help with using alias in bash shell

Question

i want to have an alias "t" to enter a folder and list the content there.

i tried with:

alias t="cd $1; ls -la"

but it just listed the folder i typed but did not enter it. i wonder why?

cause when i use this one:

alias b="cd ..; ls"

it went back to the parent and listed the content.

so i want the "t" do enter the folder i type in too.

someone knows how to do this right?

Answer 1

You can't pass arguments into bash aliases. You'll need to create a shell function like so:

function t { cd "$1" && ls -la; }

Edit: whoops, forgot the function and edited per Juliano's suggestion.

Answer 2

I don't think you can use aliases that way. You can, however, declare a function:

function t {
    cd "$1"
    ls -la
}

Answer 3

cd is tricky in bash. The command you issued ran in a separate process than your bash shell, and that process terminated when it was done. See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/255414/why-doesnt-cd-work-in-a-bash-shell-script

Answer 4

In most UNIX shells (csh, bash, zsh) aliases are a form of expansion. Thus they are not parsed like functions. Any word in the interactive input stream which would be processed as a command will be scanned against the list of aliases and a simple string replacement will be performed (usually before any other forms of expansion).

If you need to process arguments then you want to define a function which is parsed and processed rather than simply being expanded like a macro.