creating shortcuts to executables on IRIX64 6.5

I'm telnetting into an IRIX 64 server and I'm trying to create shortcuts to emacs, gvim, and other executables that are stored in a certain directory. I tried using the alias command on the command line in the following manner: alias gvim="/usr/.../gvim" alias emacs="/usr/.../emacs" ... but whenever I try this and run emacs/gvim, it still doesn't work. And when I run alias -p, nothing shows up. What am I doing wrong?