Source bashrc from script failing

Question

I've written a simple bash script that adds an alias to my .bashrc automatically, and when it finishes, I would like it to source the .bashrc

It works fine as of now, for example

./addalias.sh ls 'ls -l' 

properly appends 'alias ls='ls -l' to the .bashrc, but doesn't source it.

The code is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
FIRST=$1

SECOND=${2:-cd `pwd`}

echo alias $FIRST="'$SECOND'" >> /home/oscar/.bashrc
echo alias $FIRST="'$SECOND'"

source /home/oscar/.bashrc

That doesn't work, nor does running an alias ("sourcebash") to source the bash instead of the last line.

Any thoughts on how this could be fixed?

Answer 1

The shell that runs 'addalias.sh' does source the .bashrc file; it then exits. It does not and cannot affect the parent shell's environment.

You'd have to invoke the command as:

source ./addalias.sh ls 'ls --color=auto'

Or:

. ./addalias.sh ls 'ls --color=auto'

(Now fixed: And I'm not convinced that, even in a question, playing with sudo rm -fr /* is remotely sensible. There's too much risk of an idiot copying and not realizing.)

Answer 2

Maybe you can make it a function or an alias instead of a bash script. Doing that might cause the changes to occur in the same shell.