Paul Goyette wrote:
In my case, I have a shell alias for
alias diff "diff -u"
'cuz most of the time I want a -u output. But once in a blue moon (or perhaps
once in a blue+super moon) I want a -y (side-by-side) output; it's a real pain
to have to bypass the alias by specifying a complete path to /usr/bin/diff
Not really addressing your original question, but is using \diff an
option for those times you want to use -y? Most shells allow you to put
a \ in front of an alias to bypass the alias. At least it means you
don't have to remember where diff lives and resort using the full path.