What are aliases?

Being able to add aliases is a useful function of the bot that is often overlooked.

If used right, aliases can add a lot to the bot and to your community with little to no “coding”.
With a little creative thinking and maybe some coding here and there, aliases can add a lot of functionality that isn’t inherent in the bot.

This page will assume you have ! as your prefix. If you have a different prefix, simply substitute ! with yours.

First comes first. Do !help Alias and look through the commands a bit. Try making some of your own aliases.

The purpose of aliases is to let you call a command using a different name. Here are a few examples that demonstrate that.

Aliases are case-sensitive

!alias add NO flip
!NO
flips a coin and… HEADS!

You can use the command inputs like normal
!NO Kowlin
(╯°□°）╯︵ uᴉlʍoʞ

Some useful aliases

For the average user

  • !alias add q queue - Now just use !q url to queue a song or !q to list them!
  • !alias add wiki wikipedia - For the lazy
  • !alias add g google - Nobody’s got time to write out google!
  • !alias add volume audioset volume - Now you only need to type !volume to set the volume.
  • !alias add will 8 - Ask the 8 ball just by asking the question.
  • !alias add nudes gifr penguins - ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
  • !alias add "🔪🖐" "" "" "" "" "" "" "‼😵🔴" - Knife game.
    • Chooses a random response (most of which are empty)
    • Notice, the emotes have no space. Alias names must be single words: !alias add ":knife::hand_splayed:" choose "" "" "" "" "" "" ":bangbang::dizzy_face::red_circle:"
  • !alias add 😬🔫 choose 😅🎈🔫 😅🔅🔫 😅🎊🔫 😅🎉🔫 😅❣🔫 ❗💥☠🔫 - Russian Roulette. Same as the Knife game.

Tools for making advanced aliases

adding examples for each later

  • debug - aliasing the debug command allows you to evaluate arbitrary python code
    • only the bot owner can use aliases with this
  • List Comprehensions
    • looping
    • assignment within an expression - [None for my_var in ["value to put in my_var"]]`
    • filtering with if
  • Conditional Expressions (Ternery Operators) - if/else within expressions
  • lambdas
    • altering scopes
    • awaiting function calls
    • user input - !alias add cmd debug (lambda input: #code) user does !cmd (input)
    • default arguments - (lambda search, page=0, url='www.github.com') users can specifiy different values if they would like
  • open - open files to read/write from/to
  • subprocess - running anything you would in cmd/terminal! (more difficult to use on windows)
    • can even get terminal output by writing stdout to a file then reading in the same expression
  • create_task - running multiple awaited function calls in one expression

For people who somewhat know what they are doing

  • !alias add coglist debug sorted(bot.cogs.keys()) - Displays all of your cogs
  • !alias add postcog debug (lambda fname, ctx=ctx: bot.send_file(ctx.message.channel,"cogs/"+fname+".py")) - Posts a cog to chat. Format: !postcog ('<cogname>') Use for debugging only.

This will seriously break stuff

Only proceed if you know what you are doing, and how to undo things. This will void your support warranty.
This will probably also make it more difficult to update your bot

What this alias will do is allow you to install cogs from github links or discord attachments, but it requires some editing. You shouldn’t really do this, but if you do, and it breaks, it isn’t our fault. You read this disclaimer. Period.

Here we will edit red.py. So y’know, dangerous and all.

You can edit red.py two ways:

  1. open red.py and place import subprocess in with the other imports
  2. for the lazy:
    1. add the import to red2.py: !debug (lambda: open("red2.py", 'w'))().write("import subprocess\n"+"".join(list(open('red.py'))))
    2. overwrite red.py with red2.py: !debug (lambda: open("red.py", 'w'))().write("".join(list(open('red2.py'))))
    3. double check import subprocess is in red.py: !debug "".join(list(open('red.py')))[:500]

You may need to repeat this process when you update your bot, depending on how you update.

Next, type

!alias add install debug (lambda fn_or_url, core_cog=0: 'Installed. Make sure to (re)load the cog.'*int(0==(lambda url: subprocess.call(['wget', '-P', 'cogs', '-N', url]))((lambda c=fn_or_url, co=core_cog: (c.replace('https://github.com/','https://raw.githubusercontent.com/')).replace('/blob','') if '.' in c or '/' in c else 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Twentysix26/Red-DiscordBot/develop/cogs/' +c+'.py' if bool(co) else 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Twentysix26/Red-Cogs/master/cogs'+('/'+c)*2+'.py')())))

To use this command, it’s almost identical to !postcog. Type !install ('<link>'), and load the cog once done.