Defining tcsh aliases through a .aliases file has worked perfectly for me for years and years using cygwin and older versions of mandriva. I am encountering very annoying and mysterious problems when attempting to do the same thing with a .aliases file in a fedora 64-bit VM. Strangely, if I define aliases in the file, they won't work, but if I do so on the command line, then they will.

Here's a simple example:
suppose I define an alias for "ls" in the file:

alias ls '/bin/ls'

then source the file. This happens:

me: ls
: Command not found.
me: alias ls
/bin/ls
me: /bin/ls
file1 file2 file3 etc.
me: unalias ls
me: ls
file1 file2 file3 etc.
me: alias ls '/bin/ls'
me: ls
file1 file2 file3 etc.

A second example: if I place either of these lines in my .aliases file:

alias d '/bin/ls -alF \!:1'
alias d '/bin/ls -alF \!*'

and source the alias file, this happens:

/ me: d
Bad ! arg selector.

However, if I define the alias on the command line:

/ me: alias d '/bin/ls -alF \!*'

then the alias behaves correctly:

/ me: d

total 376
drwxr-xr-x. 10 r r 4096 Apr 14 16:05 ./
drwxrwxr-x. 6 r r 4096 Feb 21 16:15 ../
drwxr-xr-x. 3 r r 4096 Apr 14 16:05 bin.v2/
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 r r 193872 Apr 14 15:35 bjam*
-rw-r--r--. 1 r r 52804 Apr 14 17:20 bjam.my.log
drwxr-xr-x. 77 r r 4096 Nov 17 09:49 boost/
-rw-r--r--. 1 r r 989 Nov 17 04:51 boost.css

A fix for this annoying but not fatal problem would be very appreciated, and an explanation of what is happening and why very much even if no fix is possible. Thanks.

How about definig your aliases in .bashrc? EDIT: I didn't realize you weren't using bash.

Also, is your PATH set up right? It should just work when you type "ls" with no aliases.

Thanks so much, but as you can see if you look at the 1st example, "ls" does indeed work perfectly with no alias after I "unalias" it. The paths are just fine. The example was only to show what happens when I define an alias under tcsh and then attempt to use it. Something very weird seems to happen with the aliases themselves -- in other words, it shouldn't matter whether I invoke "/bin/ls" using the alias (I should get the same result regardless, instead of the ": Command not found" message)

Thanks again for the thought --