Question

I just switch from ubuntu to archlinux and I installed ack-grep via pacman. However what I found is I can’t run $ ack from terminal directy. I have to type $ perl ack , which is a pain…I wonder if anyone hve experienced similar situation and how do you solve it.

Thanks

Answer 1

It depends on the shell you’re using. Probably the simplest thing you can do (assuming bash) is to create an alias for your desired command, something like:

alias acx='perl ack'

You’ll probably want to place that somewhere in one of your startup scripts, such as .profile, or .bash_profile in your home directory.

If you’re using a different sheel that doesn’t support aliases, you can still resort to providing a script to do the translation for you, such as putting the following acx file in your path:

perl ack "$@" # or however your particular sheel transfers all arguments.