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To: Zsh Users <zsh-users@zsh.org>
From: Ray Andrews <rayandrews@eastlink.ca>
Subject: alias hygiene
Message-id: <1679a1e0-f716-e501-c4c2-f7e485f9701f@eastlink.ca>
Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2018 08:09:42 -0800
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     [ some test ] && alias _grep="egrep --color=always  "$string""
                             || alias _grep="egrep --color=always 
"^|$1|$string""

... the alias will end up downstream from a pipe which is why there's no 
filespec.

Is that sort of thing sanitary?  It seems to work and it's simpler than 
making a function call but it makes me feel queasy. I'd like to use one 
line after cobbling together the argument string based on the test, but 
"^|$1|$string"   is only understandable to egrep so we can't pre-digest 
it.  It seems I need the two lines.   I'm leery of some gotcha, but it 
seems ok so far.