Question: In Ubuntu how can I use a shell alias that hasn’t taken effect yet?

Answer: After creating an alias during a session the alias doesn’t take effect often until you logout and log back in, an action which triggers a reparse of the alias file. You can immediately execute your new alias though with the eval command. Here is a brief example that will create a ‘test’ alias and map it to ‘ls’ to show you the current directory:

alias test=ls;eval test