As jstimpfle mentioned, that doesn't work, which is why the argument is left off the alias. In general, you can do that in a function instead of an alias:

As jstimpfle mentioned, that doesn't work, which is why the argument is left off the alias. In general, you can do that in a function instead of an alias: lsr() { find . -name "$1" } Wrapping variable expansion with double quotes is a good habit, so spaces are handled properly. Also, if you are using a modern-ish bash, you almost always want to use "$@" when there could be multiple arguments. The double-quoted @ special variable is guaranteed to always expand as multiple args, but with spaces handled correctly: foo() { bar --quux=42 "$@" } foo "a b c" "Spaces in my filename.txt"