1. Bash Aliases

Bash aliases are a way to create Bash commands that call actual programs. Bash aliases are defined as so:

alias alias_name="command_to_run <arguments>"

Aliases are usually placed in a file that will be sourced by Bash during initialization, such as the ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, or ~/.bash_aliases. Here is the full contents of my ~/.terraform_aliases.bash file, which is source from ~/.bashrc during Bash initialization:

alias tf='terraform'
alias tfaa='terraform apply -auto-approve'
alias tfda='terraform destroy -auto-approve'
alias tfi='terraform init'
alias tfp='terraform plan'

This command in my ~/.bashrc sources the ~/.terraform_aliases.bash file, ensuring that these aliases are present every time I open a terminal.

source ~/.terraform_aliases.bash

Note

The aliases could just as easily be located directly in the ~/.bashrc rather than being sourced. I source the file rather than having them in ~/.bashrc because I have (literally) hundreds of aliases, and breaking them into separate files helps keep them organized.

To use an alias you just type the alias name as if it were a command. To use the ‘tfaa’ alias I would enter the following on the command line:

tfaa

…which would be the same as typing:

terraform apply --auto-approve