Some Useful Bash Aliases

I have collected a few interesting bash aliases that I use in my day-to-day programming. This tutorial is a list of the ones that I have found most helpful. I will note that a few of these aliases are MacOS-specific, but I am sure you could find the Linux equivalent somewhere on the internet.

I put all of these bash aliases in a .bash_aliases in my home directory and load them by including the following in my .bashrc file:

# Add bash aliases
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
    source ~/.bash_aliases
fi

This checks to see if the .bash_aliases file exists, and if it does, load all of the aliases.

Additional ls options.

alias ls="ls -h"                       #  Use human readable filesizes
alias la="ls -hA"                      #  Show hidden files easier
alias lla="ls -hlA"                    #  Show long-hidden files

I use ls -lA to list the details of all the hidden files so often that I found it necessary to have an alias.

I additionally always want to use -h to make all the file sizes in a human-readable format. It makes it much easier to see the file size of everything in the directory.

Faster backwards cd.

alias ..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ....="cd ../../.."
alias .....="cd ../../../.."
alias -- -="cd -"

To go backwards from a directory (cd ..) I can use ... Or I use ... to go backward two directories, etc

Also, I can use - to switch between the last two directories I was in. I find - helpful when I need to swap between two entirely different directories quickly a few times.

Open the current terminal directory in Finder.

alias f="open -a Finder ./"

I often want to open whatever directory I am in with Finder to look at all the file thumbnails. So by just typing f, I open up Finder ‘here’ rather than having to open the files themselves in the terminal.

Quickly refresh Bash session.

alias restart="source ~/.bash_profile"         #  Quickly refresh shell

I use restart to quickly refresh the bash shell without having to close and then open a new terminal. I usually use this after I’ve edited my .bashrc, .bash_profile or .bash_aliases files.

Hide/Show all Desktop Icons.

alias hidedesktop="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false; killall Finder;"
alias showdesktop="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true; killall Finder;"

These are useful when I have a presentation, and I don’t want everyone to know how messy my desktop is. I type hidedesktop in the terminal, and all my icons disappear (the files are still there, but the icon isn’t displayed). If I want to return them, I type showdesktop.

Count the number of files in all subdirectories.

alias count='find . -type f | wc -l'           #  Count files

I use this whenever I need to know how many files there are in my current directory. Note that this also includes hidden files but doesn’t include directories. So if you have a directory that contains two subdirectories, one containing 2 files and another with 3 files, count will return 5.

Get IP Address and External IP Address.

alias ip="ipconfig getifaddr en0"
alias ipext="curl -s http://checkip.dyndns.org/ | grep -o '[0-9][0-9]*.[0-9][0-9]*.[0-9][0-9]*.[0-9]*'"

Sometimes I need to find my current IP address, and instead of googling “What is my IP address?” every time, I use ip and ipext to find my internal and external IP addresses.

Your “internal IP address” is the IP address you use on your local, internal network (i.e. LAN). Your “external IP address” is the IP address you use when communicating with other machines on the internet. This is assigned by your internet service provider.

All of the aliases from this tutorial.

alias ls="ls -h"                       #  Use human readable filesizes
alias la="ls -hA"                      #  Show hidden files easier
alias lla="ls -hlA"                    #  Show long hidden files

alias ..="cd .."
alias ...="cd ../.."
alias ....="cd ../../.."
alias .....="cd ../../../.."
alias -- -="cd -"                      # Switch to previous directory

alias f="open -a Finder ./"            #  Open current directory in Finder

alias restart="source ~/.bash_profile"         #  Quickly refresh shell

alias count='find . -type f | wc -l'           #  Count files

# Get IP Addresses
alias ip="ipconfig getifaddr en0"
alias ipext="curl -s http://checkip.dyndns.org/ | grep -o '[0-9][0-9]*.[0-9][0-9]*.[0-9][0-9]*.[0-9]*'"

# Hide/Show all the desktop icons
alias hidedesktop="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false; killall Finder;"
alias showdesktop="defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true; killall Finder;"