Show Shell Function in Ubuntu Terminal

Question

Over the years I've moved away from using aliases to defining functions in a .functions file that I source at the time of launching the shell. This works fine, but one feature of alias that I miss is being able to see what a particular function does.

Example:

• Alias:

  alias tailnet='journalctl -f -u NetworkManager'
  

• Function:

  tailnet() {
    # Continuous tailing of the network log
    journalctl -f -u NetworkManager
  }
  

In order to see what the alias tailnet does, I can just type alias tailnet and the definition of the alias will be shown. Is there something similar for functions or do I have to open the file where the function is defined?

Answer 1

You can do both (and maybe more) at once with type -a like so:

$ type -a tailnet
tailnet is aliased to `journalctl -f -u NetworkManager'
tailnet is a function
tailnet () 
{ 
    journalctl -f -u NetworkManager
}

Answer 2

Use declare:

declare -pf tailnet

• -p tells declare to print the definitions;
• -f tells declare tailnet is a function.