GNU watch - how do I make it read my environment (aliases, functions, etc)

Question

This one has been bugging me for a while: I want to use the marvelous GNU watch command to run a few custom aliases and functions that are defined in my .bashrc, but it is never able to run anything except bash built-in or binaries.

watch -d foo

The output is always: foo: command not found.

How can I make it inherit my environment or use the .bashrc?

What is foo? A shell script? An alias? What if you run that watch command from your prompt? — lorenzog, Mar 17 '10 at 23:18
As I mentioned, foo can be a custom alias or a bash function, not just a simple call to a binary. — Artem Russakovskii, Mar 17 '10 at 23:34
Here's an example of a bash function:
x () { xmllint -format $* ;} — Artem Russakovskii, Mar 17 '10 at 23:35

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 18 '10 at 01:25

8

Do something like this watch bash -i -c 'alias -p' this should call bash, load your settings and then run whatever command you have after the -c

answered Mar 18 '10 at 01:25

Zoredache

134,355

Brilliant - that worked like a charm. – Artem Russakovskii Mar 18 '10 at 05:19
Great! But my functions are still not visible :( ....when is used after pipe (|) – sobi3ch Feb 23 '18 at 09:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 17 '10 at 23:36

1

From man watch:

Note that command is given to "sh -c"

So it's not going to see your Bash aliases and functions.

answered Mar 17 '10 at 23:36

Dennis Williamson

64,583

GNU watch - how do I make it read my environment (aliases, functions, etc)

2 Answers2