this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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My question is whether it is good practice to include a unique wrapper phrase for custom commands and aliases.

For example, lets say I use the following command frequently:

apt update && apt upgrade -y && flatpak update

I want to save time by shortening this command. I want to alias it to the following command:

update

And lets say I also make up a command that calls a bash script to scrub all of of my zfs and btrfs pools:

scrub

Lets say I add 100 other aliases. Maybe I am overthinking it, but I feel there should be some easy way to distinguish these from native Unix commands. I feel there should be some abstraction layer.

My question is whether converting these commands into arguments behind a wrapper command is worth it.

For example, lets say my initials are "RK". The above commands would become:

rk update rk scrub

Then I could even create the following to list all of my subcommands and their uses:

rk --help

I would have no custom commands that exist outside of rk, so I add to total of one executable to my system.

I feel like this is the "cleaner" approach, but what do you think? Is this an antipattern? Is is just extra work?

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[–] carnha@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You may like this pattern of starting all custom commands with a comma - benefits against a wrapper command would be shorter command names and built-in tab completion.

[–] LeFantome@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

It looks a bit ugly to my eye but honestly that is a really good idea.