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From: wjc@hos1cad.ATT.COM (Bill Carpenter)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Use of function keys for common comands at the ksh prompt.
Message-ID: <1991Feb19.174423.20269@cbnewsh.att.com>
Date: 19 Feb 91 17:44:23 GMT
References: <1991Feb17.235721.20854@shibaya.lonestar.org>
	<1991Feb19.124002.29386@cbnews.att.com>
Sender: bill@cbnewsh.att.com (william.j.carpenter)
Reply-To: wjc@hos1cad.att.com (Bill Carpenter)
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 19
In-Reply-To: mvadh@cbnews.att.com's message of Tue, 19 Feb 91 12:40:02 GMT

mvadh> nope, you're SOL.  strings that begin with ^[ are either syntax
mvadh> errors or invalid alias names.

In general, yes.  However, in the [ge]macs mode of KSH, aliases
defined as underscore-letter are invoked by typing ESC-letter.  For
example,

	alias -x _z="ls -laF \`whence \`^B"

This is invoked as "ESC z".  (The ^B at the end, literally a cntl-B in
my $ENV file, positions the cursor inside the backquote.  Then I just
finish the command and hit return.)  There's no problem if you want to
include the newline at the end of the alias definition.  I have
several of these aliases already wired into the ROMs in my fingers.

Any escape sequences already in use for the [ge]macs mode editing will
have their hardwired meanings and not this kind of alias invocation.
-- 
  Bill Carpenter         att!hos1cad!wjc  or  attmail!bill