UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a few aliases set up on AIX servers in my .kshrc file. Some of them contain multiple commands that are piped together.

A simple example would be something like this:

Code:

 
# alias to list directory contents as root and sort by size.
alias lss='sudo ls -l | sort -nbk5'

When I call the alias from the command line, is it possible to pass a command line switch to one of the commands in the sequence using the alias? For instance, with the above example, if I wanted to include a "-a" argument to the ls command in addition to the -l that is part of my alias, could I do that?

I know I could create multiple aliases with the various argument permutations, but if there is a way to pass the arguments in, it would mean fewer aliases to have to create (and remember.)

Thank you.

Code:

alias lss='sudo ls -l $@ | sort -nbk5'
lss -a

Hmm, as fas as I remember `aliases' can't handle arguments, since they are inserted literally. If I need arguments I wrap the code into a function. At least the following example with alias didn't work in Bash and KSH:

Code:

sidorenko@sidorenko>
>alias myecho='echo -- $@ --'

sidorenko@sidorenko>
0 ~>myecho Duck
-- -- Duck

worked fine with Solaris' bash:

Code:

alias foo='ls $@'
foo -l

Try please my example with `echo', I want to make sure that it was `$@' which expanded to `-l'. And not that `foo' was expanded to `ls ' and the `-l' was just appended to the expanded alias.

Thank you for the quick replies.

The suggestion by vgersh99 doesn't appear to work (at least not in my environment which is KSH88 on AIX). When I execute the alias with an argument it tries to pass the argument to the last command in the sequence. So in this example it attempts to add a "-a" to the sort command, not to the ls command.

sidorenko -- good idea to wrap the command in a function instead of using an alias. That seems like a promising way to do what I want to do. I'll give it a try.