newalias creates new hash and data files from a text file. If the program is invoked with the -g (global) flag, the program updates the system alias files. Otherwise, the program looks for a file called $HOME/.elm/aliases.text and, upon finding it, creates files $HOME/.elm/aliases.dir, $HOME/.elm/aliases.pag and $HOME/.elm/aliases for the elm program.

The format that the program expects is:

alias, alias, .. = comment = address

or

alias, alias, .. = comment = alias, alias, ...

The first form is for an individual user such as:

dave, taylor = Dave Taylor = veeger!hpcnou!dat

or optionally as:

dave, taylor = Taylor; Dave = veeger!hpcnou!dat

to allow the aliases to be properly sorted by last name. The second is for defining a group alias such as:

gurus = Unix Gurus = alan, john, dave, mike, I richard, larry, t_richardson

Note that lines can be continued at will, blank lines are accepted without error, and that any line starting with '#' is considered a comment and is not processed.

If the 'comment', or 'address' fields need to contain '=' characters, those characters must either be escaped using a backslash character or the address must be inside doublequotes (").

Aliases are not case sensitive so dave and Dave are both the same alias.

Finally, aliases can contain other aliases, and/or groups. For example:

unix = Unix people = gurus, taylor, jonboy

newalias [-g]

Files