Developer's Daily | Unix by Example |
main | java | perl | unix | dev directory | web log |
newalias - install new elm aliases for user and/or system |
newalias [-g] |
Newalias creates new hash and data files from a text file. If the program is invoked with the -g (global) flag, the program updates the system alias files. Otherwise, the program looks for a file called $HOME/.elm/aliases.text and, upon finding it, creates files $HOME/.elm/aliases.dir, $HOME/.elm/aliases.pag and $HOME/.elm/aliases for the elm program. The format that the program expects is; |
alias, alias, .. = comment = address |
or |
alias, alias, .. = comment = alias, alias, ... |
The first form is for an individual user such as; |
dave, taylor = Dave Taylor = veeger!hpcnou!dat |
or optionally as; |
dave, taylor = Taylor; Dave = veeger!hpcnou!dat |
to allow the aliases to be properly sorted by last name. The second is for defining a group alias such as; |
gurus = Unix Gurus = alan, john, dave, mike, richard, |
||||
larry, t_richardson |
Note that lines can be continued at will, blank lines are accepted without error, and that any line starting with ’#’ is considered a comment and is not processed. If the ‘comment’, or ‘address’ fields need to contain ‘=’ characters, those characters must either be escaped using a backslash character or the address must be inside doublequotes (‘"’). Aliases are case insensitive so dave and Dave are both the same alias. Finally, aliases can contain other aliases, and/or groups; unix = Unix people = gurus, taylor, jonboy |
$HOME/.elm/aliases.text alias source for user |
Elm Development Group |
elm(1L), elmalias(1L), checkalias(1L), mail(1), mailx(1) |
Newalias has a couple of descriptive error messages which don’t need to be detailed here. It is, however, worth noting that the checkalias program can be used to ensure that the aliases are in the proper order and are available for the elm system. |
Bill Pemberton flash@virginia.edu |
Copyright 1988-1995 by The USENET Community Trust |