In computing, alias is a command in various command-line interpreters (shells), which enables a replacement of a word by another string. It is mainly used for abbreviating a system command, or for adding default arguments to a regularly used command.
alias
is available in Unix shells, AmigaDOS, 4DOS/4NT, FreeDOS, KolibriOS, Windows PowerShell, ReactOS, and the EFI shell. Aliasing functionality in the MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows operating systems is provided by the DOSKey command-line utility.An alias will last for the life of the shell session. Regularly used aliases can be set from the shell's rc file (such as
.bashrc
) so that they will be available upon the start of the corresponding shell session. The alias commands may either be written in the config file directly or sourced from a separate file.