Alias.sh: for finding, sharing and storing bash aliases | Hacker News Reader

Alias.sh: for finding, sharing and storing bash aliases

alias.sh

96 pointsmambodog53 comments

Command line fu (http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/browse) already contains a pretty big collection of useful shell snippets, I'm not sure that making another website will help.

[edit] However, I have to admit that I prefer your design. :)

This is a great site. I might post a few on alias.sh. A lot of them however are just cool commands you can run, not commands that are packaged into an alias.

Isn't an alias just a cool command with a shortcut? I agree that on the site it's just `command` and not `alias short_cmd=command`, but the idea is the same.

One of the advantages of this site is that you can build a list of your aliases and then there are snippets that are provided to copy and source them into your bash aliases file. I guess the advantage is it allows you to a build a list on your own profile and easily sync them across machines. Does this site achieve that?

An alias is the sort of command you use often, or an interesting new way of using a command you use often (e.g. ls).

That's the difference.

One thing that isn't really highlighted as much as it should be is that you can directly grab or source your opted-in aliases, eg.

    wget -q -O - "$@" https://alias.sh/user/[userid]/alias >> ~/.bash_aliases

or, if you like to live dangerously:

    source <(wget -q -O - "$@" https://alias.sh/user/[userid]/alias)

for me the wget thing doesn't work. i get some aliases, but not those i have been adding to my list.

fschwehn, can you try again. We picked the bug up you were describing.

Also aliases are meant to be public. We may have private aliases in the future.

Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated.

thanks, now works like a charm!

Heart almost skipped a beat when first glanced at the welcome email, last two lines:

username: thomseddon password: Your password

With the actual text "Your password", Phew!! Not quite sure it's necessary to include this line, for the sake of your users cardiovascular health you may wish to consider removing it!

(Oh, do really like this site, started using it already as you can see!)

I don't know if it is my browser, but to me I get the feeling the site is disabled, with the very darkend colors. It's almost as if a modal is showing, and the rest of the page is faded out - but I can't see no modal. Just my first impressions. But other than that: Really cool - going straight to the bookmarks!

Had the exact same reaction when I first opened the site, thought my eyes had gone funny.

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. I did the design for the site.

Tonight I'm planning on bumping up the contrast and it seems calibrating my monitor also ;)

This looks great! The 'freq' alias is new to me -- very cool. I would find this more useful were I not to have to create an account before uploading my aliases.

Yeah, sorting your bash history helps highlight what you spend most of your time doing and if that can be cut down at all.

Top two are wrong… Not a good thing. It's always the same badly written snippets that get copy-pasted across websites without anyone really understanding what it does (hence the copy/paste).

> alias servethis="python -c 'import SimpleHTTPServer; SimpleHTTPServer.test()'"

    python -m SimpleHTTPServer # python 3
    python -m http.server # Python 3

> extract () { /* useless stuff */ }

   tar xf

We only launched this morning so they're all very new. We do have a voting feature on the full page view so we're hoping the poorer aliases sink over time. We also intend to make the voting more prominent.

I think you mean Python 2 for the SimpleHTTPServer example.

python one works fine for me. I tried tar xf on a zip file and it didn't work?

tar xf doesn't work on zip, rar, 7z, or plain compressed files (ie log.gz instead of log.tar.gz)

Additionally I prefer "verb noun" form over "program noun", so I like extract. I already alias open=xdg-open (so I can type "open somefile.pdf" or "open somefile.doc", etc)

There are versions of tar (that I have to use) which don't autodetect the compression type. And that alias includes non-tar filetypes.

This website is quite fun, except it has (for me) one fatal flaw - if I use the automated stuff I am stuck with whatever name someone else decided to give the alias.

For example, http://alias.sh/open-any-file-default-command-file I find so useful I shorted the alias to 'o'. Now, I could make another alias with a different name, but that seems like a bad idea..

Nope feel free to create another alias. Aliases can be voted up or down so eventually over time the best ones will rise to the top. Also if you want it on your profile just add it.

We did think about this and plan on adding private aliases soon so you can add them without cluttering the site or if you just don't want to share. :)

First time I visited the website I was waiting for a popup to show up because the page seemed to have an overlay. Turns out that's the color scheme.

I eschew aliases, using them only when necessary, e.g. when changing directory. There's many places in Unix where a knowledgeable user can kick off a command and in many aliases won't work. This gets annoying and is solved by having ~/bin/... wherever possible. The overhead is minimal, many being one-line of code starting with exec.

I use aliases to open frequently used programs with specific configuration files (mutt, for example, to manage multiple email accounts) or with long complex arguments (rdesktop, for example, for connections to multiple hosts). I also use ~/bin/ when I want something in my path that has a purpose local to me, but can be widely deployed to the various platforms I work on. But for one-liners that don't work as aliases (used too infrequently or not portable) I use Makefiles. It's nice to be able to cd into a working directory and type 'make update' on any machine without trying to remember which package manager to use and how to invoke it.

I really like the idea, but I'd do even more so if I could install a cronjob to automatically download a file with all aliases I previously added to my online profile. Of course this comes with security implications you'd have to sort out. Please do this (or let me help you with it).

Edit: I just found the feature on the site and am happy now. (:

You can use the second command on your profile page.

source <(wget -q -O - "$@" https://alias.sh/user/7/alias)

This will source it every time you login. Otherwise you could easily put the first command on your profile in a cronjob to run one daily etc.

Are you the benjy from the site? Thanks for the help.

Yeah that's me.

A search function would be great, showing just the popular tags makes it hard to find new tricks.

I agree; that and being able to tag and comment on aliases. Some way of posting alternatives for the same task would be great too.

Comments already exist. You can comment while logged in and viewing an alias. You can use them to post alternatives for now. This is something that will be considered as a new feature though in our next sprint.

A promising start. But it would really help if it were possible to edit aliases you've posted. (For example, I want to clean up the tags for something I posted, but that doesn't seem possible.)

Editing aliases could cause a security issue. Eg if someone is using your alias and you edited it to be malicious. We're planning on having private aliases which will be editable.

If you have a alias you want editing then send us an email from your email on your account and I can help you fix it up. admin at alias dot sh

Keep your bash aliases at github public repository or anywhere in a private repository. it's more easy to do git pull mydotfiles.git rather than using copy pasting from any web resource.

Nice site!

Consider using the site's name consistently. The logo is "alias", the home page refers to "Alias.sh", and the About page refers to "alias.sh".

Good suggestion, it's definitely something we are on the fence about. I think "Alias" is better but it also made some of the copy sound a little confusing.

One of the sort criteria is "highested voted".

Good catch, fixed.

I'm sure you mean "fixded" ;)

I like this, but I think the author or contributor of the alias should be made public (like next to the vote/score buttons)

Good suggestion. I just added it to the full page view and will consider adding it throughout the site in the next sprint.

This is a little dumb

    alias process='ps -ax'

Gray text on a gray background. No thanks.

Some mates of mine threw this together, and the first thing I told them was that someone on HN would complain about the colour scheme

We have a user voice account, we're posting on here looking for some useful feedback.

Link for the lazy: https://alias.uservoice.com/

I'm guessing you changed it since this feedback, but I really like the current color scheme. The lighter-grey bubbles around the actual code do a nice job directing focus to the important bits.

It was a very subtle change but yeah we lightened it up a bit after the feedback from this thread. We made quite a few changes actually and summarised them here: http://alias.sh/thank-you-hacker-news-community

I was instinctively looking for a modal window to close to make the colors vibrant again. It's a somewhat jarring experience.

A very easy to read grey on a very nice grey background.

Yes please.

"VC thinks I need an app for my tits" (probably not a direct quote).

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