[SOLVED] How to define bash aliases?

[john256]

I have problems setting some handy bash aliases. Creating ~/.bash_aliases and placing the desired aliases therein seems not to work. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Edited title to make it more informative and to indicate that the issue has been resolved.

[Shador]

Add this to your ~/.bashrc:

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if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
        . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

[john256]

Thank you for the suggestion, Shador, but these lines are already in ~/.bashrc.

[Shador]

Run bash -x .bashrc. Also posting the content of both files could be useful.

[john256]

My ~/.bashrc is the default one:

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export PS1='\u[\W]\$ '
export PAGER="most"

if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then
        . ~/.bash_aliases
fi

And ~/.bash_aliases contains:

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alias 'mc=mc -b'

Running bash -x .bashrc sems to indicate that ~/.bash_aliases is being read, but the alias don't work:

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+ export 'PS1=\u[\W]\$ '
+ PS1='\u[\W]\$ '
+ export PAGER=most
+ PAGER=most
+ '[' -f /home/john/.bash_aliases ']'
+ . /home/john/.bash_aliases
++ alias 'mc=mc -b'

[Shador]

Running bash -x .bashrc sems to indicate that ~/.bash_aliases is being read, but the alias don't work:

That's natural. We start a new bash session here, which returns after running .bashrc to the current on, but the current session where you run that command doesn't get affected.
Now try this:

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set -e
. ~/.bashrc
mc

[john256]

Running

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set -e
. ~/.bashrc
mc

closes the terminal

[Shador]

Running

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set -e
. ~/.bashrc
mc

closes the terminal

oops, replace -e with -x (I always mix them up ). Anyway this indicates one of the commands called by .bashrc is returning non-zero (i.e. probably failing).

[john256]

Thank you for the hint, Shador! It turned out that the alias had a wrong format.

It should have been:

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alias mc="mc -b"

[john256]

I found, however, that this don't work if the XFCE Terminal is set to run as a login shell. Does anybody know how to make bash_aliases to work in this case?

Edit: I need the option "Run command as login shell" because it enables colored output defined in ~/.dir_colors. If this can be accomplished without running the terminal as login shell, I would greatly appreciate hints in that direction.