116

Is there a way to expand aliases inline in bash?

$bash>alias ll='ls -l '
$bash>ll<tab>
$bash>ls -l
asdfg
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4 Answers4

149

You can press Ctrl-Alt-e to perform the readline function shell-expand-line which will do alias, history and word expansions. Note that on some keyboards Meta is not Alt. You might need to press Esc then Ctrl-e

The functions alias-expand-line and history-and-alias-expand-line are not bound by default, but you can bind them by adding lines similar to the following to your ~/.inputrc file.

"\e\C-l": alias-expand-line

which would make Ctrl-Alt-l (lower case "ell") perform only alias expansion.

Dennis Williamson
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  • Can we map alias expansion to without affecting other bash completions?. – asdfg Feb 19 '11 at 15:44
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    @asdfg: If you do, it will break other completions. It might work (untested) to create the map as shown above and then add this additional map to replace the existing one for Tab: "\C-i": "\e\C-l\e\e" which creates a macro that performs both alias-expand-line and complete. It depends on the binding from my answer above and that the default binding for Esc-Esc remains in place. You would still be able to do Esc-Esc if you wanted to do default completion. – Dennis Williamson Feb 19 '11 at 16:03
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    Indeed, ESC C-e works for Bash, but C-x a works for Zsh. Also tested on OS X. – Blaz Oct 05 '15 at 19:40
  • If you're simply looking for Ctrl+something, where something can be the "x" key, you can do it like this in some systems: Control-x: history-and-alias-expand-line. – igordcard Nov 14 '16 at 14:33
  • Note that when you manually expand aliases that contain quotes (such as an alias foo='this "bar"'), the quotes will disappear upon expansion with Ctrl+Alt+E. But rest assured that they get properly sent to the actual command when you really use the alias. You can verify this by putting a --something option inside double quotes. The command will work when used as an alias. But your program will fail with a message such as "invalid option --something" when manually expanded to the non-quoted version. –  Dec 15 '16 at 20:48
  • Ctrl-Alt-l locked my X session ... I would suggest using other combinations. – Weijun Zhou Nov 24 '18 at 15:18
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    @WeijunZhou: That depends on your window manager and any custom settings you have. For Gnome, for example, lock screen is Super+L. – Dennis Williamson Nov 24 '18 at 15:34
  • @Blaz I can't get C-x a to work in macOS Catalina 10.15.2. – eethirteenzz Jan 03 '20 at 20:47
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    It's worth adding this works only if the alias is the first part of your line, and won't work for alias in the middle of the command, e.g. it works for k get po but not for watch k get po where alias k=kubectl. – Meitham May 10 '20 at 08:29
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    @Meitham: zsh supports suffix and "global" (meaning replaced anywhere on the line) aliases as well (with alias -s and alias -g respectively), but bash does not do those. http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Intro/intro_8.html – the gods from engineering Jun 26 '20 at 09:32
  • I was hoping the tab key could be overloaded so I don't have to remember another shortcut. It looks like it can't elegantly be done: https://brbsix.github.io/2015/11/23/perform-tab-completion-for-aliases-in-bash/ – Sridhar Sarnobat Apr 29 '22 at 21:27
14

For people having zsh & Oh My ZSH installed looking for a simple solution, globalias might be your friend

Expands all glob expressions, subcommands and aliases (including global).

# .zsrc:
alias S="sudo systemctl"

$ S<space>
# expands to:
$ sudo systemctl

to install just add "globalias" to you .zshrc plugin list

plugins=(... globalias)

Then just press SPACE to trigger the expansion of a command you've written.

If you only want to insert a space without expanding the command line, press CTRL+SPACE

Can Rau
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0

This does not work. But I'm guessing/hoping something like this can be done to do what you want to do. You would have to use your own completion script. This is how you make one:

_ll()
{
     COMPREPLY=(ls -l)
     #The next line does not work. I just hope there were a way to replace that word
     COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]="ls -l"
}
complete -F _ll ll

Now source the full bash_completion file(http://caliban.org/bash) and put the above mentioned script in a file inside bash_completion.d directory that the script you get from the url references. Let me know if it doesn't work.

Thanks.

0fnt
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-2

This actually might be a much simpler way to do what you're trying to (bashversion >= 4.2.29):

shopt -s direxpand
shopt -s expand_aliases

shopt's man page: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/The-Shopt-Builtin.html

starscream_disco_party
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    This is wrong. Shell options "direxpand" and "expand_aliases" do not help expand the aliases inline like the question specifies. I do not know from which hat "direxpand" was taken...? By default, "expand_aliases" is already set. If you unset it, the result is to basically disable aliases from working (they are not expanded before interpretation of the command line). E.g. given an alias alias ll='ls -l the shell would interpret 'll' as command/function 'll' which likely does not exist. – FooF Sep 29 '17 at 08:38
  • @FooF: yeah, that option does something else: "Aliases are not expanded when the shell is not interactive, unless the expand_aliases shell option is set using shopt." https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Aliases.html#Aliases – the gods from engineering Jun 26 '20 at 09:22