make and change into a directory

[Sy Ali]

On 5/19/06, Giles Orr <gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On 5/19/06, Sy Ali <sy1234-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> > I guess my question is:
> > How can I make an alias do two things?
>
> Good question! Fun for the whole family ...
>
> $ alias a2e="echo -$1-; echo _$1_"
> $ a2e blah
> --
> __ blah

I noticed this.  I scratched my head and continued searching for
answers.  I figured that $1 was only available once in this context.


> In the bash man page it says "There is no mechanism for using
> arguments in the replacement text.   If arguments  are  needed,  a
> shell function should be used (see FUNCTIONS below)."  I took the
> hint:

I saw this, but at this point I threw my hands up at the docs for
being unhelpful.  I should have read up on functions, but I wanted
more examples without needing to learn too much from scratch.


> $ function f2e () { echo -$1-; echo _$1_; }
> $ f2e blah
> -blah-
> _blah_
>
> Success?  "function mcd () { mkdir $1; cd $1; }" does appear to work
> as requested.  Please note that the trailing semicolon is required.

Aah.  In Behdad's example there was an extra carriage return like so:

mcd() {
  mkdir "$1"
  cd "$1"
}

so perhaps this functionality carried over in the single-line version of it.


.. It seems that I'm forced to learn bash stuff, because a lot of its
quirks carry over into the commandline tools I'm beginning to build
(in Ruby).

Thanks a lot for the insight.
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