'hhighlighter' wrapper script saying command not found

Question

I have gotten the wrapper script 'hhighlighter' from https://github.com/paoloantinori/hhighlighter which colors anything you want in stdout. I followed the instructions about installing ack-grep, created alias for ack=ack-grep in ~/.bashrc, put the h() function in ~/.bashrc, everything works fine when typing in the terminal. But when putting the EXACT same commands in a bash script, it says command not found. I will give examples here...

root@kali:~# echo "abcd" | h a b c d
abcd

Here is what my script looks like

#!/bin/bash  
echo "abcd" | h a b c d

Exactly like the command typed in, but here is the output when running the script

root@kali:~# ./test.sh
./test.sh: line 1: h: command not found

How could this work when typing directly in the terminal, but not when having the exact same command in a bash script?

Answer 1

Solution that helped me was to force the script to run in interactive mode with a #!/bin/bash -i header.

Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide warns about weird consequences though:

Be aware that this can cause erratic script behavior or show error messages even when no error is present.

However I haven't observed anything like this.

Answer 2

~/.bashrc is only read during startup of an interactive bash session.

If you want it to always be read, put the name in the BASH_ENV environment variable:

export BASH_ENV=$HOME/.bashrc