The benefits of using scripts over aliases
I prefer scripts to real aliases when defining a custom command.
I've done something similiar to this over the years for organization purposes and not having to change much between shells except add a path. You can also add cases that check your shell and do something slightly different if needed.
I have never heard of anyone using aliases for anything but trivial one-liners. I don't think people consider them as an alternative to scripts so I don't really get the point of half of this post.
However, the part explaining the benefits of using scripts over aliases even for trivial one-liners is pretty neat.
I like fish abbreviations. They are like aliases but expand when you press space or enter. That way you can edit it, and also still see the full command so you are less likely to forget it when you don't have your aliases. Of course I have some scripts as well.
And: Fish implements aliases as scripts! When you use alias —save, fish creates as script with a function in it.
I actually use both in fish. I use aliases for some longer commands. For example I have la as an alias for eza -la --icons=auto --group-directories-first because I don't really want to see it every time I run la. I use abbreviations for some shorter commands. For example systemctl abbreviated to sys and systemctl --user abbreviated to sysu.
I use ZSH with plugins but back when I switched away from bash, I also looked at fish. I didn't use it back then because people say it doesn't follow the POSIX standard but is that really an issue? It probably only extends it instead of taking things away, right?
All POSIX compatible shells have their quirks and differences because the common POSIX part is rather small, so you will need to learn them anyway when switching from one to another. Fish is not that different from them (to much less extent than something like nushell) and it benefits from having less ancient baggage.
No issues except that if you want to source files to set env vars you might have to use a plugin (foreignenv in my case)
I still write scripts in bash. But fish's command completion is incredible. Idk, maybe other shells can be that good as well, but fish does out of the box.
Edit: Also some people used to bash wondered what that nice shell is on a server we administrate together. They had no problems using it coming from bash.
And sticking with POSIX is good if you want to stay portable, but my shell mustn't be portable. It should be friendly and reduce mental load.
Thanks for this info! Didn't know about it! 😃
I use zsh with aliases, and Atuin which I find very convenient.
I'll definitely try out fish abbr in combo with aliases. Logic in aliases is great.
Honestly, I'd rather record command and flags instead of relying on aliases to do that for me.
Unless if its something very "niche" (like automatically pulling the required third party software everytime the distro boots up on .bash_profile).
Functions are best for this.
I agree. My .zshrc is littered with functions. Most useful ones are my pack and extract I made ~10 years ago, they just recognize file extension and use the correct tool.
I even wrote a function to parse a json for some configuration details, and loop through it to dynamically create more named functions from that json profile. I use it at work for automating my cloud account logins with a single profile name from the command line. :)
It still limits where / how you use them.
For example, it's easier / more efficient to call a shell script from sway (or whichever other software that might be running without a bash login session behind) than to try and force it to load a whole shell login session that includes those functions (which might also slow down the startup of the program and make it need a bit more ram without much of a benefit).
Scripts can reliably be run from everywhere (specially if placed somewhere in $PATH), functions require some preloading for every single new shell process and making sure the program invoking the shell (be it a terminal emulator or something else) is actually loading it. So as someone who likes to automate everything and often assigns hotkeys to particular commandline oneliners, scripts are much better.. even a symlink might be more reliable than an alias.
Just recently I learned that one can also define functions in .bash_aliases. Very handy.
Yep. And if you edit it you can reload it with ". ~/.bash_aliases" and if you do it frequently you can create an alias for it.
I also switched to scripts. Aliases tend to break in loops with modified IFS
Nice!
Aliasing anything seems like an unnecessary abstraction in just about every instance.
Glad I don't come across it or much other unnecessary stuff in my work.