Setting up Aliases

Natya Hans · March 5, 2024

hipergator   bash   running jobs

Setting up Aliases in linux and unix makes life a lot easier. You can choose your own commands and shortcuts to commands you commonly use a lot and save time. Another way to make life easier is to set up SSH keys so you won’t be asked for a password everytime you login to the server.

I am going to share some aliases that I use and have added in the .bashrc file (both at my local computer and the HiPerGator). If you are using the newer versions of mac, the default shell is Z shell, so you should add the aliases in .zshrc

Accessing the .bashrc file ( or .zshrc )

The .bashrc file is located in the home directory on your local machine. The location for home directory on my mac is: /Users/nhans,

On HiPerGator, the .bashrc file is located in the home directory, which in my case is as follow: /ufrc/burleigh/nhans

After you open, edit and close the file make sure you source the .bashrc

source .bashrc

My favorite Aliases

Alias command in linux can be used to create shortcuts for commands you mostly use. Make sure that you start with alias command and then add a space between the word/combination you would like to use as command. Use a “=” sign and double quotes of the command you want to set up as alias. Make sure there is no space between the your substitute word,= sign and quotes.

1) This is a great way for finding out what is taking so much space on your drives!

alias diskspace="du -S | sort -n -r |more"

2) Show me the size (sorted) of only the folders in this directory

alias folders="find . -maxdepth 1 -type d -print | xargs du -sk | sort -rn"

3) List by line in reverse time order

alias lsr="ls -ltr";

4) Naming working directories

alias gbird="cd /ufrc/burleigh/nhans/Cloning_Github/BigBird";

alias gs='git status';
alias gc='git commit';
alias ga='git add';
alias gd='git diff';

alias gNH='git@github.com:NatyaHans';

Don’t forget to source the .bashrc after you have, copied and pasted the above Aliases

6) Function to extract compressed files

Copy the following to the .bashrc file. This should extract any file with the following extensions.

 # NH function to extract any file with following extensions
extract () {
   if [ -f $1 ] ; then
       case $1 in
           *.tar.bz2)   tar xvjf $1    ;;
           *.tar.gz)    tar xvzf $1    ;;
           *.bz2)       bunzip2 $1     ;;
           *.rar)       unrar x $1     ;;
           *.gz)        gunzip $1      ;;
           *.tar)       tar xvf $1     ;;
           *.tbz2)      tar xvjf $1    ;;
           *.tgz)       tar xvzf $1    ;;
           *.zip)       unzip $1       ;;
           *.Z)         uncompress $1  ;;
           *.7z)        7z x $1        ;;
           *)           echo "don't know how to extract '$1'..." ;;
       esac
   else
       echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"
   fi
}

USAGE: the file samplecompressedfolder.tar.gz given as first argument with the command should extract the folder

extract samplecompressedfolder.tar.gz

7) Function to compress a folder or files to tar.gz

Copy the following to the .bashrc file. This should compress any file or folder to tar.gz format.

# NH function to compress a file/directory to tar.gz
compress() {
   if [ -f $1 ] ; then
       echo "$1 is a file";
       case $1 in
           *)   tar czvf $1".tar.gz" $1 ;;
       esac
   elif [ -d $1 ]; then
       echo "$1 is a directory";
       case $1 in
           *)   tar czvf $1".tar.gz" $1 ;;
       esac
   else
      echo "'$1' is not a valid file!"
   fi
}

USAGE:

 compress samplefoldertobecompressed

should give you a compressed folder samplefoldertobecompressed.tar.gz

8) Function to go up when you have multiple subdirectories

 # NH function to go up in a directory 
up(){
    local d=""
    limit=$1
    for ((i=1 ; i <= limit ; i++))
       do
         d=$d/..
       done
    d=$(echo $d | sed 's/^\///')
    if [ -z "$d" ]; then
       d=..
    fi
    cd $d
    }

USAGE: to go up 4 directories

 up 4

9) To find empty files

findzero() {
      echo " Files with zero size with extension ------ $1 ------ are : ";
      find . -type f -name "*.$1"  -size 0;
      echo " Total files: ";
      find . -type f -name "*.$1"  -size 0 |wc;
}

USAGE:

 findzero txt

Here txt can be replaced by the file extension of your choice.

10) To make a new directory and change into the directory

# NH function to mkdir and cd into it
function mc() {
    mkdir -p "$*" && cd "$*" && pwd
}

USAGE:

mc madeNewDirAndNowIamInIt

So now if you check your current dir it should be madeNewDirAndNowIamInIt

pwd

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