locally created alias not being used if called using backticks (`)

Question

I have come across this issue while trying to build up a script to do grep on multiple files for 10 different word.

The script I created, is (minified)

#!bin/bash
alias grep='grep -n'
out=`grep word $1`

Output

some text word  
some other text word more text

The grep does work, but the alias is not being considered. It just outputs the matching lines and not the line numbers (-n is for line numbers)

and now if i run the below, it works fine

#!bin/bash
out=`grep -n word $1`

Output and the expected output from above script:

233: some text word  
532: some other text word more text

I have grep statement at many places in the script, and i don't want to go and edit each line. I am looking to override the grep once by aliasing it, but it doesn't seem to be working.

What could be the issue here? How can i make the alias work?

Answer 1

You forgot this line:

shopt -s expand_aliases

e.g.

#!/bin/bash
shopt -s expand_aliases
alias grep='grep -n'
out=$(grep word "$1")
echo "$out"

Answer 2

The problem is that you made an alias for your actual shell. When you use backticks (or $(...)), you run a sub-shell which ignores your alias (AFAIK aliases can't be exported, so you'd have to re-define them in the sub-shell).

In your case, maybe the best approach would be to set a variable containing the command. Say:

MY_GREP="grep -n"
out=`${MY_GREP} word $1`