Conditional abbreviations

[rbhanot4739]

Thank you for the amazing plugin, and it works really well. Just wondering if its possible to add certain abbreviations only if the command exists. For example, this is what I have in my aliases file

if [[ $(command -v eza) ]]; then
	alias ls='eza -I "*pyc*" $eza_params'
	alias lsa='ls --all'
        ...
fi

However, when I import these aliases into abbreviations, this logic isn't respected automatically (which is acceptable and not a big deal). So is it possible to add such if/else conditions in the $ABBR_USER_ABBREVIATIONS_FILE and have an abbreviation defined based on that ?

[olets]

Interesting question!

Three solutions come to mind:

Put the condition in the abbreviated command itself (wrapping the if condition in {} prevents its exit code from affecting whether the else is reached).

% abbr ls='command -v eza && { eza -I "*pyc*" $eza_params } || ls'

Or use the standard command as a fallback (2>/dev/null prevents the "zsh: command not found" output from showing in your terminal)

% abbr ls='eza -I "*pyc*" $eza_params 2>/dev/null || ls'

Or conditionally add session abbreviations edit: abbreviations when the shell starts:

# .zshrc

# load zsh-abbr and then

if …; then
  # edit: this is what I said originally
  # abbr -S …
  # but in retrospect (see henrebotha's response) this is probably preferable
  abbr …
fi

[henrebotha]

I set up abbreviations (not session abbreviations though) on shell startup, like option 3, which works great except for clobbering my p10k prompt a little bit when it fires because I can't be bothered to learn which p10k setting will prevent that. Anyway, because it's not session-specific, it only fires when there's something new to abbreviate, i.e. once per new machine setup and/or dotfiles-tinkering day.

So I'd personally go for something like option 3.

[olets]

Belatedly: thanks @henrebotha. Looking back at this, I don't see a reason to use session abbreviations in option 3.

[henrebotha]

I've since started using chezmoi, which gives me a better way to implement this that adds no shell startup time or anything.