Can sudo use my existing aliases?

Question

How can I let sudo use my existing aliases in my .bash_profile (or .bashrc, .profile …)? For example I want to be able to use ll instead of ls -laGF as sudo.

Answer 1

No. Sudo draws from the root account and won't consult your user's ~/.bash_profile.

But you can workaround this problem by adding the following alias to your profile:

alias sudo='sudo '

*Note the space after the command. From then on, sudo will work normally and you'll be able to use your user's aliases without issue (both normally and with root privileges).

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Explanation: http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Aliases says:

If the last character of the alias value is a space or tab character, then the next command word following the alias is also checked for alias expansion.