UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi:

I am trying to create an alias that takes an argument, but if the argument is missing, gets it from the STDIN. so something like this:

alias foo ' dosomething $?1 || $<'

But obviously it does not work.

What is the typical way to achieve that?

Thanks.

newbie Phil

Something like that is much easier to do as a function that as an alias.

What shell is this?

Trying to do it in csh.

Thanks.

Hmmm, not the answer I was hoping for, csh doesn't do functions.

Does it really have to be csh? It is quite possible the worst shell to use. If you really have to use csh I would suggest using a script and aliasing the script.

Something like this should work:

Code:

#!/bin/csh

if ($#argv < 1) then
        echo "input filename:"
        set line = $<
        echo "input was $line"
else
        echo "argument was $argv"
endif

Thank you very much for the help!

That is right, there is no reason for me to restrict it to alias only. I will use it as a script then.

A related question is: is "$1" recognized by an alias in csh? I did some experiments, sometime it works and sometime it does not.

Thanks.

Phil

Yes. It should be.

writing scripts in csh/tcsh is pretty much a lost art; with exception of functions, which really is what killed scripting for csh, I find it in a lot of respects better then ksh.. there's things I can do easily in tcsh, it's not so straightforward in ksh, but that's just me.

!$ is from what I can tell what you're looking for, or at least what I've used.
if you type in your alias with an argument, or if you use alias !$ and it takes argv1 from the previous command.

Code:

alias lss 'ls \!$'

%touch file1 file2

%wc -l file1
0 file1

%lss !$
lss file1
file1

%lss file2
file2