Aliases are perhaps the single most powerful and flexible means of customizing TCC. Many regular users create dozens or even hundreds of aliases to make TCC fit the way they work. Aliases are a complex subject, and a thorough discussion could fill a book. In this tutorial I will only touch on a few ways that you can use aliases to customize your working environment in TCC.

 

As you create and refine useful aliases, you will gradually accumulate a collection that you'll want to have available whenever you use TCC. The usual method is to store them in a text file and load them with an ALIAS /R in your TCSTART.BTM file. If you keep your aliases in a file named ALIASES.TXT in the Take Command program directory, you might load them using a command like this:

 

alias /r "%@path[%_cmdspec]aliases.txt"

 

The alias definitions in the text file are almost the same as the commands used to define them at the command line. Just remove the ALIAS command from the start of the line; if backquotes or doubled percent signs were used to defer variable expansion, remove the backquotes or replace the doubled percent signs with single percent signs.

 

There are three types of aliases: command aliases, keystroke aliases, and directory aliases. They serve different purposes and are invoked at different times, but all three types are defined using the ALIAS command.