A command by any other name: The utility of aliases and wrappers in the shell

This isnā€™t a manifesto about anonymity, not that kind of alias, just a simple moments appreciation for decoupling programs from their invocations.

The title makes reference to the line ā€œA rose by any other name would smell as sweetā€ from Shakespeareā€™s Romeo and Juliet.

For as long as I have made a home on the terminal I have made heavy use of aliases to make common tasks more efficient and less brittle.

Example: I wrote a script that switches all the theming on my system (window manager, terminal, editor, browser etc). Rather than typing out system-theme-switcher --dark when I want to switch to ā€˜dark-modeā€™ across my system, I have dark as an alias to this same command.

Click here to see the whole script 

#!/bin/sh
# creator: Silas Jelley
# created: 2022-12-09
# updated: 2023-09-22T17:09:38

# Place script somewhere on your PATH and make it executable.
# For convenience, create the following aliases:
#   alias light="system-theme-switcher --light"
#   alias dark="system-theme-switcher --dark"

# Themes and colors
dark_gtk_theme="Arc-Gruvbox"
dark_alacritty_theme="$HOME/.config/alacritty/themes/pencil-dark.yml"
dark_waybar_bg_color="#212121"
dark_wofi_bg_color="#212121"
dark_wofi_fg_color="#f1f1f1"
dark_wallpaper="#000000 solid_color"
dark_btop_theme="Default"
dark_neovim_theme="$HOME/.config/nvim/colors/gruvbox.vim"

light_gtk_theme="Default"
light_alacritty_theme="$HOME/.config/alacritty/themes/pencil-light.yml"
light_waybar_bg_color="#f1f1f1"
light_wofi_bg_color="#f1f1f1"
light_wofi_fg_color="#212121"
light_wallpaper="#999993 solid_color"
light_btop_theme="whiteout"
light_neovim_theme="$HOME/.config/nvim/colors/theme.vim"

if [ "$1" = "--light" ]; then
	prefer_color_scheme="prefer-light"
	gtk_theme="$light_gtk_theme"
	alacritty_theme="$light_alacritty_theme"
	waybar_bg_color="$light_waybar_bg_color"
	wofi_bg_color="$light_wofi_bg_color"
	wofi_fg_color="$light_wofi_fg_color"
	wallpaper="$light_wallpaper"
	btop_theme="$light_btop_theme"
	NEOVIM_THEME="$light_neovim_theme"
	FIREFOX_DARKMODE_SETTING="0"

elif [ "$1" = "--dark" ]; then
	prefer_color_scheme="prefer-dark"
	gtk_theme="$dark_gtk_theme"
	alacritty_theme="$dark_alacritty_theme"
	waybar_bg_color="$dark_waybar_bg_color"
	wofi_bg_color="$dark_wofi_bg_color"
	wofi_fg_color="$dark_wofi_fg_color"
	wallpaper="$dark_wallpaper"
	btop_theme="$dark_btop_theme"
	NEOVIM_THEME="$dark_neovim_theme"
	FIREFOX_DARKMODE_SETTING="1"

else
	echo "Mode not specified, options are --light, --dark"
	exit
fi

sed -i 's/ *background-color:.*/    background-color: '"$waybar_bg_color"';/' "$HOME/.config/waybar/style.css"
sed -i 's/ *background-color:.*/    background-color: '"$wofi_bg_color"';/' "$HOME/.config/wofi/style.css"
sed -i 's/    color:.*/    color: '"$wofi_fg_color"';/' "$HOME/.config/wofi/style.css"
sed -i 's/ *output \* bg.*.*/    output \* bg '"$wallpaper"'/' "$HOME/.config/sway/config"
sed -i 's/color_theme = .*/color_theme = '"$btop_theme"'/' "$HOME/.config/btop/btop.conf"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface gtk-theme "$gtk_theme"
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface color-scheme "$prefer_color_scheme"
nohup pkill waybar_bg >/dev/null 2>&1 &
swaymsg reload >/dev/null
cp "$alacritty_theme" "$HOME/.config/alacritty/themes/auto.yml"
cp "$NEOVIM_THEME" "$HOME/.config/nvim/colors/auto.vim"
nvim --server ~/.cache/nvim/server.pipe --remote-send ':colorscheme auto'
touch "$HOME/.config/alacritty/alacritty.yml"
sed -i "s/user_pref(\"ui.systemUsesDarkTheme\",.*);/user_pref(\"ui.systemUsesDarkTheme\",$FIREFOX_DARKMODE_SETTING);/" ~/.mozilla/firefox/silas/prefs.js

In the above case thatā€™s a simple matter of putting the following in my shell config:

alias light="system-theme-switcher --light"
  alias dark="system-theme-switcher --dark"

After reading something a long while back by Drew Devault, I also began using wrapper scripts over the programs I use often. Primarily this is done so that I can call these programs with the options I almost always use without having to repeat myself.

One such wrapper I use often is one over networkmanager so I donā€™t have to remember its somewhat verbose command structure. And I alias this to wifi allowing me to type wifi connect, select from available networks and be prompted to enter a password. For my most common networks I have custom handling, so wifi home connects me to my home network, automatically retrieving the password from my password manager.

Click here to view the script 

#!/bin/sh
# creator:  Silas Jelley
# created: 2019-06-15T13:12:04
# updated: 2022-12-09T07:04:28
# Without completion nmcli is damned inscrutable, and even with completion it's
# a bit on the arcane side. Here's my little helper wrapper.

# DEPENDENCIES: nmcli, fzf, pass, sed etc

# Place script somewhere on your PATH and make it executable.
# For convenience, create the following alias:
#   alias wifi="system-wifi-wrapper"


if [ "$1" = "list" ]; then # List available wifi networks
    nmcli device wifi list

elif [ "$1" = "connect" ]; then # Connect to specified network, else provide
    if [ "$2" != '' ]; then     # a fuzzy selection of available networks.
        WIFI_SSID="$2"
    else
        WIFI_SSID="$(nmcli device wifi list | sed 's/^... *//' | sed 's/^USE *//' | fzf | awk '{print $1}')"
    fi
    nmcli device wifi connect $WIFI_SSID --ask

elif [ "$1" = "status" ]; then  # Show device status
    nmcli device status

elif [ "$1" = "off" ]; then     # Turn off the wifi radio
    nmcli radio wifi off

elif [ "$1" = "on" ]; then      # Turn on the wifi radio
    nmcli radio wifi on

elif [ "$1" = "ip" ]; then      # Show IPv4 address
    nmcli device show wlp0s20f3 | grep IP4.ADDRESS  | sed 's/^.*: //' | awk '{$1=$1};1'

elif [ "$1" = "house" ]; then   # Connect to house wifi
    WIFI_SSID="Orcon-Wireless"
    WIFI_PASSWORD="$(pass show misc/locking-street | grep primary | sed 's/^.*: //')"
    nmcli device wifi connect $WIFI_SSID password $WIFI_PASSWORD

elif [ "$1" = "cabin" ]; then   # Connect to cabin wifi
    WIFI_SSID="Jelleybean"
    WIFI_PASSWORD="$(pass show misc/locking-street | grep extender | sed 's/^.*: //')"
    nmcli device wifi connect $WIFI_SSID password $WIFI_PASSWORD
else
    echo "Input invalid"
fi

I have a similar setup for if Iā€™m torrenting something that Iā€™m not able to find in print, or those that I own in print but wish to have a digital copy of. When I recently switched from using aria2 to rtorrent for this purpose all I had to do was update my wrapper script with a call to rtorrent, adding a couple of options, in order to continue using torrent path/to/torrent.file. No need to learn and remember a new tools bespoke syntax.