Hello,

I am trying to create an alias that I can use in .bash_profile. Before creating an alias, I tested the following positively.

tail -f $ORACLE_BASE/diag/rdbms/`echo $ORACLE_SID |awk '{print tolower\($1\)}'`/$ORACLE_SID/trace/alert_$ORACLE_SID.log

But when I try to create an alias called alertt using below:

alias alertt='tail -f /u01/app/oracle/diag/rdbms/`echo $ORACLE_SID |awk '{print tolower($1)}'`/$ORACLE_SID/trace/alert_$ORACLE_SID.log'

it throws the following error:
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

Any help is appreciated.

--AK

The problem is that the quotes around the awk code actually close the starting quote and open a new pair of quotes respectively. See the parts highlighted in blue:
To solve this you could embed the whole alias definition in double quotes instead of single ones. Even better you could define a function instead and use export -f to make it available to any other (sub)shell.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you!!! it worked. I am new to UNIX world. Can you elaborate more on "define a function instead". An example would be good.

--AK

As you are in bash, you could try: