A handy collection of shell aliases from my bash startup

A common topic in the #shell channel in the Chicago Tech Slack is what people have as shell aliases. Here are some handy aliases from my aliases.sh that runs at shell startup.

Customized `ls`

Most unixes have an ls for a short version of the ls command, and then ll for ls -al. Here’s my version of that.

First, the color options are different on macOS ls than Linux ls, so there are two different aliases depending on OS. The -Fp options tell ls to print symbols as annotations for the names listed in the output.

if [ "${OSTYPE:0:6}" == 'darwin' ] ; then
    # Mac has -G for color.
    alias ls='ls -GFp'
    alias ll='ls -GFp -l'
else
    alias ls='ls -Fp --color=auto'
    alias ll='ls -Fp --color=auto -l'
fi

Then, if I’m on a machine that has exa installed, use that instead. exa is an enhanced version of ls, but I don’t have it installed everywhere.

# If we have exa, update ll to use it instead.
hash exa 2>/dev/null && alias ll='exa -F -l -B --git'

Git and Subversion statuses

I work with both Git and Subversion throughout the day, so I have aliases for both.

# Show me status of files, but not files Subversion doesn't recognize.
alias ssq='svn status -q'

# Show what was changed in the most recent commit.
alias sdrp='svn diff -rPREV'

# Show the log entry for the most recent commit.
alias slrp='svn log -rPREV:COMMITTED'

# Git version of "ssq" above.
alias gsq='git status -sb'
alias gpr='git pull --rebase --stat'

Show processes that use the most memory.

Ed Silva gave me this long ago. I keep it around because ps’s options are the worst to remember.

alias memusage='ps -o rss,command -waxc | sort -n'

Show my running processes.

Speaking of ps and running progresses, I originally had an alias called paga that ran ps aux | grep alester, but now it’s expanded to do a lot more, and not care what user I’m logged in as.

alias paga='ps -u "$USER" f --header -o pid,ppid,start_time,%cpu,rssize=Resident,vsize=Virtual,cmd'

The output from paga shows only my running processes and in a tree format.

  PID  PPID START %CPU Resident Virtual CMD
18020 21:44  0.0     2732  155040 sshd: andy@pts/0,pts/1
18022 21:44  0.0     6092  119324  \_ -bash
18023 22:07  0.0     1612  155368  |   \_ ps -u andy f --header -o pid,ppid,start_time,%cpu,rssize=Resident,vsize=Virtual,cmd
18022 22:05  0.0     6112  119324  \_ -bash
18441 22:07  0.7     8356  152236      \_ vim .bashrc
18662 22:07  0.0     1200  113184          \_ /bin/bash -c (find /) >/tmp/v0sA0Oq/11 2>&1
18724 22:07 52.5     1828  120664              \_ find /

Directory jumps

up is only three characters shorter than cd .., but I don’t even want to think about it.

alias up='cd ..'
alias upup='cd ../..'

Vim aliases

I use :e in vim to open a new file, but sometimes I forget I’m in the shell, and use :e filename when I mean to use vim filename. This alias makes it work anyway.

alias ':e'=vim

I use vimdiff to show file differences all the time, but sometimes I need it to ignore whitespace. This is how.

alias vimdiffx='vimdiff -c "set diffopt+=iwhite"'

Set up an SSH tunnel.

If I’m on public wifi, I set up a tunnel to my dev machine that my web browser can proxy through. I run this tunnel command and tell my browser to use port 8080 on localhost as a SOCKS5 proxy.

alias cliffordtunnel='ssh -N -f -D8080 tunnel@clifford.petdance.com'

Dump HTTP headers

I often want to contact a website and see the HTTP headers, without the content. This command does it.

alias headerdump='curl -D- -o/dev/null'

Are any of these helpful? Should I list more about my shell setup? Let me know at andy@petdance.com.

Customized ls