Kieren Searle

If you often use a command with arguments you probably started to get annoyed at having to retype it again and again. For example, if you’re searching the repositories in a Debian style distribution then you would use the command:

apt-cache search <program>

While typing this out isn’t amazingly difficult, using it several times a day will get tedious. Using alias you could do the following:

alias apts=’apt-cache search’

Now the command apts is effectively a shortcut to the longer command apt-cache search so to search the repository all you need to do now is:

apts <program>

One thing to be careful of though is making sure the alias you’re going to use isn’t already taken or a command.