Re: autoload and alias expansion question

[Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>]

"Peter Hegedus" wrote:
> hegedus@su20% cat >foobar <<EOF
> foobar () { }
> alias DATE=date ; barfoo () { setopt aliases ; DATE ; ECHO OK }
> EOF
> hegedus@su20% autoload foobar
> hegedus@su20% foobar
> hegedus@su20% barfoo
> barfoo: command not found: DATE
> OK

> Do I miss something?

No, you don't.  Aliases are expanded very early, during the initial
parsing of the code, so the DATE is reached and parsed before the alias
command is run.

> Is there a way to make this work?

You have two obvious options.

Firstly, most people when writing scripts or functions would use scripts
or functions at this point anyway, i.e. DATE() { date; }.  The main use
of aliases is as a hack at the command line to save typing; they are
rather less atractive if that's not an issue.

Second, you can put the alias definitions in a separate file and ensure
that that gets loaded before the function.  There are various ways of
doing this if that's what you really need.  Until we know why you're not
using a function for DATE it's hard to answer.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@xxxxxxx>                  Software Engineer
CSR PLC, Churchill House, Cambridge Business Park, Cowley Road
Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070