True, but I think that the author did not mean this as a real useful example.
At least for myself, the main benefit of aliases is not to abbreviate the command name, but to change the default command-line options.
I strongly dislike the default command-line options of most UNIX utilities, e.g. cp, mv, rm and the like, so I never invoke them directly, but only through aliases that use what I consider to be the correct default options (for instance I consider that the default for any kind of copy command must be to make an exact copy of the source, instead of losing any part of the original information).
At least for myself, the main benefit of aliases is not to abbreviate the command name, but to change the default command-line options.
I strongly dislike the default command-line options of most UNIX utilities, e.g. cp, mv, rm and the like, so I never invoke them directly, but only through aliases that use what I consider to be the correct default options (for instance I consider that the default for any kind of copy command must be to make an exact copy of the source, instead of losing any part of the original information).