Creating bash aliases via .bashrc

Question

As a sysadmin I routinely rdp and ssh into remote machines for administration.

I've created a file, ${SERVER_FILE}, containing one entry per line noting the hostname and protocol to use when connecting to a given server.

Example:

... server1,ssh winsrv,rdp ...

Given the above entries I want the following to be created+evaluated (rdp is itself a script on my system):

alias server1='ssh server1' winsrv='rdp winsrv'

The following code, when I cut and paste the resultant output to an alias command, works flawlessly:

$ echo $(sed "s/\(.*\),\(rdp\|ssh\)/\1='\2 \1' /g" ${SERVER_FILE} | tr -d '\n') server1='ssh server1' winsrv='rdp winsrv' $ alias server1='ssh server1' winsrv='rdp winsrv' $ alias alias server1='ssh server1' alias winsrv='rdp winsrv'

SO I change it to this to actually cause the aliases to be created and I get errors:

$ alias $(sed "s/\(.*\),\(rdp\|ssh\)/\1='\2 \1' /g" ${SERVER_FILE} | tr -d '\n') bash: alias: server1': not found bash: alias: winsrv': not found $ alias alias server1=''\''ssh' alias winsrv=''\''rdp'

Advice?

Burton Samograd · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-23 20:55:59Z

2

Try:

 $ eval alias $(sed "s/\(.*\),\(rdp\|ssh\)/\1='\2 \1' /g" ${SERVER_FILE} | tr -d '\n')

Works for me.

answered Sep 23, 2011 at 20:55

Burton Samograd

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2 Comments

Roland Illig Over a year ago

What about eval "alias $(sed ...)"? It seems more robust to me, since there is no extra stage of word expansion. It makes the result easier to understand.

Shaun Over a year ago

Thanks, this did the trick! I've also incorporated Roland's quotes with excellent results.

Swiss · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-23 21:29:28Z

Might I suggest awk instead of sed for a much more easily readable command?

awk 'BEGIN { FS="," format = "%s=\"%s %s\" " } $2 ~ /(rdp|ssh)/ { printf format, $1, $2, $1 }' ${SERVER_FILE}

Chriszuma · Accepted Answer · 2011-09-23 21:09:10Z

Well, it looks like alias and echo are interpreting some backslashes differently. This is admittedly a hack, but I would try this:

alias $(echo $(sed "s/\(.*\),\(rdp\|ssh\)/\1='\2 \1' /g" ${SERVER_FILE} | tr -d '\n'))

:-)

Hello, this generates the same errors. Output of alias is identical too.

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