Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 14:56:13 +0000 From: Mike Clarke <jmc-freebsd2@milibyte.co.uk> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Cc: zep <zgreenfelder@gmail.com>, Manish Jain <bourne.identity@hotmail.com> Subject: Re: Setting up an alias for 'pkg info | awk' Message-ID: <2057440.qDmOUYx2b0@curlew.lan> In-Reply-To: <54BA6112.1070406@gmail.com> References: <mailman.60.1421409601.72162.freebsd-questions@freebsd.org> <BLU437-SMTP5127A51A909BBF868937B4F64C0@phx.gbl> <54BA6112.1070406@gmail.com>
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On Saturday 17 Jan 2015 08:18:10 zep wrote:
> > I am trying to list out all the ports on my system with a Bash shell
> > alias :
> >
> > alias pia="pkg info | awk '{print $1}'"
> >
> > But this alias simply prints the output of 'pkg info'.
> >
> > Is there some way to do this ?
>
> it doesn't make any sense to me why the alias wouldn't be working,
$1 is in a string quoted with double quotes so gets evaluated (to a null
string) when the alias is defined so you end up with {print } as the awk
command:
$ alias pia="pkg info | awk '{print $1}'"
$ alias pia
pia='pkg info | awk '\''{print }'\'
Simpler solutions not requiring awk have been given elsewhere in this thread
but the awk command can be made to work by using Dollar-Single Quotes to quote
the $ character:
$ alias pia="pkg info | awk '{print $'$'1}'"
$ alias pia
pia='pkg info | awk '\''{print $'\''$'\''1}'\'
$ pia | head -3
GentiumBasic-110_1
GeoIP-1.6.4
ImageMagick-6.9.0.2,1
An alternative would be to break the alias string down into 3 concatenated
strings which is a bit more error prone to type but makes the resulting alias
look a bit less like Klingon poetry:
$ alias pia="pkg info | awk '{print "'$1'"}'"
$ alias pia
pia='pkg info | awk '\''{print $1}'\'
$ pia | head -3
GentiumBasic-110_1
GeoIP-1.6.4
ImageMagick-6.9.0.2,1
--
Mike Clarke
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