Easiest way to migrate aliases from bash to zsh

I want to start using zsh as recommended by Apple for Mac OS Catalina. How do I migrate my aliases that I have defined in the ~/.bash_profile to the new shell?

Solution 1:

If until now you've been using ~/.bash_profile for the loading the aliases, here are some of the ways you can migrate your aliases:

1. Copy the contents:

The most assiduous and obvious way is to copy the contents of your ~/.bash_profile to ~/.zshrc. It works particularly when you are moving on from bash to zsh for good.

2. Pull out aliases and then source them:

Another ^*way is:

1. Create a new file that will contain the aliases (let's call it ~/.aliases);
2. Copy the contents of ~/.bash_profile to the new aliases file;
3. Modify the ~/.bash_profile and ~/.zshrc to source the new file.

Put the following in ~/.bash_profile:

if [ -f ~/.aliases ]; then
   . ~/.aliases
fi

and put the following in ~/.zshrc:

source $HOME/.aliases

This way the aliases will be available for both shells. More importantly, if you make changes to the aliases, the changes will cascade to both shells automatically.

^{* Taken from here}