How to set up aliases in zsh?

Question

I know that in bash you can set up aliases in a .bash_aliases file, so that the command you type doesn't need to be a command stored in the binaries in the system. Is there any way I can get aliases into zsh?

score 217 · Answer 1 · edited Feb 18 '21 at 11:53

217

I go back and forth between bash and zsh, and use the same .aliases file for both. They share the same basic alias syntax, so you can create a .aliases file and link it to .bashrc and .zshrc:

.bashrc

if [ -f ~/.aliases ]; then
    . ~/.aliases
fi

.zshrc

source $HOME/.aliases

FWIW this can also be done with environment variable declarations, in a separate .env file.

edited Feb 18 '21 at 11:53

Community

1

answered Oct 02 '12 at 01:24

bgibson

5,037

score 57 · Accepted Answer · edited Jul 01 '20 at 16:23

You can do it by the "alias" command with this syntax:

alias [ -gmrL ] [ name[=value] ... ]

For "gmrL" switches, see this guide, which is my reference.
For each name, with no value, zsh will print the name and what it is aliased to previously. With no arguments at all, alias prints the values of ALL defined aliases.

To define one or more aliases, simply enter:

alias name1=value1 name2=value2 ... nameX=valueX

For each name with a corresponding value, zsh defines an alias with that value. For further info, check out that link. ;-)

score 13 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 20 '11 at 18:01

13

You generally put them in ~/.zshenv. But many programs use /bin/sh (usually bash) instead of $SHELL to execute shell commands, so for it to work everywhere you will probably need to put the bash equivalent of the alias into ~/.bash_aliases anyway.

answered Mar 20 '11 at 18:01

geekosaur

11,777

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 29 '23 at 20:21

4

I was trying some things and I found a way to use my aliases created in bash into zsh, only I had to copy these lines from bashrc:

if [ -e ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
  . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

edited Mar 29 '23 at 20:21

Dale C. Anderson

387

answered Nov 03 '21 at 23:21

Elias Cruz

41

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Nov 14 '22 at 10:07

What I've found from official guide for Zsh it could be done by code below in your .zshrc:

if [[ -r ~/.aliasrc ]]; then
    . ~/.aliasrc
fi
which checks if there is a readable file ~/.aliasrc, and if there is, it runs it in exactly the same way the normal startup files are run. You can use source instead of . if it means more to you; . is the traditional Bourne and Korn shell name, however.

score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Oct 26 '21 at 02:35

0

`.zshrc`

add this line at the bottom of the file (assuming that your aliases located in ~/.profile):

source ~/.profile

edited Oct 26 '21 at 02:35

muru

207,228

answered May 19 '21 at 14:22

code-8

205

score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Dec 22 '21 at 19:59

If anyone find this useful: My situation is that I have a Macbook Laptop, Ubuntu Laptop, Ubuntu Desktop and couple of Ubuntu VMs. In all of them I want to use defaults (so Bash in Ubuntu and Zsh in OSX) but with same aliases.

The way I handle it is that I have my alias file .bash_aliases in git repo called dotfiles. I just clone the repo in all my computers and I just create a symlink to the alias file:

ln -s "~/wherever_i_store_git_repos/dotfiles/.bash_aliases" "~/.bash_aliases"

in Ubuntu I add this to ~/.bashrc :

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
  . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

in OSX I add this to .zshrc :

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
  source $HOME/.bash_aliases
fi

note: Alternatively if you don't use git you can ln -s a Dropbox folder

How to set up aliases in zsh?

7 Answers7

.bashrc

.zshrc

.zshrc

`.zshrc`