piping output to an alias

Question

in order to run a certain command I need to use

sudo -h -u someuser <somecommand>

in order to save some sanity I created an alias

alias somecommand='function _dm(){ sudo -u ubuntu somecommand $@; };_dm'

This works great until I try and do something fancy.

somecommand arg1 | xargs somecommand arg2

This causes me problems since xargs doesn't invoke the alias. Is it possible to make this work somehow?

Answer 1

1. As long as your alias is in your .bashrc, you should be able to do ...|xargs bash -c somealias ...

2. Easier is to put your alias in a shell script instead. Make ~/bin, add it to your PATH, put the script in, and your original command will work.

Example shell script:

#!/bin/bash
sudo -u ubuntu somecommand "$@"

Edit: this answer suggests trying #1 with bash -ic rather than bash -c.