.bash_profile shortcut to reverse a string

Question

[johan]

I found this little code which I put in a .bash_profile file

lenFunc() {
  echo ${#1}
}

alias len=lenFunc

Typing actg in terminal outputs 4.

I then learned that echo actg|rev outputs gtca. However, I have troubles creating an alias from it.

Neither of these two works for me:

alias revFunc() {
 echo ${#1}|rev
}

alias rev=renFunc

and

alias rev='echo "$1"|rev'

Help is appreciated!

(bonus: if anyone knows a way I can upgrade and also have a "revcom" command for reverse complementary I'll give you a virtual hug)

I run macOS if it matters.

Answer 1

[ATpoint]

Why did you put an alias before the function declaration?

It should be

revFunc() {
  echo ${1} | rev 
}

## => also removed the # inside {1} as yu want to print rather than count the input.

alias REV=revFunc

## gives:
REV 1234
> 4321

Also, avoid alias names that are identical to existing system commands like rev, use REV, myrev or similar instead. There was also a typo: alias rev=renFunc was re=>N<=Func instead of re=>V<=Func

For reverse complements, see e.g. fasta - reverse complement sequence or a super-simple https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com/questions/7458/what-is-a-quick-way-to-find-the-reverse-complement-in-bash which would then be

revComp() {
  echo $1 | tr ACGTacgt TGCAtgca | rev 
}
revComp AAAACCTG
>CAGGTTTT

[johan]

Thanks for the quick reply! Works perfectly.

Answer 2

[rizoic]

You just need to remove the alias in your function and change the first argument to $1 as you are not interested in the length i.e. $#1

revFunc() {
      echo ${1}|rev
}

For reverse compliment you can change the function to be

revComp() {
      echo ${1}|tr "[ATGCatgc]" "[TACGtacg]"|rev
}

[Ram]

Hi rizoic,

Our editor does not support language specification in markdown code blocks yet, which is why your code block was not exposed to syntax highlighting. I have removed the language specification for now. Thank you for exposing this bug!

[johan]

Thanks for the quick reply! Works perfectly.