A short word that expands to a longer command in an interactive shell.

Shell aliases shrink repeated typing

An alias replaces a command word with shell text while Bash reads a command. It is useful for personal shortcuts such as alias ll='ls -l', but it is not an executable and has no independent argument scope. Noninteractive Bash disables alias expansion by default; a script can explicitly enable it. Understanding that distinction explains why a shortcut works at a prompt but disappears in automation. ...

October 4, 2027 · 4 min · XB Field Notes