If you’re a Ruby on Rails developer, you probably type the words ‘bundle exec’ numerous times a day. I finally got tired of it and decided to do something about it.

In the context of keeping it simple, I use the ‘alias’ command and add to my .profile. I know there are more Rails recommended ways of solving this problem via binstubs but I rather not use that approach.

My solution is simple, add an alias to my .profile like this:

alias be='bundle exec '

Keen observers will notice the trailing space after the command. This space allows for alias chaining and can be helpful.

The resulting shortcut allows this:

bundle exec rspec

To this:

be rspec

The ‘alias’ command is super useful and has many applications to help remove repetitive typing tasks.