Introduction
What Aliases Are
Here is a short introduction to aliases in case you have not idea what they are:
An alias is simply a different name for a specific command line command. You can call an alias like any other program and the shell will then replace the alias with the command it represents.
If you find yourself typing”aptitude” a lot you could, for example, define an alias “a” for this command instead. Now, instead of typing
aptitude install <package>
you just need to type
a install <package>
Bash will recognize that the command a is really just an alias that stands for “aptitude” and therefore replace a with “aptitude”. You could make your like even easier by assigning an alias “ai” to the command “aptitude install”. Then, when typing
ai <package>
bash will notice that the command “ai” is really just an alias for “aptitude install” and replace “ai” accordingly. Therefore, the command that bash will execute is:
aptitude install <package>