zsh alias with linefeeds, commas and quotes

Question

In my zshrc I have an alias like this:

alias sl='screen -list'

It fits my need (seeing what screens I have running), but the output is rather ugly:

[pts/7]~% sl
There are screens on:
        32765.quotes-api        (04/26/2015 11:09:18 AM)        (Detached)
        5055.gitsync-test       (04/07/2015 09:24:04 PM)        (Detached)
        15074.gitsync-interceptor       (03/31/2015 10:39:45 AM)        (Detached)
        4662.eloquent-api    (03/29/2015 11:37:26 AM)        (Detached)
        16177.Dropbox   (03/17/2015 03:53:44 PM)        (Detached)
        18803.gitsync-todo-api-py       (03/06/2015 08:21:24 AM)        (Detached)
        796.website (01/31/2015 01:56:02 PM)        (Detached)
        7874.gitsync-optionals  (01/29/2015 02:27:24 PM)        (Detached)
        28474.linkbag   (12/16/2014 09:56:39 AM)        (Detached)
        10839.datapump  (10/13/2014 02:16:26 PM)        (Detached)
        5118.resr-api-python        (09/13/2014 12:28:33 PM)        (Detached)
        7619.dataglobbing    (09/03/2014 08:34:13 PM)        (Detached)
        10583.rest-api-dataglobbing  (09/03/2014 01:06:21 AM)        (Detached)
        11705.save-functions    (08/12/2014 01:00:58 PM)        (Detached)
14 Sockets in /var/run/screen/S-tuvokki.

So I started to format this and got the following to kinda work:

 screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk 'BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s\n"
         printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"
         printf format, "----", "------", "------" }
       { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'

But how do I put this in an alias like the simple command I had before?

Just putting it all on one line does not work. I have tried to escape the quotes, use double quotes instead of single gave parse errors. I also tried to wrap it in a function, but it seems that the awk command relies on the newlines and doesn't like all the instructions to be on one line.

Answer 1

There are three ways you can solve this.

One: just use a function. aliases are for simple text macros, something your second example isn't.

sl() {
screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk 'BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s\n"
         printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"
         printf format, "----", "------", "------" }
       { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'
}

Two: use the quote-line widget to properly escape the entire command

# type the entire command out like you would interactively.
% screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk 'BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s\n"
     printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"
     printf format, "----", "------", "------" }
   { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'
# use quote-line which transform the line into:
% 'screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk '\''BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s\n"
     printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"
     printf format, "----", "------", "------" }
   { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'\'''
# prepend alias sl= to the newly escaped line:
% alias sl='screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk '\''BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s\n"
     printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"
     printf format, "----", "------", "------" }
   { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'\'''

And Three: just use a function. aliases are for simple text macros.

sl() {
screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk 'BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s\n"
         printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"
         printf format, "----", "------", "------" }
       { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'
}

The awk example doesn't rely on newlines either, but you need ; to separate multiple statements on the same line.

screen -list|grep -v There|grep -v Sockets|awk 'BEGIN { format = " %-35s %-10s %s
"; printf format, "Name", "Active", "Status"; printf format, "----", "------", "------" } { printf format, $1, $2, $5 }'

Will work.