Useful Shell Aliases

Okay so over the past couple of years I’ve kept adding new aliases to my dotfiles, here Ill share some of the ones that I just couldn’t see myself without. From quick navigation shortcuts to powerful one-liners for system monitoring, file manipulation, and Git operations, these aliases save me time and keep my command-line experience efficient.

Aliases in shell environments are shortcuts that allow users to create custom, simplified commands for frequently used or complex command sequences. By defining an alias, you can replace a lengthy command or set of options with a shorter, memorable keyword, improving efficiency and reducing typing errors. For instance, alias ll='ls -lah' in a *nix shell would make ll a shortcut for listing files in detail. Aliases can be temporary (for the current session) or permanent when added to shell configuration files like .bashrc or .zshrc, enabling a more streamlined and personalized command-line experience.

Without further ado.

Navigation & Directory Management

Quick directory navigation is essential, and these aliases help you move up directories or create new ones with minimal typing.

# Navigate up directories quickly
alias ..="cd .."
alias .2="cd ../../"
alias .3="cd ../../../"
alias .4="cd ../../../../"
alias .5="cd ../../../../.."

# Create nested directories with verbose output
alias mkdir='mkdir -pv'

These aliases are invaluable for quickly moving up and managing directories without needing long paths.

# z is for zoxide
alias j='z'
alias f='zi'

Taken from the initial section of zoxide readme:

zoxide is a smarter cd command, inspired by z and autojump. It remembers which directories you use most frequently, so you can “jump” to them in just a few keystrokes. zoxide works on all major shells.

It is awesome, do yourself a favor and try this one. And these aliases just makes things more comfortable in general.

System Commands & Utilities

Some core commands, like clearing the terminal, reloading the shell, and printing PATH, come in handy multiple times a day.

# Clear the terminal and reload configuration
alias clr="clear"
alias reload="source ~/.config/zsh/.zshrc"

# Show $PATH in a readable format, with each path on a new line
alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}'

# Safely prompt before overwriting, moving, or removing files
alias cp="cp -i"
alias mv='mv -i'
alias rm='rm -i'

These aliases simplify frequent actions and make them safer by confirming overwrites and deletions.

Enhanced ls Commands

These ls aliases improve directory visibility, grouping directories first and making files easier to read with human-friendly sizes. I use LSD (LSDeluxe) for improved ls.

# Group directories first and use a long, readable format
alias ls="lsd --group-directories-first"
alias ll="ls --long --almost-all --human-readable"
alias lt='ls --tree --total-size'

ll and lt give comprehensive and tree-structured views of directories, which are ideal for development.

Text Viewing & File Count

Viewing text files and counting items in directories are common tasks. These aliases make those tasks clearer and faster.

# Enhanced text viewing with color and line numbers using bat
alias cat="bat --style=plain"

# Count files in the current directory
alias count='ls -1 | wc -l'

These are perfect for quickly glancing at files or counting contents without complex commands.

Git

Managing Git repositories is simplified with these aliases. The git aliases found here I actually fetch via a shell plugin, that contains a whole lot more than i actually use (yet).

# Selection of my most used git aliases
alias g='git'
alias gaa='git add --all'
alias gama='git commit --amend -am' # Add all modified files and change commit message
alias gan='git commit --amend --no-edit' # Keep commit message (optionally 'git add' files)
alias gcam='git commit -am'
alias gco='git checkout'
alias gcob='git checkout -b'
alias gf='git fetch'
alias gfo='git fetch origin'
alias gd='git diff'
alias gds='git diff --staged'
# Fancy 'git log --graph --oneline':
alias glgo='git log --graph --date=format:"%d/%m/%y" --pretty=format:"%C(yellow)%h%Creset   %C(white)%ad%Creset   %C(bold)%s    %C(bold green)%D%Creset%n"'
alias gp='git push'
alias gpl='git pull'

# Git commands using lazygit, an interactive Git UI
alias lg='lazygit'

I use these on a regular basis, but more and more often stretch for lazygit to handle git operations, especially for interactive rebasing and solving conflicts.

System Monitoring & Resource Management

Keep an eye on system memory and CPU usage with these handy aliases, perfect for spotting resource-heavy processes.

# Check top processes by memory usage
alias psmem='top -l 1 -n 10 -o rsize | tail -n +12 | awk "{print \$1, \$2, \$3, \$8, \$9, \$10}" | column -t | bat --color=always'

# Check top processes by CPU usage
alias pscpu='ps aux | sort -nk 3,3 | tail -n 5'

These are helpful for developers who want to optimize system performance or spot issues quickly.

Tmux Session Management

These tmux aliases simplify creating, attaching, and managing sessions, especially if you work in a multi-window environment.

# Tmux aliases for session management
alias tm="tmux"
alias tma="tmux attach-session"
alias tmat="tmux attach-session -t"
alias tmkas="tmux kill-session -a"
alias tml="tmux list-sessions"
alias tmn="tmux new-session"
alias tms="tmux new-session -s"

These are excellent for frequent tmux users who need to manage multiple sessions easily.

Colorize grep

When working with log files or long text output, colorizing the grep results can make matching patterns more visible and easier to identify. The following aliases automatically enable color in grep, egrep, and fgrep, highlighting matching patterns within text output.

# Enable colored output for grep, egrep, and fgrep
alias grep='grep --color=auto'
alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'
alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto'

These aliases will colorize results by default, making it much faster to spot matches.

Miscellaneous Aliases

Here are some versatile aliases for common tasks, such as load zsh config in editor, accessing history, viewing system information, count files in cwd, go to sleep, reboot and power off.

# Open Zsh configuration for quick edits
alias zshconfig="v ~/.config/zsh"

# Display command history
alias h="history"

# Display system information
alias mycomp='system_profiler SPSoftwareDataType SPHardwareDataType'

# Display a count of files in the current directory
alias count='ls -1 | wc -l'

# Quickly put the display to sleep (macOS-specific)
alias zz='pmset displaysleepnow'

# Reboot and shutdown aliases with sudo permissions
alias reboot='sudo /sbin/reboot'
alias poweroff='sudo /sbin/poweroff'

Oh and not to forget this beauty.

# Original ctrl+z behavior, suspend program
# Repeat action to move suspended program to foreground
_zsh_cli_fg() { fg; }
zle -N _zsh_cli_fg
bindkey '^Z' _zsh_cli_fg

Is it too much of an effort needing to press ctrl+z followed by ‘fg’ to return it to foreground? Then you’ll love this suspend toggle!