I have an alias called nf. Sometimes due to fat fingers I end up typing mf and this starts up Metafont, which is installed because I use TeX, then I would have to exit it. I got tired of this and added this alias to $HOME/.alias:
alias mf='echo "Use \\mf if you really want metafont"'
If I really want to run mf, which is rarely, I can type \mf at the command line as the \ stops alias expansion. Invocations from shell scripts and Makefiles are not affected as $HOME/.alias is only read in by interactive shells.
BTW, please do not use this technique to block shell users from executing certain commands by aliasing them to something else. It's trivial to bypass in just the way I've shown.
alias mf='echo "Use \\mf if you really want metafont"'
If I really want to run mf, which is rarely, I can type \mf at the command line as the \ stops alias expansion. Invocations from shell scripts and Makefiles are not affected as $HOME/.alias is only read in by interactive shells.
BTW, please do not use this technique to block shell users from executing certain commands by aliasing them to something else. It's trivial to bypass in just the way I've shown.
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