I want to use both bash alias and bash function with several arguments. I emulate svn sub commands. $ svngrep -nr 'Foo' . $ svn grep -nr 'Foo' . My expectation is both act as below: grep --exclude='*.svn-*' --exclude='entries' -nr 'Foo' . But actual, only alias ('svngrep') does well, function ('svn grep') causes invalid option error. How to write my .bashrc? #~/.bashrc alias svngrep="grep --exclude='*.svn-*' --exclude='entries'" svn() { if [[ $1 == grep ]] then local remains=$(echo $@ | sed -e 's/grep//') command "$svngrep $remains" else command svn "$@" fi }