How can I run the original command that I also have aliased with same name?

Question

I have an alias for the ls command in my ~/.bashrc file aliased with this one:

alias ls='ls --color=auto'

When I run the ls command in a terminal, the aliased ls (ls --color=auto) runs.

My question is: how can I run the original ls only (not the aliased one), without any extra arguments and without deleting the aliased entry?

Answer 1

You can bypass aliases by the following methods:

1. the full pathname of the command: /bin/ls

2. command substitution: $(which ls)

3. the command builtin: command ls

4. double quotation marks: "ls"

5. single quotation marks: 'ls'

6. a backslash character: \ls

Answer 2

You can disable an alias using \ in front of command.

So to run the original ls command you need to run it using \ls

For example

• First creating alias of ls command.

  [guru@guru-Aspire-5738 /]$ alias ls='ls -l'
  [guru@guru-Aspire-5738 /]$ ls
  total 96
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep  3 18:31 bin
  drwxr-xr-x   5 root root  4096 Sep 17 02:51 boot
  drwxr-xr-x   2 root root  4096 Sep  3 22:17 cdrom
  drwxr-xr-x  17 root root  4520 Sep 17 21:11 dev
  drwxr-xr-x 153 root root 12288 Sep 17 21:11 etc
  drwxr-xr-x   3 root root  4096 Sep  3 22:17 home
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    37 Sep  8 21:31 initrd.img -> /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-68-generic-pae
  lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root    36 Sep  3 22:18 initrd.img.old -> boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-
  

  (and many more...)

• Output of original ls using \ which override the alias.

  [guru@guru-Aspire-5738 /]$ \ls
  bin    etc         lib     opt   sbin     tmp      vmlinuz.old
  boot   home        lost+found  proc  selinux  usr
  cdrom  initrd.img      media       root  srv      var
  dev    initrd.img.old  mnt     run   sys      vmlinuz
  [guru@guru-Aspire-5738 /]$ 
  

Answer 3

Suspend alias expansion

You could also disable alias expansion for all aliases temporarily, without deleting them:

$ shopt -u expand_aliases
$ command -v ls
/bin/ls

To enable them:

shopt -s expand_aliases
$ command -v ls
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

Note that alias expansion is disabled by default in scripts, but set by default in interactive shells.

Answer 4

You could add command before the aliased command, e.g.

command ls

Or run the original executable by combining which

which ls

It will return /bin/ls, therefore with

`which ls`

or

$(which ls)

you could execute that file directly.

Answer 5

You can also run the command from its original location /bin/ls instead of ls