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In my .zshrc I tried to make a few aliases .I looked into a lot of places, but I couldn't find out a way that worked. I used this code below: 

# Set personal aliases, overriding those provided by oh-my-zsh libs, 
# plugins, and themes. Aliases can be placed here, though oh-my-zsh 
# users are encouraged to define aliases within the ZSH_CUSTOM folder. 
# For a full list of active aliases, run alias. # # Example aliases
alias zshconfig="mate ~/.zshrc"
alias ohmyzsh="mate ~/.oh-my-zsh"
alias n= "nano"  
alias m= "mkdir"
alias w= "cd ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2"  
alias j= "cd ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2/COMP17412"

Then I wrote a command source ~/.zshrc. Still it didn't resolve the issue. I get error messages like zsh: command not found: j

Could anyone help me with any suggestions and let me know what am I doing wrong?

Adaephon
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Shamveel Ahammed
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    Judging from the (mutliple) comments and from the error I suppose each alias is actually set on a single line, correct? – kos Apr 17 '16 at 22:49

1 Answers1

142

There must not be any whitespaces around between = and either alias name or alias definition:

alias zshconfig="mate ~/.zshrc"
alias ohmyzsh="mate ~/.oh-my-zsh"
alias n="nano"
alias m="mkdir"
alias w="cd ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2"
alias j="cd ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2/COMP17412"

BTW: If you are looking for a way to shorten directory names, I suggest looking into Named Directories and the AUTO_CD option instead of aliases:

hash -d w=~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2
hash -d j=~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2/COMP17412

This allows you to use ~w instead of ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2 and ~j instead of ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2/COMP17412 (or ~w/COMP17412). So cd ~j is identical to cd ~/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2. It also works as part of a path, e.g. cat ~j/somedir/somefile.

With 

setopt AUTO_CD

zsh will automatically cd to a directory if it is given as command on the command line and it is not the name of an actual command. e.g.

% /usr
% pwd
/usr
% ~w
/home/YOURUSERNAME/Documents/UoMWorkspace/Semester2
Adaephon
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    As a further explanation why not use spaces before and after the equation sign:e.g. `a = b`: This will be considered as a command `a` with two parameters (`b` and `=`) and will throw an error: `zsh: command not found: a`. If you put `alias`before that (`alias a = b`), it will be somehow similar. – Timo Oct 22 '17 at 07:29
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    Isn't that `AUTO_CD` cause your command history unreadable? – nanono Apr 18 '20 at 03:34
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    @nanono That depends on what you mean by "unreadable". By itself `AUTO_CD` does nothing more than allow to switch into directories by only using their paths instead of using the `cd` command. Of course, if you make active use of this feature, it is not easy to tell from the history whether the command `docs` ran a executable of that name or if it was used to switch into a directory named "docs". – Adaephon Apr 21 '20 at 15:04
  • Special thanks for shortening directories names - I have been looking for it – bora89 Jan 07 '21 at 14:08