AKA

Alias Bash Command on Steroids

A Bash alias is essentially nothing more than a keyboard shortcut, an abbreviation, a means of avoiding typing a long command sequence.
It's because of these reasons that AKA provides a better alternative to the good ol' alias command:

Aliases are stored as files on your file system and hence can be easily shared and synchronized between your computers
AKA is cross-platform, which means it can be be used on your Linux, MacOS or Windows OS based machines
It comes with some advance & handy features, such as: search, dynamic parameters and more

Installation

npm install -g as-known-as

Usage

Usage: aka [options] [command]

Commands

<alias>=<command> [options] add a new alias or update existing one
move|mv [options] <from> <to> rename an existing alias and/or update its description
copy|cp [options] <from> <to> copy (clone) an existing alias
remove|rm [options] [alias...] remove a one or more aliases
list|ls [options] [filter] show all aliases with optional filter
execute|ex <alias> execute an alias

Options

-h, --help output usage information
-V, --version output the version number
-C, --chdir <path> change the working directory
-w, --website open AKA website

Cues

<...> - mandatory value
[...] - optional value

Examples

aka my-ip="dig +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com" -d "get my public ip address" - adds a new my-ip alias with description. Description & command should be surrounded with quotes
aka ls ip - searches for all aliases which contains ip in either alias or description
aka ex my-ip - execute my-ip alias (you can also omit the ex if no options specified)
aka rm -rf - removes all aliases
aka --chdir /Users/nir/Dropbox/aka - changes AKA aliases directory

Advanced Usage

Dynamic command parameters - Use command option -p to leave out parameters which you want to add dynamically, for example:
aka ls="ls -la" -d "display folder content as a list" and then use as follows:
aka ex ls -p "some-path"
Dynamic command parameters binding - Use command option -b to flag a command with bind-able parameters.
Parameters binding makes it even easier to execute aliases, by providing help and even set of valid options, for example:
aka scale-image="convert {{Source image path?|input}} -resize {{Scale rate (in percents)?|input}} {{Scaled image path?|input}}" -d "scale an image proportionally" and then the use as follows:
aka ex scale-image

Dynamic command parameters binding format:
- {{description|type[|options]}}
- description - short parameter description
- type - can be either input for free text, list for predefined list of valid options or confirm for specific value (see options for more info)
- options
- case list - semicolon separated list of strings, required only if type is list
- case confirm - a value which will be appended to the command in case of confirmation
- case input - default value

Global Aliases

In addition to the aliases you yourself, there are global aliases which come built-in with this tool.
To see those aliases or to execute them, add -g to the ls or ex command respectively, for example:
aka ls -g or aka ex zip.

Adding Global Aliases

If you have an alias you find very useful, you can suggest adding it to the global aliases repository.
To do this, clone the project, then add your alias to the galiases directory according to the example below:

{
  "alias": "ll",
  "command": "ls -la",
  "description": "long listing",
  "timestamp": "2016-06-28T08:49:10.306Z",
  "credit": "you.email@domain.com"
}

Tips & Tricks

Call any of the commands with -h parameter to see its help
Always use absolute paths (avoid shortcuts symbols such as ~, .. etc)
You do not have to remember command's exact alias. If no command with the exact alias was found, similar options will be displayed
Change AKA aliases directory to Dropbox, Google Drive or any other online storage service, to share your aliases with all your workstations
If you get EACCES: permission denied error on first run, either run as sudo (only once), or change your global node_modules directory to a path you have write access to
If you get Permission denied (publickey) error while running ssh command, make sure your public key path is absolute (i.e. do not start path with tilde ~)
Notice that if a command contains pipes, it will run in EXEC mode, which basically means it's output is limited to 200KB

regisbsb/aka

AKA