Aliases - I learned something new

Aliases - I learned something new

[cyg Simple]

In the research for my responses to the alias issue I learned something
I didn't know. Not a big deal but I thought I would share.

If the value of an alias ends in a space the word following the issuance
of the alias command is also checked for alias expansion.  Example:

$ alias t1='echo abc'
$ alias t2='dev'
$ t1 t2
abc t2

$ alias t1='echo abc '
$ t1 t2
abc def

-- 
cyg Simple

P.S. I love learning new things, it just proves my wife's assumption
that I don't know everything. ;p

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Re: Aliases - I learned something new

[Eric Blake]

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On 08/25/2017 10:00 AM, cyg Simple wrote:
> If the value of an alias ends in a space the word following the issuance
> of the alias command is also checked for alias expansion.

In fact, this behavior is POSIX-mandated, so that you can do things like:

alias exec='exec '

and get alias expansion on 'foo' when you do 'exec foo'

>  Example:
> 
> $ alias t1='echo abc'
> $ alias t2='dev'
> $ t1 t2
> abc t2
> 
> $ alias t1='echo abc '
> $ t1 t2
> abc def

Doesn't quite match what you typed above (dev vs. def), but illustrates
the point.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org


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