How to pass command line arguments to a shell alias?

Just to reiterate what has been posted for other shells, in Bash the following works:

alias blah='function _blah(){ echo "First: $1"; echo "Second: $2"; };_blah'

Running the following:

blah one two

Gives the output below:

First: one
Second: two

You cannot in ksh, but you can in csh.

alias mkcd 'mkdir \!^; cd \!^1'

In ksh, function is the way to go. But if you really really wanted to use alias:

alias mkcd='_(){ mkdir $1; cd $1; }; _'

You found the way: create a function instead of an alias. The C shell has a mechanism for doing arguments to aliases, but bash and the Korn shell don't, because the function mechanism is more flexible and offers the same capability.