CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosterminalalias
NikashS
NikashS

Reputation: 1

Terminal Creating Alias Error

I wanted to create an alias in terminal (OSX) for this command:

cal -y | awk -v month="`date +%m`" -v day="`date +%e` " '{m=int((NR-3)/8)*3+1; for (i=0;i<3;i++) {t[i]=substr($0,1+i*22,20) " "; if (m+i==month) sub(day,"\033[0;31m&\033[0m",t[i]);} print t[0],t[1],t[2];}'

The command works perfectly fine when I just run it, but when I try to create an alias for it it gives me this error:

Syntax Error near unexpected token `('

My code for creating the alias was:

alias caly='cal -y | awk -v month="`date +%m`" -v day="`date +%e` " '{m=int((NR-3)/8)*3+1; for (i=0;i<3;i++) {t[i]=substr($0,1+i*22,20) " "; if (m+i==month) sub(day,"\033[0;31m&\033[0m",t[i]);} print t[0],t[1],t[2];}''

I also tried to use escape sequences, as the error might be the fact that there are already single quotations in the command before I put the single quotations around the whole line. This is the second piece of code I tried (which gave me the same error):

alias caly='cal -y | awk -v month="`date +%m`" -v day="`date +%e` " \'{m=int((NR-3)/8)*3+1; for (i=0;i<3;i++) {t[i]=substr($0,1+i*22,20) " "; if (m+i==month) sub(day,"\033[0;31m&\033[0m",t[i]);} print t[0],t[1],t[2];}\''

Does anyone know how I can fix this error? I'm pretty new to terminal, so any advice is appreciated!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 158

Answers (1)

WhiteViking
WhiteViking

Reputation: 3201

The error is because the command string you're passing to alias, which is enclosed by single quotes, itself also contains single quotes.

I doubt there is a simple solution that still uses alias. I looks like you're pushing the expression passed to alias a bit too far. Consider putting your code in a shell script instead, and adding that script to a directory that is in your search path.

Upvotes: 0

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