Best way to call command within a shell function having the same name [duplicate]

Question

This question already has an answer here:

• Running an executable in PATH with the same name as an existing function 3 answers

I like to encapsulate commands within shell-functions using the same name. But to avoid the shell-function calling itself recursively, I specify the complete path of the command as the following example:

less()
{
    test 0 -lt $# && echo -ne "\e]2;$@\a\e]1;$@\a"     # Window title
    /usr/bin/less -i -rS --LONG-PROMPT --shift 5 "$@"
}

But for some commands, I do not want to specify the path because it may change. I would prefer to use $PATH.

For instance, my following attempt failed to call mvn command using backslash: \mvn

mvn()  # colorizes maven output
{
        \mvn "$@" 2>&1 | #here: the shell-function recursively calls itself indefinitely
        sed -u '                                             
    s/^\[ALL\].*/\o033[1;37m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[FATAL\].*/\o033[1;31m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[ERROR\].*/\o033[1;31m&\o033[0m/
s/^\[WARNING\].*/\o033[1;33m&\o033[0m/
   s/^\[INFO\].*/\o033[1;37m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[DEBUG\].*/\o033[1;36m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[TRACE\].*/\o033[1;32m&\o033[0m/'
}

What is the best way to bypass this issue?
Please do not suggest to use a different shell-function name.

(I usually use bash but I am interested about other shell solutions.)

Answer 1

Prepend your actual commands (not functions) with command shell builtin, it has exactly the purpose you're looking for. Therefore your shell-function should look that:

mvn()
{
        command mvn "$@" 2>&1 |
        sed -u '
    s/^\[ALL\].*/\o033[1;37m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[FATAL\].*/\o033[1;31m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[ERROR\].*/\o033[1;31m&\o033[0m/
s/^\[WARNING\].*/\o033[1;33m&\o033[0m/
   s/^\[INFO\].*/\o033[1;37m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[DEBUG\].*/\o033[1;36m&\o033[0m/
  s/^\[TRACE\].*/\o033[1;32m&\o033[0m/'
}

Answer 2

It depends on what shell you use. By default zfs, bash and ksh does not expand aliases with the same name as the alias, in aliases. This is specifically to avoid [usually unintentional] loops.

Therefore you are safe to make commands like you want to do.

alias ls="echo Hello; ls"

Is perfectly fine.