Using shortcuts/alias inside a Linux Bash Command

pratap.iisc · 01-28-2010, 09:09 PM

Hi,
I know that using alias I can run a whole command with a shortcut. But my requirement is to use parts of a long command and in between I have to pass some user defined values.
E.g. Suppose I have to routinely copy a directory to another remote directory on a remote machine.
The remote machine name is quite long as well as the directory path to which I want to copy the files into.
So the command to do scp would look like this
$ scp -r ./<source_directory> pratap@remote.machine.name:~/dest_dir/

Now I want to do some sort of aliasing (say "ecp") so that I just need to pass the source_directory name and the ecp command and do my job.
Can you give me any suggestion on how can I do this in a convenient way?
Thanks,
pratap

Meson · 01-28-2010, 09:20 PM

You need to do it with a function, or just create a tiny executable and put it in your $PATH

trey85stang · 01-29-2010, 01:26 PM

yes you will need a function...

you can through it in your .profile, or if you use bash .bashrc.

ecp () {
scp -r $1 pratap@remote.machine.name:~/dest_dir
}

ecp /path/to/dir

you can get fancy too, say you want to copy to dest_dir and and append the date to the directory you are copying over... you can do it like so

ecp () {
scp -r $1 pratap@remote.machine.name:~/dest_dir/${1}.`date +%m-%d-%Y`
}

all up to you.

pratap.iisc · 01-30-2010, 04:52 AM

Wow...
That works very well...
Cool solution man...
Thanks!

-Pratap