Using awk in BASH alias or function

Question

I\'ve a command that works just fine at the command line, but not when I try to put it in an alias or function.

$ awk \'{print $1}\' /tmp/textfile
0
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Answer 1

You need to escape the $ like so:

 alias a="awk '{print \$1}' /tmp/textfile"

Otherwise your alias is:

 awk '{print }' /tmp/textfile

Which prints the whole file...