List all aliases starting with a particular string

Question

To improve on the steps I have to take to complete some actions on my Mac, I have created many aliases. Example:

1. To open System Preferences, which I have to do often to manage multiple monitors, I have created the following alias in ~/.bash_profile:

   alias pref='open -a System\ Preferences'
   

2. To put my setup in "Work From Home" mode, I have:

   alias wfh='code&rdc&smc&'
   

   which opens Visual Studio Code, the Remote Desktop and the Cisco Mobility Client.

3. To work with aliases themselves I have:

   alias editbash='nano ~/.bash_profile;source ~/.bash_profile'
   

   which opens the ~/.bash_profile in nano editor and then when I'm done, it automatically sources the updated contents of the file for me.

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Question:

I have numerous aliases that are all related to git. I often forget the alias for some actions. However, the good news is that all of my git aliases start with gt.

How can I list only the aliases that start with a particular string?

Answer 1

grep for them

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1. Far better suggestion from the comments - grep on alias.

   You can list all your aliases, even the ones not written in ~/.bash_profile, by calling alias.

   grep the result to find the aliases starting from gt as:

   alias | grep "^alias gt"
   

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2. Since the aliases are created by writing alias <alias_name>=..., to list the aliases starting with, for example, gt, you can do:

   grep "^alias gt" ~/.bash_profile
   

   The ^ in the grep argument is an anchor. The caret ^ and the dollar sign $ are meta-characters that respectively match the empty string at the beginning and end of a line.

   In ^alias gt, it implies that you want only those lines that start with "alias gt". On my machine, I get the following result:

   alias gts="git status" 
   alias gtd="git diff" 
   alias gtpull="git pull"
   alias gtb="git branch"  
   alias gtpush="git push"  
   alias gtpullmk="gtpull;./make all"  
   alias gtst="git stash"  
   alias gtstash="gtst save"  
   alias gtstlist="gtst list"  
   alias gtctall="runformatter;git commit -a"
   

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3. Alternatively, you could grep without the anchor as:

   grep gt ~/.bash_profile
   

   Here, you are simply looking for any line that contains the substring "gt", anywhere. As a result, you may get some unnecessary lines, but you will get all aliases that use any of your git aliases.

   On my machine, I get the following output using this search. Notice the extra line at the top, which was not present in the previous output:

   alias debugmk="echows;gtb;${ws}/make ${DEBUG_OPTIONS}"  
   alias gts="git status"  
   alias gtd="git diff"  
   alias gtpull="git pull"  
   alias gtb="git branch"  
   alias gtpush="git push"  
   alias gtpullmk="gtpull;./make all"  
   alias gtst="git stash"  
   alias gtstash="gtst save"  
   alias gtstlist="gtst list"  
   alias gtctall="runformatter;git commit -a"
   

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4. Finally, depending upon which command you find more useful (or even go for both if they both are useful), you can create a new alias to list all git related aliases:

   alias allgit="alias | grep gt"
   

Answer 2

You can use the Programmable Completion Builtins compgen command with the a option. The syntax looks like:

compgen [option] [word]

The a option lists all the aliases and word matches all the aliases beginning with those characters. So, to answer your question to list all git aliases:

compgen -a gt

More info can be found with this command:

help compgen