Aliases

You can define an alias in the shell to create new commands or to specify your favorite options.

For example, the -F option to the ls command displays certain characters at the end of the names to indicate that the file is executable, a link, a directory, and so on. If you always want ls to use this option, create an alias:

alias ls='ls -F'

If you ever want to invoke the generic ls command, specify the path to the executable, or put a backslash (\) in front of the command (for example, \ls).

Aliases are expanded in place, so you can't put an argument into the middle of the expanded form; if you want to do that, use a shell function instead. For example, if you want a version of the cd command that tells you where you end up in, type something like the following in ksh:

function my_cd
{
  cd $1
  pwd
}

For more information, see Functions in the entry for ksh in the Utilities Reference.