I frequently need to type in a long domain name "verylongdomainname.com". To save me some trouble, I want to create an alias so that on my machine I can just type "remote".

The /etc/hosts file lets me create an alias for an IP address, for example
127.0.0.1 localhost
allows me to type localhost instead of 127.0.0.1. Can I achieve the same thing for a domain name instead of an IP? The IP associated with the domain can change.

This is not a server question. I only want this alias to work on my own computer. However I want it to work in every application on the computer that uses DNS.

Thanks!

you can put your own entry for the IP that the longname resolves to, but you can't trivially make one name become another without a DNS solution. Also a remote site may well ONLY respond to the right hostname.

I don't think that is a problem in this particular case.