BASH Shortcuts

The following is a list of shortcuts Pratt students may want to add to their .bashrc profile. This, first of all, assumes that they are using the bash shell. To check this, type

echo $SHELL

If the result is

/bin/bash

than this page applies to you; if not, see the TCSH Shortcuts page.

If you are a bash shell user, you will also need to have a .bash_profile in your CIFS home directory (the ~ directory) for the shortcuts to work. The contents of the profile should be:

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
      . ~/.bashrc 
fi  

# User specific environment and startup programs
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

export PATH

Stayin' Alive

There is currently a 10-minute inactivity timeout on remote logins. In order to eliminate this, add the following line to your .bashrc file:

xeyes -geometry 1x1-1-1 &

This will start the xeyes program off screen and in the background. With this program running, however, your session will not time out. If that puts an xeyes window on your screen, try

xeyes -geometry 1x1-1-100 &

instead.

AFS Directory Shortcut

If you are in a class that is using the AFS space (specifically so that permission can be set and such), you may want to add a line to your .bashrc file to get there more efficiently. The information on that is at the AFS Course Space page, specifically in the /bin/bash users section.

latex and dvips in One Command

Now that you need to run both latex and dvips to get a PostScript file for evince to look at, you may want to have a shorter way that having to type

latex FILE.tex
dvips -t FILE.dvi

every time. To make a /bin/bash shortcut for that, add the following to your .bashrc file:

ltx() {
   latex $1.tex
   dvips -t letter $1
}

If you want a version that does some basic error-checking, use this one:

ltx() {
if [[ $1 = *.* ]]
then
  echo "ERROR: '$1' has dots.  ltx does not want dots"
  return
fi

if [[ -f $1.tex ]]
then
   latex $1.tex
   dvips -t letter $1
else
  echo "ERROR: '$1.tex' not found"
fi
}

From that point on, once the .bashrc runs to start your session, you can simply type

ltx FILE

and it will run

latex FILE.tex
dvips -t letter FILE.dvi