Passing bash argument as string -

i have little , stupid problem..

i'm trying make alias tar , gzip uses file name (given argument), not converting expected filename in output.

my alias is:

alias targz='tar -cvzf $1.tar.gz $1' 

it works, argument stored in $1 not working when setting filename, zips in file called ".tar.gz".

i tried echoing '$1.tar.gz' , output '.tar.gz', so, think should stupid in format.

any welcome,

aliases don't have positional parameters. they're macros (an alias gets replaced text of alias when executed).

you use function:

targz() {   tar -cvzf "$1".tar.gz "$1" } 

or script

#!/bin/bash   tar -cvzf "$1".tar.gz "$1" 

personally, i've been using following script achieve similar goal (comments added convenience):

#!/bin/bash #support multiple args arg in "$@"    #strip ending slash if present (tab-completion adds them)   arg=${arg%/}   #compress pigz (faster on multicore systems)   tar c "$arg" | pigz - > "$arg".tgz  done 

in case want complete version, remove argument directory if tarring , compression succeed (similar gzip individual files)

#!/bin/bash set -o pipefail arg in "$@"    arg=${arg%/}   tar c "$arg" | pigz - > "$arg".tgz && rm -rf "$arg" done 

update: credits @mklement0 more succinct , more efficient stripping of ending slashes.