Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cwjcc!gatech!psuvax1!psuvm!t20
From: T20@PSUVM.BITNET (Stephen G. Simpson)
Newsgroups: gnu.emacs
Subject: Bash question from a novice
Message-ID: <89250.114714T20@PSUVM.BITNET>
Date: 7 Sep 89 15:47:14 GMT
Organization: Penn State University
Lines: 54

I'm not sure where on the net to turn for information about
Bash, the GNU Bourne Again Shell, so I'll try here.  If there
is another newsgroup where Bash users hang out, please e-mail
me.

I am used to DOS where there are all kinds of public domain
utilities to enhance the command line.  In particular, there
is a little item called DOSEDIT which allows you to recall and
edit previous commands in a very intuitive way.  You use up arrow
to scroll back through previous commands, then when you find the
one you want, you edit it using the left and right arrow, home, end,
delete and insert keys.

There is also a more elaborate program called 4DOS which
replaces the normal DOS shell, COMMAND.COM.  4DOS
incorporates DOSEDIT-style command line editing, aliasing, command
completion, and a lot of other enhancements.  An older program
which does a lot of the same things is Chris Dunford's CED.

In trying to get used to Unix, I found that C-shell command line
editing is not nearly so flexible or easy to use.  Wanting something
better, I have been playing around with Bash for the last couple
of days.  Bash gives me pretty much what I was looking for.  I
have to use Ctrl-P instead of the up arrow, but that's OK since
I am going to have to learn emacs anyway.

However, I have some simple questions about aliasing in Bash.
For example, I would like to do something like

   alias f='finger $* | more'

so that

    f rms

on the command line would be executed as

    finger rms | more

Unfortunately this doesn't work.  It seems that the
only way is to use a function definition,

    function f () { finger $* | more ; }

Or, is there a simpler way?

In the C Shell, I can do it with

   alias f 'finger \!* | more'

and in the DOS world, CED and 4DOS have a similar capability.
Since Bash is supposed to include a superset of the useful
features of the C Shell, I thought it ought to have this
ability to pass arguments to aliases.  Can someone clarify this?