Well, there's the simpler answer of "Get a better shell (or learn the complete features of your shell)". That avoids the need for what you want to begin with.

Zsh and bash both should support <( list ) and >( list ) forms of redirection which will pass the name of a FIFO connected to the output of (or input to, for the second form) of the commands in list. Zsh goes one further and provides =( list ) which makes an actual tmpfile-on-disk which is transparently removed when the whole pipeline exits (which is handy for things which may not play nice with a FIFO as input and really want a real file).

Update: And according to the man page for pdksh on my OS X (10.4.8) box it understands the <( list ) and >( list ) constructs as well. No such luck for tcsh, but then if you're still using it you deserve all the pain you're asking for by doing so. :)

In reply to Re: spawning shell commands with aliases by Fletch
in thread spawning shell commands with aliases by xafwodahs

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