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From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: csh alias command
Keywords: SunOS 4.1
Message-ID: <1991Apr17.175711.17092@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 17 Apr 91 17:57:11 GMT
References: <1864@ontek.com>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 38

In article <1864@ontek.com>, mikey@ontek.com (michael "krill-man" lee) writes:
|> Typing "alias" results in
|> 
|>   foo     (foo -options)
|> 
|> Other aliases which have different names than the command they
|> alias to and aliases which have been quoted do not seem to get
|> parenthesized.

That's interesting, because they do on my system:

% alias foo foo -bar
% alias | grep foo
foo     (foo -bar)
% alias foo bar -bar
% alias | grep foo
foo     (bar -bar)

The fact that the alias is listed in parentheses means that there are multiple
"words" in the alias.  If you define an alias without quotes, it gets multiple
words in it.

Although I can't say for certain, I doubt very much the parentheses (or
whether or not the alias has multiple words) has any effect on what happens
when it is actually used.  At least I can't come up with a situation that
would behave differently if the same alias were defined with and without
quotes (assuming that all special characters were quoted as necessary in the
version defined without quotes).

By the way, cross-posting between comp.unix.questions and talk.bizarre is
rude.  Especially if you don't put "Followup-To: comp.unix.questions" in your
posting.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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