Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

60%
+1 −0
Q&A How can I simply persist functions written in the current terminal session for later use?

Suppose I write a Bash function at the command line: $ hello-world() { echo "Hello, world!"; } and I revise (perhaps hitting up-arrow to retrieve it from command history and edit it) and test a...

1 answer  ·  posted 1d ago by Karl Knechtel‭  ·  last activity 21h ago by Michael‭

#1: Initial revision by user avatar Karl Knechtel‭ · 2024-12-21T01:36:39Z (1 day ago)
How can I simply persist functions written in the current terminal session for later use?
Suppose I write a Bash function at the command line:

```
$ hello-world() { echo "Hello, world!"; }
```

and I revise (perhaps hitting up-arrow to retrieve it from command history and edit it) and test and debug it, and eventually have a working function that does what I want:

```
$ hello-world 
Hello, world!
```

Now I'd like to make this available in future sessions, so I... well, currently, the best I can come up with is `type hello-world | tail -n+2 >> ~/.bash_aliases` (using `tail` to remove the helpful `hello-world is a function` message).

Is there a built-in, or simpler way to do this? Ideally, something that would add every function I've written in the current shell?