Aliases and Variables Keep Things Short and Simple

Aliases are great for saving typing time, and you probably already have a handful set up. But you may not be aware that it’s possible to set up aliases that take command line variables as an argument. Read on for
an example.

Note: You can set
up the commands given below either directly from the command line or by
putting them into your shell config file (e.g., ~/.bashrc or
~/.tcshrc) and then sourcing that.

Occasionally, I want to check which desktop belongs to a particular
user. I have a local LDAP directory value set for this, so the command

ldapsearch "(localUser=username)"

does the trick.
I want to set up an alias for this, with the
command line argument taking the place of username.

In tcsh, this can be done straightforwardly using
!:1 for the first argument, !:2 for the second, and so on.
Remember, you’ll need to escape the ! in the alias definition.

So for my LDAP search:

alias finduser 'ldapsearch "(localUser=!:1)"'

Then the following:

$ finduser username

Unfortunately, in bash/sh/ksh this is no good,
as you can’t put arguments in aliases. What you can do to produce
the same effect is write a function.

function finduser() { ldapsearch "(localUser=$1)"; }

(Note the ; at the end of the command.)

To pass in further arguments to bash, you use $2, $3 and so on. Or, to pass in all the arguments on the command line, $*. This
gives much more scop for saving your typing fingers!

This article was first published on EnterpriseITPlanet.com.

RELATED NEWS AND ANALYSIS

• Huawei’s AI Update: Things Are Moving Faster Than We Think

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  December 04, 2020

• Keeping Machine Learning Algorithms Honest in the ‘Ethics-First’ Era

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 18, 2020

• Key Trends in Chatbots and RPA

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  November 10, 2020

• Top 10 AIOps Companies

  FEATURE |  By Samuel Greengard,
  November 05, 2020

• What is Text Analysis?

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  November 02, 2020

• How Intel’s Work With Autonomous Cars Could Redefine General Purpose AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 29, 2020

• Dell Technologies World: Weaving Together Human And Machine Interaction For AI And Robotics

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 23, 2020

• The Super Moderator, or How IBM Project Debater Could Save Social Media

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  October 16, 2020

• Top 10 Chatbot Platforms

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  October 07, 2020

• Finding a Career Path in AI

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Guest Author,
  October 05, 2020

• CIOs Discuss the Promise of AI and Data Science

  FEATURE |  By Guest Author,
  September 25, 2020

• Microsoft Is Building An AI Product That Could Predict The Future

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 25, 2020

• Top 10 Machine Learning Companies 2020

  FEATURE |  By Cynthia Harvey,
  September 22, 2020

• NVIDIA and ARM: Massively Changing The AI Landscape

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 18, 2020

• Continuous Intelligence: Expert Discussion [Video and Podcast]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 14, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Governance and Ethics [Video]

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By James Maguire,
  September 13, 2020

• IBM Watson At The US Open: Showcasing The Power Of A Mature Enterprise-Class AI

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 11, 2020

• Artificial Intelligence: Perception vs. Reality

  FEATURE |  By James Maguire,
  September 09, 2020

• Anticipating The Coming Wave Of AI Enhanced PCs

  FEATURE |  By Rob Enderle,
  September 05, 2020

• The Critical Nature Of IBM’s NLP (Natural Language Processing) Effort

  ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE |  By Rob Enderle,
  August 14, 2020