How can I define an alias for a Git subcommand (e.g. for `list` in `git stash list`)?

Question

Whenever I try to type git stash list my fingers go rogue and type git stash ls. I'd really like to alias ls to list, but only within the stash subcommand. Is this possible with git aliases?

Answer 1

Git doesn't offer any mechanism for aliasing a subcommand; see the git-config man page.

However, there is a trick for achieving the same effect: use a small wrapper around the git binary by defining a shell command also called git that does what you want:

git() {
    if [ "$1" = "stash" -a "$2" = "ls" ]
    then
        command git stash list
    else
        command git $@
    fi;
}

Not pretty, but does the job (as tested in one of my repositories):

# starting from a dirty working state...
$ git stash save
Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 7c6655d add missing word in documentation
HEAD is now at 7c6655d add missing word in documentation
$ git stash ls
stash@{0}: WIP on master: 7c6655d add missing word in documentation

Note that this approach isn't very robust. In particular, git stash list will not be run if there are other command-line arguments between git and stash ls, as in

git -C ~/Desktop stash ls

The approach should be sufficient for your use case, though.

To avoid having to retype the definition of that git function every time you start your shell, you should put it in one of the files that your shell is configured to source.