Aliases aren’t available on the same line or in the same function where they are defined. From the Bash man page: The rules concerning the definition and use of aliases are somewhat confusing. Bash always reads at least one complete line of input before executing any of the commands on that line. Aliases are expanded … Read more
This will work in Bash 4: ls -l {,**/}*.ext In order for the double-asterisk glob to work, the globstar option needs to be set (default: on): shopt -s globstar From man bash: globstar If set, the pattern ** used in a filename expansion con‐ text will match a files and zero or more directories and … Read more
The command shopt -s expand_aliases will allow alias expansion in non-interactive shells.
You can stop this behaviour by setting nullglob: shopt -s nullglob From the linked page: nullglob is a Bash shell option which modifies [[glob]] expansion such that patterns that match no files expand to zero arguments, rather than to themselves. You can remove this setting with -u (unset, whereas s is for set): shopt -u … Read more