ppl [alias] Configuration Guide

Sometimes typing the same long commands repeatedly becomes tiresome. The [alias] section is intended to address this issue by providing a means of configuring shorter forms of commands.

[alias]
    l = ls
    s = show

Adding the above lines to ~/.pplconfig would allow the user to interact with ppl as follows:

$ ppl l
jdoe: John Doe    <jdoe@example.org>
fred: Fred Bloggs <fred@example.org>
$ ppl s jdoe
John Doe <jdoe@example.org>

  Birthday      1970-01-01
  Organization  Example Organization

Email Addresses
  jdoe@example.org

Bang Aliases

ppl’s alias system is similar to git’s in that it supports executing external commands via aliases prefixed with an exclamation mark, or “bang”. In your ~/.pplconfig, this would look something like the following:

[alias]
    lsx = !ppl ls | grep -i x

The above example creates an alias lsx that pipes the output of ppl ls through grep -i x. This means that you effectively create a new command - ppl lsx - which is identical to ppl ls except that it only displays lines containing the letter x.