Re: shell-command, its relatives, and aliases

[Kevin Rodgers <kevin.d.rodgers@gmail.com>]

Bill Rising wrote:
> 
> I would like to use aliases in (shell-command ...) or (call-process 
> region ...). Even if I tell the latter to behave as a login shell, and 
> make sure that the aliases are available to the login shell, I cannot 
> get them to execute.
> 
> The shell can see the aliases without any problem, because I can send 
> the -alias- command and get the list of aliases.
> 
> It seems to me that elisp is trying to see if the command is defined 
> before running it, instead of simply letting the shell chew on whatever 
> was sent to it. This could be a grave misconception.
> 
> In any case, is there are way to be able to use aliases within any of 
> the 'execute this line/region without starting a buffer with a shell' 
> commands?

call-process-region does not invoke the shell at all.  If you want to
use any shell features (e.g. redirection, aliases) you need to use
shell-command-on-region.

There are several ways to make aliases available in the shell invoked
by Emacs.  I would just explicitly read the shell definitions e.g.

	M-| . ~/my_aliases.bash && alias_1 arg_1

Or you could create the ~/.emacs_bash file and read the shell
definitions there (automatically) -- see the Interactive Shell
node of the Emacs manual.

-- 
Kevin Rodgers
Denver, Colorado, USA