Cannot use awk in alias command chain

Question

I'd like to add this command chain to alias to have a shorthand:

tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10

However, as alias it does not work as it should:

alias ttn="tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10"

I tried to use single quote instead of double quote or use an escape character \ before awk's quotes but none worked. So appreciate your help.

Are you sure you need awk anyway and not just cut -d' ' -f1? It depends what the first white space is in your input file - if every line starts with non-white-space followed by a blank char then you can just use cut instead of awk (which would be slower). — Ed Morton
– Ed Morton, Commented Oct 22, 2021 at 14:31
backslashing only $ does not work but this one is fine: alias ttn='tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log | awk '\''{print $1}'\'' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10' . Please answer and I'll accept. — blnks
– blnks, Commented Oct 22, 2021 at 14:59
This is one reason why functions are better than aliases: you can avoid quoting hell. ttn() { tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10"; } — glenn jackman
– glenn jackman, Commented Oct 22, 2021 at 15:47

Ed Morton · Accepted Answer · 2021-10-23 16:17:35Z

As requested:

This is one reason why functions are better than aliases: you can avoid quoting hell.

ttn() { tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10; }

or, more readably

ttn() { tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log | awk '{print $1}' | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -10 }

or, another multi-line style:

ttn() { tail -10000 /var/log/nginx/access.log \ | awk '{print $1}' \ | sort \ | uniq -c \ | sort -nr \ | head -10 }

I call this ttn() an elegant solution! Did not know I can use functions as alias. Thanks! — blnks
– blnks, Commented Oct 22, 2021 at 22:32

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