I tend to forget aliases I've set up and mostly use Ctrl+R to reverse search history and find the command I want if I've used it before. Either that or "history | grep <command_used_before>" if it was some time in the past. Aliases just don't stick in my memory.
I don't, because I SSH into a lot of machines - many are systems I don't own so can't really change things on. Or they'll be re-imaged in a day anyways.<p>I almost always prefer to use what's available by default, that way what I memorize works anywhere.
Somewhat less with time, as bash <i>functions</i> are preferred and more powerful handle arguments, multi-step processing, logic).<p>But yes, for basic arguments, particularly for ls:<p><pre><code> alias ls='ls -F'
alias la='ls -A'
alias ll='ls -l'
</code></pre>
Occasionally for other commands for which the default is not ideal. w3m, for example, will read the bookmarks file if URL is passed, with '-B', but otherwise exits with an error, which is annoying.<p><pre><code> alias w3m='w3m -B'
</code></pre>
Git commands, as others note.
Yes. And I've setup a big .bash_alias to be scp'd to my machines.<p>functions only for the complicated parts. about the same number of bash aliases as .gitconfig aliases.
cat .bash_aliases | wc -l<p><pre><code> 61
</code></pre>
but yes alias command when I need to work on a system I aliased prior and have not used...<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_span" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_span</a>