Alias not assigned correctly

Question

I have a weird issue with a bash alias. I have the following alias defined in my .bashrc:

alias rec='nano `ls slurm-* | sort -t. -k3n | tail -1`'

However, when I expand the alias rec in the shell with CTRL ALT E I get:

nano Remember that all constraints must be readded!

If I execute the alias, I get the same thing:

nano Remember that all constraints must be readded!

If I use which rec I get the correct expansion:

alias rec='nano `ls slurm-* | sort -t. -k3n | tail -1`'
/home/spack/opt/spack/linux-rhel6-x86_64/gcc-4.4.7/nano-2.6.3-k2cwz7lwjd4zutb7r7cfo63apevyztuw/bin/nano
/home/spack/opt/spack/linux-rhel6-x86_64/gcc-4.4.7/coreutils-8.26-icpocuezd6r7ydd73ipkehkg345372eo/bin/sort
/home/spack/opt/spack/linux-rhel6-x86_64/gcc-4.4.7/coreutils-8.26-icpocuezd6r7ydd73ipkehkg345372eo/bin/tail

This Remember that all constraints must be readded! is the output of a (supposedly) completely unrelated script that I have written. Any idea what's going on here?

Answer 1

You are parsing ls, you shouldn't do this. I think it may be the source of your problem.

E.g. if at lease one of your slurm-* filenames is like:

*\nRemember that all constraints must be readded!

or

*\nRemember that all constraints must be readded!\n*

where \n is a newline, then sort receives more lines than you expect. This filename alone:

slurm-0.1.-5\nRemember that all constraints must be readded!

will make sort receive two lines and then in its output the Remember … line will be after the slurm-… line. I don't know how your slurm-* filenames look like exactly. I'm not even sure this is what really happens. My point is you shouldn't parse the output of ls.

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Another weak fragment is where you don't quote the argument for nano. This is probably unrelated to your current problem but keep in mind nano a b makes nano edit a, then b, not "a b".