You might be better off using a .ssh/config file, as in this tutorial: http://fabien.potencier.org/article/19/quick-ssh-tip http://fabien.potencier.org/article

You might be better off using a .ssh/config file, as in this tutorial: http://fabien.potencier.org/article/19/quick-ssh-tip http://fabien.potencier.org/article/19/quick-ssh-tip It saves about as many keystrokes, also works in scp, and won't clutter up your shell dotfiles.