How do you wrap executable commands so that they work in an alias or function?

Question

I'm still getting around the quirks of shell scripting, but I feel like I'm getting a little more comfortable with it.

I've been trying to create an alias to generate a tar file that I have to create frequently, but it always gives me tar errors. Just as a test I tried to create a simple wrapper but it doesn't work either:

function eztar(){

    if [ -d $1 ]
    then
        export QTAR="$1.tar";
        tar –cvf ${QTAR} "$1/";

    else
        echo "Missing directory name";
    fi

}

>eztar mydir
tar: invalid option -- ''
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.

Is the -cvf option in this case getting eaten up somehow?

Anyway here'es another one

I had a problem where Apache would run out of memory. I found out that too many failed shutdowns cause the semaphore to get full so to fix that I discovered a script I liked and I tried to get it to run in alias. (BTW is there a better way to do this?) I think I need to put this in a function because when I check the aliases the for loop had expanded to the list of current semaphores, which isnt what I had intended.

alias semfix='eval "for i in `ipcs -s # grep apache # awk '{print $2}'` ; do ipcrm -s $i; done";'

I'm learning I cant just create an alias or wrapper function out of everything on Unix!

Answer 1

There's nothing wrong with your first function except there's a typo.
The character in front of the cvf isn't a minus char.
Are you using a std. US 101 key keyboard?

Taking that out altogether (the minus is optional on most tar switches) and the function works fine.
Or else, you could fix it with a proper -cvf

Also, there's no need for the export
export causes an environment variable to have more persistence than you need in a function like this.

I suggest you read the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide
Look at let, local and export.
See how they vary, when to use one or the other.

Yes, you should try and rewrite the second as a function.
The less nested quoting and piping, while learning, will make writing functions and aliases easier.

The one liners come later :)