See also EshellFunctions for more elaborate examples.

Reloading the aliases file

The eshell aliases are stored in a file whose name is in the variable eshell-aliases-file (this defaults to something like ~/.emacs.d/eshell/aliases). If you edit it by hand then (as the manual says), you’ll need to refresh eshell’s cache of the values. To do this, run the eshell-read-aliases-list function (which, of course, you can do by typing its name in eshell!)

open file

I used this in my .emacs so that I can simply open file instead of find-file. This has the added advantage that I can M-x open file when I can’t remember what C-x C-f does ;P

( defalias ' open 'find-file) ( defalias ' openo 'find-file-other-window)

Alias 'll' to 'ls -l'

Make sure that the positional parameters are included:

~ $ alias ll 'ls -l $*'

Alias 'emacs' to 'find-file'

~ $ alias emacs 'find-file $1'

Note that without the quotes, the positional parameter will get lost:

~ $ alias emacs find-file $1 ~ $ alias alias emacs find-file

Note also that $* will not work because ‘find-file’ expects exactly one parameter. Using $* instead of $1 will pass a list of parameters to find-file, and find-file will barf:

~ $ alias emacs 'find-file $*' ~ $ emacs test.txt Wrong type argument: stringp, ( "test.txt" )

Note, that $* will work with the following advice (put it into .emacs):

( defadvice find-file (around find-files activate) "Also find all files within a list of files. This even works recursively." ( if (listp filename) ( loop for f in filename do (find-file f wildcards)) ad-do-it))

Or the all-eshell version:

alias emacs 'for i in ${eshell-flatten-list $*} {find-file $i}'

Alias 'w3m' to 'w3m-find-file'

The same idea is for checking html files. I generate a lot of html documentation using Doxygen and want to see the document without leaving emacs. If you have emacs-w3m and w3m installed; then you may want to alias w3m to w3m-find-file same as emacs to find-file:

~ $ alias w3m 'w3m-find-file $1'

--AntonKulchitsky

Alias 'clear' to 'recenter 0'

~ $ alias clear recenter 0

What about permanent aliases?

The trick is that all aliases will be stored automatically, thus you do not need to edit anything equivalent to your ".bash_alias" manually. The variable ‘eshell-aliases-file’ defines the file in which aliases are stored. Refer to the comments in the source file "em-alias.el" for details.

More about permanent aliases

You also can define new eshell commands in your .emacs file. There is a simple example. To define ‘emacs’ command as ‘find-file’ as above you may write:

( defun eshell/emacs (file) (find-file file))

This way you can define pretty complicated functions using all emacs lisp power. From the other side, it may be just overkill for such simple definitions. See EshellFunctions for more information about this. --AntonKulchitsky

Sharing aliases with bash

Many people have lines like this in their .bashrc file: alias ll=’ls -l’ Eshell needs a different syntax: alias ll ‘ls -l’ To integrate both, either:

a) eshell accepts bash’s syntax

b) bash reads eshell’s alias file

c) both shells use a new neutral command which defines alias using the right syntax depending on the caller

d) the user is forced to maintain two files, ideally with a script which can create one from the other

I have used solution d: I use a line in .bashrc which, after all aliases have been defined, creates the alias file for eshell (eshell-aliases-file):

alias | sed -E "s/^alias ([ ^ =]+)='(.*)'$/alias \1 \2 \$ */g >~/.emacs.d/eshell/alias

This takes care of allowing eventual parameters ($*) and allows single quotes as part of the expanded alias. That line takes only 0m0.007s so I don’t mind running it each time I open bash.

– 2.m7.2010 DanielClemente

… And if you’re using zsh, try this cryptic line, it handles all the strange cases with quotes, at least all the ones in my file, and you can debug it by stopping in the intermediate pipes:

alias | sed 's/^alias //' | sed -E "s/^([ ^ =]+)='(.+?)'$/ \1 = \2 /" | sed "s/' \\ \\ ''/'/g" | sed "s/' \\ \\ $/'/ | sed -E 's/^([ ^ =]+)=(.+)$/alias \1 \2 /' >~/.emacs.d/eshell/alias

– 10.m9.2017 DanielClemente

Reading directly from ~/.bash_aliases

(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'eshell-load-bashrc-aliases) ( defun re-n-matches () (1- (/ (length (match-data)) 2)))

( defun get-string-from-file (filePath) "Return filePath's file content." ( with-temp-buffer (insert-file-contents filePath) (buffer-string)))

( defun match-strings-all ( &optional string) "Return the list of all expressions matched in last search. STRING is optionally what was given to ` string-match '." ( loop for i from 0 to (re-n-matches) collect (match-string-no-properties i string))) ( defun re-find-all (regexp string &optional groups yes-props) "like python's re.find_all" ( let ( (match-string-fun ( if (not yes-props) 'match-string 'match-string-no-properties)) (start 0) (matches nil ) ) ( while (setq start (and (string-match regexp string start) (match-end 0))) (setq matches (cons (cdr (match-strings-all string)) matches)) ) (setq matches (reverse matches)) ( if (not (cdar matches)) (mapcar 'car matches) matches ) ) ) ( defun apply-eshell-alias (alias &rest definition) "basically taken from eshell/alias function" ( if (not definition) (setq eshell-command-aliases-list (delq (assoc alias eshell-command-aliases-list) eshell-command-aliases-list)) (and (stringp definition) (set-text-properties 0 (length definition) nil definition)) ( let ((def (assoc alias eshell-command-aliases-list)) (alias-def (list alias (eshell-flatten-and-stringify definition)))) ( if def (setq eshell-command-aliases-list (delq def eshell-command-aliases-list))) (setq eshell-command-aliases-list (cons alias-def eshell-command-aliases-list)))) ) ( defun eshell-load-bashrc-aliases () (interactive) (mapc ( lambda (alias-def) (apply 'eshell/alias alias-def)) (re-find-all "^alias \\ ([ ^ =]+ \\ )='? \\ (.+? \\ )'?$" (get-string-from-file (concat (getenv "HOME" ) "/" ".bash_aliases" )) ) ) )

– 2019-01-24 Arthur Miller:

I have edited code above - added get-string-from-file and commented away unnecessary line (groups (or … )))) to make it work on my Emacs, however this is noticeably slow. The solution will neither take into consideration that users might have their aliases spread in different files, for example if they use something bash-it. Currently as I know the best solution is to export aliases from bash to alias file as suggested in ‘sed’ snippet.

Dynamically loading aliases from Bash environment

I just played with Eshell a bit again, and hacked simple way to load aliases dynamically. Unlike Sed version above it seems to work much smoother since it asks Bash for the list of currently available aliases instead of parsing .bashrc file. It means that alias changes will be mirrored in Eshell when .bashrc is changed. I also use only temporary buffer, and does not read files at all which seems to be a bit faster as well. Gotcha is that I was too lazy to make it properly (it works well for me). First caveat is that it expects a list of single quoted aliases:

alias md=’mkdir’

Also, you can’t use something like alias md=“mkdir”. Second issue is that it expects no white spaces after the alias line ending. So cleanup you bashrc file before you run it or adapt this script to use regular expressions with both quotes and more flexible white spaces.

( require ' eshell ) ( defun eshell-load-bash-aliases () "Reads bash aliases from Bash and inserts them into the list of eshell aliases." (interactive) ( progn (message "Parsing aliases" ) (shell-command "alias" "bash-aliases" "bash-errors" ) (switch-to-buffer "bash-aliases" ) (replace-string "alias " "" ) (goto-char 1) (replace-string "='" " " ) (goto-char 1) (replace-string "'

" "

" ) (goto-char 1) ( let ((alias-name) (command-string) (alias-list)) ( while (not (eobp)) ( while (not (char-equal (char-after) 32)) (forward-char 1)) (setq alias-name (buffer-substring-no-properties (line-beginning-position) (point))) (forward-char 1) (setq command-string (buffer-substring-no-properties (point) (line-end-position))) (setq alias-list (cons (list alias-name command-string) alias-list)) (forward-line 1)) (setq eshell-command-aliases-list alias-list)) ( if (get-buffer "bash-aliases" )(kill-buffer "bash-aliases" )) ( if (get-buffer "bash-errors" )(kill-buffer "bash-errors" ))))

(add-hook 'eshell-mode-hook 'eshell-load-bash-aliases)

– 2019-04-01 Arthur Miller: CategoryEshell