and Functions

Bash lets you define your own versions of commands, either through aliases or functions.

Aliases let you create shortcuts for commands or override the default options for existing commands. You define them with the alias command, but it’s better to define them in your ~/.bashrc file. Let’s define some aliases.

Open your ~/.bashrc file in nano:

$ nano ~/.bashrc

Let’s create an alias for ls -alh so you can avoid typing it out. Add this line to the end of the ~/.bashrc file to define an alias called ll:

environment/bashrc

alias ll='ls -alh'

Save the file and exit the editor. Then source the file to apply the changes:

$ source ~/.bashrc

Try running the ll alias:

$ ll
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