radj307 / alias

Emulates bash aliases on Windows.

alias

A filename-based Windows executable that emulates the specified command in a terminal, similar to bash aliases.

This allows you to create command aliases or command macros on windows, or execute shell scripts (.bat/.ps1) using an executable (.exe).

Features

• Same return code as executing the command manually
• Forwards commandline arguments
• Filename-based configuration allows you to have any number of aliases in the same directory
• Live-updating output

Usage

1. Download the latest release.
2. Rename the executable to whatever you want.
3. Run the executable once, which will create the default configuration file in the same directory as the executable.
4. Edit the generated .ini file & set the command to execute.

Example

Say you wanted to create an alias lsf for the PowerShell command Get-ChildItem -Force.

1. Download (or copy-paste) alias.exe & move it to a directory on your PATH.
2. Rename alias.exe to lsf.exe, then run it once to generate the config file.
3. Edit lsf.ini:

   [target]
   command = "PowerShell -Command 'Get-ChildItem -Force'"
   forward_args = true

   Now you can run the lsf command to execute Get-ChildItem -Force

How it Works

When the program is called, it finds its current location and searches that directory for an ini file with the same name.

It then uses the popen function to open a process pipe that it uses to emulate that process.
The executed command's return code is forwarded by the program when it exits as well.

Note: popen uses cmd.exe by default; to execute PowerShell commands you must prepend powershell -Command to the command string in the config.