My favourite bash aliases – Notes by Dan Untenzu (pixelbrackets)

tl;dr My favourite bash aliases help me tremendously to shortcut commands I can't or don't want to remember.

A bash alias is a shortcut to avoid the need to type or remember other commands.

Instead of typing ls -alh to print a nicely readable list of files and directories, you could create the alias la to do the same.

To add a personal alias open the file ~/.bash_aliases and add a line with the following schema:

alias shortname-of-the-alias="command --with-arguments"

These are my favourite bash aliases:

Shorten even short commands

alias ..='cd ..'
alias ...='cd ../..'
alias ....='cd ../../..'
alias .....='cd ../../../..'

Avoid typos

alias sl='ls'
alias got='git'
alias gut='git'
alias vmi='vim'

Don't remember tar arguments

alias ctar='tar -czf'
alias xtar='tar -xzf'

Use speaking aliases for commands with angular arguments

alias copy='xclip -sel clip'
alias directorysize='du -hc --max-depth=1'
alias password='pwgen -s 32 -1'
alias runrepeatedly='watch -n 1'
alias shrinkimages='mogrify -resize 1024x *.JPG'
alias unixtime='date +%s'

Run the last command again with sudo

alias please='sudo $(history -p \!\!)'

I made a Gist with my current .bash_aliases file which I update from time to time.

Update: I added some more commands to this post and the Gist.