Helpful Command Line Aliases for OS X

I started a new job this week and with that comes setting up a new computer.

To help make things easy on myself, I like to set up some Aliases in my .bash_profile so I can get things done in the command line a bit quicker.

If you’re looking for shortcuts for the command line, here’s some helpful ones I’m using.

# See http://www.shellperson.net/using-sudo-with-an-alias/
alias sudo='sudo '

# This helps me edit files that my user isn't the owner of
alias edit='SUDO_EDITOR="open -FWne" sudo -e'

# The alias that takes me here - to editing these very aliases
alias edit_profile='open -e ~/.bash_profile'

# I do a lot of web development, so I need to edit these non-owned files fairly often
alias edit_hosts='nano /etc/hosts'
alias edit_httpd='nano /etc/apache2/httpd.conf'
alias edit_php='nano /etc/php.ini'
alias edit_vhosts='nano /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf'

# This alias recursively destroys all .DS_Store files in the folder I am currently in
alias killDS='find . -name *.DS_Store -type f -delete'

# This alias reloads this file
alias reload_profile='source ~/.bash_profile'

# Mac get stuck very often and are extremely slow and unstable on shutdowns. This forces a shutdown.
alias poweroff='sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now'

# Setting for the new UTF-8 terminal support in Lion / Mountain Lion
export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8

# Color listing
alias ll='ls -lGaf'

## Colorize the ls output ##
alias ls='ls --color=auto'

# Show open ports
alias ports='netstat -tulanp'

 

Got any other cool Aliases that you use? Let me know.

• Category: Resources, Thoughts