Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rpi!rpi.edu!tale From: tale@pawl.rpi.edu (David C Lawrence) Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug Subject: Re: should argument substitution work in aliases? Message-ID: Date: 13 Jun 89 00:42:26 GMT References: <2466@perseus.sw.mcc.com> <8906122342.AA11340@bu-cs.BU.EDU> Sender: usenet@rpi.edu Reply-To: tale@pawl.rpi.edu Distribution: gnu Lines: 22 In-reply-to: composer@BU-CS.BU.EDU's message of 12 Jun 89 23:42:28 GMT In <8906122342.AA11340@bu-cs.BU.EDU> composer@BU-CS.BU.EDU (Jeff Kellem): > In aliases, no. (as far as I know.) This is the way bash really wants to do things? If the intent is to make people use function definitions when they want argument substitution, then fine; however, if the intent is to provide an alias mechanism similar to that of other interactive shells, then it falls short. Even abbrevs in Primos allow argument substitution and Primos is brain-damaged. (My opinion only; if you like Primos I really don't want to hear about it.) I rarely use aliases in csh (far fewer than my peers seem to have) but of the five that I have, four use the \!* mechanism to stuff things into a pipeline. Not having argument substitutions makes those four useless, but I could rewrite them as functions in bash. What is the real intent of bash aliases? Dave -- (setq mail '("tale@pawl.rpi.edu" "tale@itsgw.rpi.edu" "tale@rpitsmts.bitnet")) "I realize the Internet isn't the whole world, but it is the center of it." -- Greg Woods