| 1 | <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"> |
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| 2 | |
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| 3 | <html> |
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| 4 | |
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| 5 | <head> |
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| 6 | <title>J User's Guide - Aliases</title> |
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| 7 | <LINK REL="stylesheet" HREF="j.css" TYPE="text/css"> |
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| 8 | </head> |
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| 9 | |
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| 10 | <body> |
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| 11 | |
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| 12 | <a href="contents.html">Top</a> |
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| 13 | |
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| 14 | <hr> |
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| 15 | |
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| 16 | <h1>Aliases</h1> |
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| 17 | |
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| 18 | <hr> |
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| 19 | |
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| 20 | <p> |
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| 21 | <a href="commands.html#openFile">openFile</a> and |
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| 22 | <a href="commands.html#executeCommand">executeCommand</a> support the use of |
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| 23 | aliases. |
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| 24 | <p> |
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| 25 | To define an alias, use the command <a href="commands.html#alias">alias</a>, |
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| 26 | which you can invoke using |
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| 27 | <a href="commands.html#executeCommand">executeCommand</a> (mapped by default |
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| 28 | to Alt X). |
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| 29 | <p> |
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| 30 | Usage: |
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| 31 | <pre> |
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| 32 | alias key=value</pre> |
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| 33 | <p> |
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| 34 | For example: |
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| 35 | <pre> |
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| 36 | alias notes=/home/peter/notes</pre> |
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| 37 | or |
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| 38 | <pre> |
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| 39 | alias pf=man perlfunc</pre> |
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| 40 | <p> |
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| 41 | The '=' is optional; a space will do as well. Keys may not contain embedded |
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| 42 | spaces. |
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| 43 | <p> |
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| 44 | If you want to define an alias for the current file, you can use "here" as a |
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| 45 | shortcut: |
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| 46 | <pre> |
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| 47 | alias notes here</pre> |
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| 48 | <p> |
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| 49 | Once you've defined an alias, you can use the key ("notes" or "pf") instead of |
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| 50 | the value ("/home/peter/notes" or "man perlfunc") with |
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| 51 | <a href="commands.html#openFile">openFile</a> or |
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| 52 | <a href="commands.html#executeCommand">executeCommand</a>. J simply substitues |
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| 53 | the value for the key when you press Enter in the location bar textfield. |
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| 54 | <p> |
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| 55 | To unset an alias, set it to nothing: |
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| 56 | <pre> |
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| 57 | alias notes=</pre> |
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| 58 | You can bring up a dialog box to edit the value of an alias by invoking |
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| 59 | <a href="commands.html#alias">alias</a> with no arguments or by specifying |
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| 60 | just the key: |
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| 61 | <pre> |
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| 62 | alias notes</pre> |
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| 63 | <p> |
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| 64 | Aliases are stored in the file ~/.j/aliases, or C:\.j\aliases on Windows, |
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| 65 | unless you specify a different home directory when starting j (see |
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| 66 | <a href="preferences.html">Preferences</a>). You can edit this file to add, |
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| 67 | remove, or modify aliases as long as you maintain the same format. If you use |
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| 68 | j to edit your aliases file, the running instance of j automatically reloads |
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| 69 | your aliases when you save the changes to the file, so it is not necessary to |
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| 70 | restart j in order to pick up the new aliases. |
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| 71 | <p> |
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| 72 | J itself defines three system aliases which may not be changed: "prefs" is an |
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| 73 | alias for j's <a href="preferences.html">preferences file</a>, "aliases" is an |
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| 74 | alias for the file that contains the aliases themselves, and "inbox" is an |
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| 75 | alias for the user's default inbox, if any, as specified in the preferences |
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| 76 | file (see <a href="preferences.html#inbox">inbox</a>). |
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| 77 | |
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| 78 | </body> |
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| 79 | </html> |
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