Possible to create a Bash alias that enters a certain string into Terminal?

Question

Is it possible to create a Bash alias that upon running, enters a string of my prior choosing, into Terminal?

Let's pretend this is in my ~/.bash_profile:

alias start_youtube="cd ~/Video/Youtube; **[PASTE: youtube-dl URL]**"

Imagine that: the alias would change directory to Video/Youtube and then [PASTE] the string: youtube-dl URL. It could either do Return ⏎ or preferably just leave the string youtube-dl URL in the Terminal prompt so that I could swap the placeholder URL for a real URL.

If I try actually running the alias below;

alias start_youtube="cd ~/Video/Youtube; youtube-dl URL"

it will run the command as entered by which youtube-dl will return an error like "Could not parse URL" – which could've been fine. But pressing the ↑ key will not show the last input of the alias (youtube-dl URL) but rather shows the invoking of the alias (start_youtube) [which I'm sure is usually preferable].

So the requested solution is to paste a placeholder string into the Command Prompt, or somehow access the history of the alias command via the Shell.

Answer 1

Here's how I would approach it. Use this related question to write the function that would reside in your bashrc or bash_profile. Then add a line in the function that would delete the most recent line in your bash history using this

Answer 2

You could use osascript for this and tell the System Events to type keys for you. Generally, I strongly advise against the whole approach of blindly sending keystrokes to the shell, you can wreak havoc on your system with this!

osascript -e 'tell application "Terminal" to activate' -e 'tell application "System Events" to keystroke "# cd /tmp; your text" '

For safety reasons I send the comment character # as the first character, but this line gives the result you wanted. The cursor waits after the your text and you may continue typing.