Setting up aliases.mine in OSX

You're beginning to tinker around with the Unix command line in OSX, and you're now at the point where you are feeling frustrated with what seems like repetitive typing of the same commands and parameters again and again (and you have already uncovered the handy up-arrow feature). you are now ready to learn more about configuring your shell environment.

As background, if you enter this into your command line shell (yes, this is insecure pseudocode!):

alias ssh1 'ssh myserver.mydomain.com -l myshortname -p mypassword'

you will find that you can connect to myserver.mydomain.com by entering only ssh1. What a handy time saver! Unfortunately, when you exit your shell, you lose this shortcut. The file aliases.mine can hold an arbitrary number of such aliases, which are automatically enabled at login time. However, setting it up is a bit tedious; the following Applescript does the work for you, and provides a tidy teaching lesson as well.

-- The inspiration for this script is found in the file at -- /usr/share/tcsh/examples/README -- you must be logged in as an administrator, as the user whose tcsh shell you wish to configure set shortname to do shell script "whoami" set echo_src to "echo \"source /usr/share/tcsh/examples/" set path_1 to " /Users/" & shortname set target_1 to "\" >>" & path_1 & "/." set path_2 to "/Library/init/tcsh" set path_3 to path_1 & path_2 -- get the administrator password set x to display dialog ("Enter the administrator password for " & shortname) default answer "" set jagpass to text returned of x set shellscript to echo_src & "rc" & target_1 & "tcshrc" my doshell(shellscript) set shellscript to echo_src & "login" & target_1 & "login" my doshell(shellscript) set shellscript to echo_src & "logout" & target_1 & "logout" my doshell(shellscript) set shellscript to ("sudo mkdir -p" & path_3) my sudoshell(shellscript,jagpass) set posixLibinitPath to path_1 & "/Library/init" set shellscript to "sudo chown " & shortname & posixLibinitPath my sudoshell(shellscript,jagpass) set shellscript to "sudo chown " & shortname & path_3 my sudoshell(shellscript,jagpass) set configs to {"aliases.mine","completions.mine","environment.mine","rc.mine","path"} set inittcshPath to "Users:" & shortname & ":Library:init:tcsh:" repeat with configfile in configs set configpath to path_3 & "/" & configfile set shellscript to "touch" & configpath my doshell(shellscript) end repeat repeat with configfile in configs tell application "Finder" try set creator type of file (inittcshPath & configfile) to "R*ch" on error errmsg display dialog errmsg end try end tell end repeat set favPath to "Users:" & shortname & ":Library:Favorites" set aliasesminePath to inittcshPath & "aliases.mine" tell application "Finder" try set creator type of file aliasesminePath to "R*ch" make alias to file aliasesminePath at folder favPath make alias to folder inittcshPath at folder favPath update folder inittcshPath update folder favPath end try end tell -- set up a few aliases set myaliases to {"alias myaliases 'pico ~/Library/init/tcsh/aliases.mine'", "alias l 'ls -la'","alias myenv 'pico ~/Library/init/tcsh/environment.mine'"} set aliases_mine_path to path_3 & "/aliases.mine" repeat with analias in myaliases set shellscript to "echo \"" & analias & "\" >> " & aliases_mine_path my doshell(shellscript) end repeat -- set up environment.mine -- in doing so, fix (by way of interception) a bug in /usr/share/tcsh/examples/aliases set myenvironment to {"if !( $?TERM_PROGRAM ) then","setenv TERM_PROGRAM undefined","endif"} set environment_mine_path to path_3 & "/environment.mine" repeat with anenv in myenvironment set shellscript to "echo '" & anenv & "' >> " & environment_mine_path my doshell(shellscript) end repeat on doshell(cli) display dialog cli do shell script cli end doshell on sudoshell(cli,pswd) display dialog cli do shell script cli administrator privileges true password pswd end sudoshell

To set up aliases.mine, copy and paste the above script into your Jaguar Script Editor, compile it, and run it. The script includes several display dialog commands, which allow you to watch, learn, and debug, and to stop the script if something seems awry. It is also helpful to open the Script Editor event log (before running the script!) and check "Show Event Results" to follow the progress of the script.

When completed, a Finder alias to aliases.mine will be in your Favorites folder (along with a Finder alias to ~/Library/init/tcsh/), and it will conveniently open in BBEdit Get BBEdit Lite. If you have trouble after editing any of the files using BBEdit, be sure to save them using Unix line breaks (there's an "Options" button in the open/save dialog). You can also edit your aliases.mine file by typing myaliases at your command line prompt. You will need to exit your current shell and log in anew before these changes will take effect.

The inspiration for this script can be viewed in the terminal with:

cat /usr/share/tcsh/examples/README

which will bring up the following:

The above Applescript creates, but does not further modify, completions.mine, rc.mine, and path. This is because this is a work in progress, I have no current need to extend those functions further, and I wanted to keep the script lean and focused on aliases.mine (and I don't know yet what I can do with them anyway).

Credits

My thanks to Daniel Woods who helped me debug the problem with /usr/share/tcsh/examples/aliases.