Loading and modifying an alias in command line

Question

In order to speed up typing of a long command, we can make an alias of a command, e.g.

alias remcopy='scp [email protected]:/home/file.txt /home/user/'

And we type user this exact command will be run.

However, is it possible only to load the command and then modify it according to the current need, e.g.

scp [email protected]:/home/file.txt /home/user/addeddir/

Answer 1

There are two ways you can start various modifications of the command.

• an alias can have a parameter, for example

  alias remcopy='scp [email protected]:/home/user/file.txt'
  
  remcopy targetname
  

  where targetname is selected a run time.

• a function is more flexible than an alias. It can be a single line or big like a whole shellscript file.

  function remcopy () { scp [email protected]:/home/user/file.txt /home/user/"$1" ; }
  
  remcopy
  remcopy addeddir
  

  which can be used without a parameter and with a parameter (in order to change the name of the target file.

  You can store a small function in ~/.bashrc like you store aliases.

Answer 2

You can use variables to accomplish this.

For example:

alias something='nano ${1}'
something test.txt

Will open test.txt in nano for writing