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bashshellcommand-line
Filip
Filip

Reputation: 128

bash alias expantion

Is there a way to "expand" a bash alias on the command-line and get the command behind it? So it for instance would turn ls into;

ls --color=auto

I keep getting into situations when my aliases does almost what I want to do, but not exactly...

Is this possible all suggestions or answers appreciated

Upvotes: 0

Views: 236

Answers (2)

estani
estani

Reputation: 26447

And a much more complex way, which is suitable for echoing:

$ cut -d = -f1 --complement< <(alias alias_name) | tr '"'"'" ' '

So, in a function like

exp() { 
  cmd=$1 
  shift 
  echo $(cut -d = -f1 --complement< <(alias $cmd) | tr '"'"'" ' ') $@
}

would result in echoing the command as it would be issued to the shell, after all expansions are in place.

This might be useful for debugging.

$ exp ll .*
ls -l --color=tty . .. .bash_history .bash_logout .bash_profile .bashrc .lesshst

Upvotes: 1

Pavunkumar
Pavunkumar

Reputation: 5335

Try 

$ alias alias_name

It will show you the expansion of the given alias name

Upvotes: 1

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