When using the 'alias' command without parameters, or with the '-p' parameter, a list of aliases is displayed. This list has the form:
alias name='value' 'help alias' states that this form is 'reusable', thus implying, if I understand it correctly, that it can be fed back to bash. But that's not always the case. I have an alias called '-' that resolves to 'cd -'. This alias needs to be entered as follows: alias -- -='cd -' However, it is output by the 'alias' command as: alias -='cd -' And when that line is input to bash, it produces an error: bash: alias: -=: invalid option alias: usage: alias [-p] [name[=value] ... ] This can be easily fixed with sed to ensure the output is compatible with bash: alias -p | sed 's/^alias -/alias -- -/' Therefore, either the docs need to be fixed (by adding a caveat, perhaps suggesting the 'sed' workaround, or by omitting 'reusable'), or the output of 'alias -p' should include '--' when the alias name starts with '-'.
