Whitespace in command alias

Question

For example, I want to make a command good night and this would look something like alias good night="many many many commands here". I tried this but, whitespace is not allowed. Is there any way I could accomplish this?

Try to use good_night, or assign an alias to good, and an alias to night, and see what happens. I think it could work. — GTRONICK, Jan 12 '17 at 16:06
i just want to know if its possible i just want white space sir — ujwal dhakal, Jan 12 '17 at 16:07
You could make a script or Bash function that is named good, which reads its arguments, requires the first one to be "night" and then executes the commands you want. — Byte Commander, Jan 12 '17 at 16:11
@ujwaldhakal Why do you need the whitespace? Why not goodnight? — wjandrea, Jan 12 '17 at 18:49
@wjandrea see what question wants to explain.. making whitespace in command alias — ujwal dhakal, Jan 13 '17 at 03:50

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 12 '17 at 18:46

10

This function should get you started:

good () {
    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo "Perhaps you meant 'good night'?"
    else
        if [ "$1" = "night" ]; then
            echo "GOOD"
            echo "NIGHT"
            echo "good"
            echo "night"
            echo "etc"
        else
            echo "ERROR: strange time detected: $1"
        fi
    fi
}

Save it as, for example, good.sh, then source it:

. good.sh

good night now will execute various commands (replace the echo statements with whatever you want).

edited Jan 12 '17 at 18:46

wjandrea

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answered Jan 12 '17 at 16:13

John N

337

1

You can add the line that sources your script to the end of your ~/.bashrc file so that the function will be available in every Bash session. – Byte Commander Jan 12 '17 at 16:18
Or put the function itself in the bashrc, which may be more convenient. – wjandrea Jan 12 '17 at 18:43
1

You could simplify the logic a bit by removing the if [ -z "$1" ] statement. It's not needed. – wjandrea Jan 12 '17 at 18:53

Whitespace in command alias

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