Alias (command)
In computing, alias is a command in various command-line interpreters (shells), which enables a replacement of a word by another string. It is mainly used for abbreviating a system command, or for adding default arguments to a regularly used command. alias is available in Unix shells, AmigaDOS, 4DOS/4NT, KolibriOS, Windows PowerShell, ReactOS, and the EFI shell. Aliasing functionality in the MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems is provided by the DOSKey command-line utility. An alias will last for the life of the shell session. Regularly used aliases can be set from the shell's rc file (such as .bashrc) so that they will be available upon the start of the corresponding shell session. The alias commands may either be written in the config file directly or sourced from a separate file. History In Unix, aliases were introduced in the C shell and survive in descendant shells such as tcsh and bash. C shell aliases were strictly limited to one line. This was useful for creating simple shortcut commands, but not more complex constructs. Older versions of the Bourne shell did not offer aliases, but it did provide functions, which are more powerful than the csh alias concept. The alias concept from