Re: alias appears to not work inside a called bash script

[Eliot Moss <moss@cs.umass.edu>]

On 8/21/2017 6:30 PM, Michel LaBarre wrote:
 > Hello all,
 >
 > I have a 4 line bash script:
 >   #!/bin/bash
 >   alias nawk=gawk
 >   alias nawk
 >   nawk  'BEGIN {FS="^"} ; (length($0) > maxline) { maxline = length($0) ;
 > line=$0} ; END{print maxline, line}' $*
 >
 >
 > When I run the script I see:
 >   alias nawk='gawk'
 >  /cygdrive/c/mybin/maxline/: line 4: nawk: command not found
 >
 > It looks like the alias is properly defined but it does not appear to take
 > effect.
 >
 > Same thing happens if I alias to awk instead of qawk.
 >
 > Same thing happens if I define the alias in .bashrc (I include an echo in
 > bashrc to confirm that it is being invoked).
 >
 > My .bashrc is not likely a factor - I empty it and the result is the same.
 > No carriage returns in the script or .bashrc.
 >
 > I have updated everything August 5th using setup and letting all "Pending"
 > pkgs update so I believe I am up to date.
 >
 > The funny thing is that it works ok from an interactive session, whether the
 > alias is explicitly defined in the session or in .bashrc.

 From the bash man page:

"Aliases are  ot expanded when the shell is not interactive, unless the expand_aliases shell option
is set using shopt (see the description of shopt under SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below)."

Could that be the root of your difficulty?

Eliot Moss

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