Need csh alias to match patterns in history

[Maarten Litmaath]

naim at eecs.nwu.edu (Naim Abdullah) writes:
\A friend of mine wants a csh alias that will print all lines in
\the history list that match a pattern if one is supplied, otherwise
\just print the history.

\He asked me and I suggested the following csh alias:

\alias h ' \
\if ( "X\!*" == "X" ) then \
\history \
\else \
\history | grep \!* \
\endif'

\For some reason, this does not work.

Welcome to csh! Generally it doesn't like foreach, while, etc. in aliases.
Solutions:

	alias	h	'set q=(\!*); eval h$#q'
	alias	h0	history
	alias	h1	'(history | sed -n -e \$q -e /"$q"/p)'
or
	alias	h	'if ("\!*" == "") set status=1 &&'\
			'history | sed -n -e \$q -e /"\!*"/p ||'\
			history
or
	alias	h	'if (\!* == "") set status=1 &&'\
			'history | sed -n -e \$q -e /\!*/p ||'\
			history

The final version causes csh to complain if multiple arguments are given.
BTW, it's obvious why I used sed instead of grep.
-- 
 Modeless editors and strong typing:   |Maarten Litmaath @ VU Amsterdam:
   both for people with weak memories. |maart at cs.vu.nl, mcvax!botter!maart