Random alias of the day

random-alias-of-the-day.md

Why?

Too many aliases to remember all at once? Teach or remind yourself of one at a time.

On opening a new terminal window, show a random alias from your aliases and git aliases.

This is your IDE's tip of the day but in your terminal.

Follow instructions in this gist to setup.

Sample result

This can be triggered manually or on opening a new tab.

Examples my main aliases:

$ random_alias
alias update='sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade'
$ random_alias
ls = ls-files

Examples my git aliases:

$ random_alias
br = branch -av

Listing aliases

Alias

You can store an alias like this:

alias foo='echo "Bar"'

If you run this you will see your alias values set:

$ alias

alias foo='echo "Bar"'
alias c='clear'
alias cp='cp -i'
...

Just be aware of that.

Git alias

You can set aliases as well specific to the git context.

Add this to your .gitconfig.

[alias]
    alias = ! git config --get-regexp ^alias\. | sed -e s/^alias\.// -e s/\ /\ =\ /

Now you can run this to see your git aliases.

git alias

st = status -s
ci = commit
br = branch -av

Setup random alias viewer

Add this to your .bashrc or .aliases file. This will concantenate the output of the two alias commands then then pick one line randomly.

alias random_alias='{ alias & git alias ;} | shuf -n 1'

And then set it up in your .bashrc file to run on each new terminal tab opened.

random_alias