How do I cd and then ls in my cshrc

Question

I want to be able to cd into a path and have it ls automatically. I have tried doing a function such as

cs() { cd "@a" ; ls}

but this results in an error saying "badly placed ()" so I do not think I can do functions. I have also tried

alias cs ' cd !:1 ; ls '

I can source my .cshrc with this but when I call it, it doesn't do anything and I am still in the same folder.

Answer 1

You were very very close.  Unix loves backslashes; Unix eats backslashes for breakfast.  You need

alias cs 'cd \!:1; ls'

If you look at the documentation for csh (and its descendants), you'll see that ! refers to the history mechanism, which lets you refer to previous command(s).  The simplest example is !!, which recalls and repeats the most recent command.  !:1 means word #1 from the referenced command (where the command itself is word #0; so, for example, in grep needle *.txt,  !:0 is grep and !:1 is needle).

Bash and other descendants of the Bourne shell have a feature that is very similar.

C shell aliases are a little weird.  When you run an alias, the command that you typed (e.g., cs vacation_photographs) is treated as the "previous command".  So, when the alias runs, !:1 is replaced with vacation_photographs.

The catch is that this happens when the alias runs.  But history expansion happens when the alias is defined, too. So, for example, if your .cshrc says

set prompt = '% '
alias cs 'cd !:1; ls'

then !:1 is evaluated as prompt, and the alias is defined as cd prompt; ls.  To be able to refer to the command that you typed (vacation_photographs), you need to define the alias to be cd !:1; ls, and so you need to use the backslash to defer the interpretation of the !:1, so it will be evaluated when the alias is run instead of when it is defined.

If you've been doing

alias cs 'cd !:1; ls'

and it doesn't do anything (not even give you an error message), I cannot explain that.