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.

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