Why “alias” is my last resort for aliases

Aliases were one of the first things I added when customizing my dotfiles. For example, here’s a very early alias I defined: alias g =git Now, I can run g instead of git , which saves me a little time for a command I run dozens of times a day! # These two commands are now equivalent: git status g status I used to define these aliases with alias . After all…I’m defining an alias! But over time, I think I discovered a better way: a script in my $PATH . How it works In my home directory, I have a folder of scripts called bin . For example, here’s a simplified version of ~/bin/g : #!/usr/bin/env bash exec git " $@ " Running this script basically just runs git . I add this folder to my $PATH . (See Julia Evans’s guide on how to do this.) In my .zshrc , I have a line like this: export PATH = " $HOME /bin: $PATH " Now, when I type g , it runs that script. This behaves just like an alias. As before, g status and git status are equivalent. # These two commands are still the same: ... Read full article.