Creates a command alias for <commands>. Commands do not need to be prefixed with a command character, in fact they shouldn't! If you want an alias to type something to the channel or query use send or say. You can use ';' to put multiple commands in a row.
Special character sequences, usually ircII variables, are prefixed with '$'. There are certain $ sequences built in to IRCII for getting such information as your nickname and current channel, plus you can expand your own variables and system variables using the $ format. You can also expand functions, substituting their return values. See ASSIGN for more on this.
Here are some simple alias examples: alias HELLO MSG $0 Hello, $0! $1- This alias can be used by typing: HELLO BigCheese How are you? This would act as though you had typed: msg BigCheese Hello, BigCheese! How are you? alias with just the <alias> argument shows the current alias for that word. ALIAS with no argument shows all current aliases. To remove an alias, use ALIAS -<alias>.
To use more than one command in an alias, separate them by ';'.
When using alias in a script it is frequently useful to surround the contents of your alias with { }s when you want to put more than one commands in an alias. E.g: alias loadcommon { load netsplit load troy } is the same as alias loadcommon load netsplit;load troy but lacks the ; and it much easier to read in a script or the .ircrc file.
For more specific information about the $ uses and more examples, see the specific help files listed below.
See Also: set/input_aliases send say assign expressions (note also Special Cases at the end)