Using aliases in Linux

Dmytro Tus

Full Stack Web developer

Sometimes on the hosting, you need to work with some specific versions of programming languages and path to it can be also specific.

The same situation was in my case: I need to use php 8.2 but default on the server php set up to 8.1 version and the path to the correct version is like so: /opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php

Let's fix this issue through adding alias to our configuration.

nano ~/.bashrc

Later we need to modify the file like so:

--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
# User specific aliases and functions
alias php='/opt/alt/php81/usr/bin/php'
alias php82='/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php'
alias composer82='/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php /usr/local/bin/composer'
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
--------------------------------------
## another aliases

Don't forget to save the file. In my case through nano it was easy:

^X [enter]

For those who prefer VIM the hints I will place in separate post. 😇

Don't forget to load your updated file

source ~/.bashrc

After that, when you will execute the command you will recieve the data about new version of php.

php82 -v

PHP 8.2.15 (cli) (built: Jan 17 2024 16:34:33) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Grou

That's all. Happy coding 👏

Thumbnail by: https://unsplash.com/@basvde