Alias Files

Alias files are used to define different names for the standard system commands. Reasons for using alias names may be to shorten long system commands, to use a language that is more familiar to you, or to simply make the system easier to use. The format of an alias file is ``alias name'' <spaces> ``command'' where white space is a series of spaces or tabs. A line beginning with the # character is ignored and is treated as a comment line. When defining an alias file it is better to keep alias names in alphabetical order to improve the software load time. An example of an alias file follows.

# An example alias file
#
"DIR" "OTHER COMMAND"
"DOS" "SYSTEM COMMAND"
"ED" "TEXT EDITOR"
"X" "FILE MANAGER"

An alias file is made known to the software via the alias specifiers as described in the previous defaults.ssi section. After an alias file is known to the software you can then type the alias name to invoke the corresponding command. Using the example file above you could type DOS to invoke the command operating system.

Some standard alias files are installed in the SSI_ETC: directory. They are short.ssi which contains shortened names for some standard system commands and surpac.ssi which contains mappings of old Surpac option numbers to their new command counterparts.