On Saturday 28 July 2007 13:32, Felix Miata wrote:
I'm having no luck figuring out why
alias Vol='tune2fs -l $1 | grep volume'
Aliases don't take positional parameters, at least not in BASH (I think they do in the Csh family, if I recall correctly). They simply expanded verbatim in front of any arguments you give, so if you invoke it with "/dev/hda7" as an argument, it's like running this command: % tune2fs -l $1 | grep volume /dev/hda7 What you're doing is tryting to run grep on /dev/hda7. Let's hope you don't have read access!
causes a usage message when 'Vol /dev/hda7' is run. Can anyone explain what I'm doing wrong, or provide a better method to discover a volume label? --
Unlike the very limited capabilities of aliases, shell procedures are just like separate scripts, except no file need be loaded to invoke them. You can get the effect I think you want with this: Vol() { tune2fs -l "$1" |grep volume } (If you put that all on one line, you'll need a semicolon after "volume" and before the closing brace.) Beware that if you're going to try this, you should undefine the alias first. They intefere, and if I'm not mistaken the alias will override the shell procedure. Once you get something you like, put it in your .bashrc, though realistically, there's no particular reason not to just make a shell script out of this. Lastly, don't use an "exit" for early return in a shell procedure. It will apply to the shell that invoked it. There's a "return" keyword that works the same as exit and causes just the shell procedure to terminate before reaching its last statement, not the whole shell.
"All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteoousness." 2 Timothy 3:16 NIV
And still I help you. Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org