Question

I want to add to my .zshrc function that will perform operations with file that has “.c” suffix. For example,

*.c () {
    gcc $0 -o ${0%.*}
}

must perform “gcc foo.c -o foo” when I am entering “foo.c”

But when I added this function to “.zshrc”, my shell begins prints “no matches found: *.c” on login.

Can I do this other way or make this function “lazy”?

Answer 1

You’ll want alias -s behaviour. From the manpages:

 ALIASES
   Suffix aliases are supported in zsh since version 4.2.0. Some examples:

       alias -s tex=vim
       alias -s html=w3m
       alias -s org=w3m

   Now pressing return-key after entering foobar.tex starts vim with foobar.tex. Calling
   a html-file runs browser w3m. www.zsh.org and pressing enter starts w3m with argument
   www.zsh.org.

Combine your written function to a suffix alias and you should be set to go!

First, write your function in this form:

compile_c () {     
   gcc $1 -o ${1%.*}
}

And then the suffix alias

alias -s c='compile_c'

will work as intended.