Hello all, I wan to create an alias of this command: alias dockps = "docker ps --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}""

The syntax for creating an alias is: alias $COMMAND = "docker ps --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}""

However, since there are quote marks, I assume they neet to be escaped with \. But in the case above, I’m getting the errors in fish and bash.

Fish error: $ alias dockps = "docker ps --format \"table {{.ID}} {{.Names}} {{.Status}} {{.Ports}}\""

alias: expected <= 2 arguments; got 3

Bash error: $ alias dockps = "docker ps --format \"table {{.ID}} {{.Names}} {{.Status}} {{.Ports}}\"" bash: alias: dockps: not found bash: alias: =: not found bash: alias: docker ps --format "table {{.ID}} {{.Names}} {{.Status}} {{.Ports}}": not found

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: For fish shell users out there, this can be accomplished by using func: $ function dockerps docker ps --format "table {{.ID}}\t{{.Names}}\t{{.Status}}\t{{.Ports}}" end $ funcsave dockerps

I’m leaving the question up as the question with escape characters is still relevant and can be a learning resouce.

  • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    19·
    10 months ago

    As the others have said, your first issue is using blank spaces before and after =

    Then, when you need to use double quotes in a command, the alias should be defined with single quotes, like this:

    \$ alias dockps='docker ps --format "table {{.ID}}  {{.Names}}  {{.Status}}  {{.Ports}}"'
    • krash@lemmy.mlOP
      6·
      10 months ago

      Thank you (and all others who replied), this worked flawlessly :-)

    • krash@lemmy.mlOP
      2·
      10 months ago

      OMG! I didn’t even know about this, thanks! Will look into it, would be awesome to have ps command spit out things like I want them by default :-)

  • Krafty KactusEnglish
    41·
    10 months ago

    Try using ‘apostrophes’ for the outer set of quotes and see if that works

  • humanplayer2@lemmy.ml
    2·
    10 months ago

    I think you have to alternate the quotations you use between doubles and singles, pairwise. Else the first pair is closed after --format.

    So you have to use a pattern like “command level 1 ‘level 2 “level 3” more level 2’ more level 1”

    Does that make sense?

  • JDubbleu@programming.dev
    1·
    10 months ago

    Not at my computer so I can’t double check, but I believe you can replace the outer double quotes with single quotes. I’d also remove the spaces before and after the equal sign for the alias. I don’t know about fish but I know bash doesn’t like when you add spaces there.