Zsh

2009-04-21
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Software > Scripting Languages >

(on Wikipedia)
https://www.zsh.org/

A shell.

Though not usually available for a Linux distribution, it's exceptionally powerful enough that I insist upon it.

  • aka Z shell

Note that you will find a lot of example and working code on GitHub:

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Table of Contents [hide]

2016-03-28 - 5.0.2 ∞

zsh 5.0.2 (i486-slackware-linux-gnu)

I installed this with slpkg:

\slpkg  -s sbo  zsh

2016-03-26 - 5.0.2 ∞

zsh 5.0.2 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)

I installed this with Lubuntu's package manager.

(no particular notes were written)

2009-07-18 - 4.3.9 ∞

TODO: - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Zsh [ 1 ] was https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Zsh

Everything worked fine out of the box, except for the home/end bindings. I had to change them:

# home
bindkey '^[[1~' beginning-of-line
# end
bindkey '^[[4~' end-of-line

It also turned out that most of the other customizations I did really were not needed, so I commented them out.

2009-04-21 - 4.3.9 ∞

Tested 2009-04-21 through to 2009-07-18

  • 2009-04-21: Holy crap, Sourceforge is still stuck at 4.2.7, released between 2005-12-05 (4.2.6) and 2006-02-28 (4.3.1).

    • A news entry for 4.2.7 didn't get released at https://zsh.sourceforge.io/News/ [ 2 ] was http://zsh.sourceforge.net/News/
  • I had to check https://www.zsh.org/pub/ for it.
  • https://zsh.sourceforge.io/News/ [ 3 ] was http://zsh.sourceforge.net/News/ doesn't include this. =/

  • omg, a first-run welcome and walkthrough! Re-run it with:

zsh  Scripts/newuser

--

HISTFILE=~/.zsh/histfile

  • Configuring tab completion:

autoload -Uz compinstall
compinstall

  • I'm allowing the shell to choose my keybindings. This might be a bad idea.

setopt autocd
setopt appendhistory
setopt nomatch
unsetopt beep
setopt notify

The result was this ~/.zshrc

~/.zshrc 

# Lines configured by zsh-newuser-install
HISTFILE=~/.zsh/histfile
HISTSIZE=1000
SAVEHIST=1000
setopt appendhistory autocd nomatch notify
unsetopt beep
# End of lines configured by zsh-newuser-install
# The following lines were added by compinstall
zstyle :compinstall filename '/home/user/.zshrc'

autoload -Uz compinit
compinit
# End of lines added by compinstall

Untangling all the config files 

cd ~/
mkdir ~/.zsh

echo "# /etc/zshenv is the 1st file zsh reads; it's read for every shell, even if started with -f (setopt NO_RCS)" >> ~/.zsh/1-every.sh
echo "# ~/.zshenv is the same, except that it's _not_ read if zsh is started with -f" >> ~/.zsh/1-every.sh
ln -s ~/.zsh/1-every.sh ~/.zshenv

echo "# /etc/zprofile and ~/.zprofile - read after zshenv, if the shell is a login shell" >> ~/.zsh/2-login.sh
ln -s ~/.zsh/2-login.sh ~/.zprofile

mv ~/.zshrc ~/.zsh/3-interactive.sh
echo "# " >> ~/.zsh/3-interactive.sh
echo "# /etc/zshrc and ~/.zshrc - read after zprofile, if the shell is an interactive shell" >> ~/.zsh/3-interactive.sh
ln -s ~/.zsh/3-interactive.sh ~/.zshrc

echo "# /etc/zlogin and ~/.zlogin - read after zshrc, if the shell is a login shell" >> ~/.zsh/4-login.sh
ln -s ~/.zsh/4-login.sh ~/.zlogin

echo "# /etc/zlogout and ~/.zlogout - Note, that for Shutdown files, the order is different to Startup files: first the per-user file is read, then the global one." >> ~/.zsh/shutdown.sh
ln -s ~/.zsh/shutdown.sh ~/.zlogout

echo "# I don't know what this is.." >> ~/.zsh/zcompdump.sh
mv ~/.zcompdump ~/.zsh/zcompdump.sh
ln -s ~/.zsh/zcompdump.sh ~/.zcompdump

zsh

  • Aliases are not sane. no colour ls.

  • Allow the user to paste into the console, and allow the # to comment things. DUH.

setopt INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS
key bindings 

# key bindings
typeset -g -A key
# backspace
# TODO - `alt-backspace` and `control-backspace` are both the same!
# So maybe somehow rig a function up to the backspace key to see if alt/ctrl were held down?
bindkey '^?' backward-delete-char
# delete
bindkey '^[[3~' delete-char
# left
bindkey '^[[D' backward-char
# right
bindkey '^[[C' forward-char 
# home
bindkey '^[[1~' beginning-of-line
# end
bindkey '^[[4~' end-of-line
# up
bindkey '^[[A' up-line-or-history
# down
bindkey '^[[B' down-line-or-history
# pageup (matching history)
bindkey '^[[5~' up-line-or-search
# pagedown (matching history)
bindkey '^[[6~' down-line-or-search
# control-left
bindkey '^[[1;5D' backward-word
# control-right
bindkey '^[[1;5C' forward-word

A basic prompt, in my ~/.zshrc put:

autoload -U promptinit && promptinit
prompt suse

A nicer prompt:

Bash had:

PS1="\w\[\e[34;1m\] > \[\e[0m\]"

zsh has:

PS1=%~$'%{\e[34;1m%} > %{\e[0m%}'

also, you can be more cool like this:

autoload -U colors && colors
PS1="%{$fg[red]%}%n%{$reset_color%}@%{$fg[blue]%}%m %{$fg[yellow]%}%~ %{$reset_color%}%% "

I have NO FREAKING CLUE how to do attribute changing. Nobody else does either.

  • If playing around with stuff, restart zsh with: exec zsh

  • Fix the title, add this to ~/.zshrc:

# Update the title of an xterm
chpwd() {
  [[ -t 1 ]] || return
  case $TERM in
    sun-cmd) print -Pn "\e]l%~\e\\"
    ;;
    *xterm*|rxvt|(dt|k|E)term) print -Pn "\e]2;%~\a"
    ;;
  esac
}
# And force the title to update on startup
chpwd

Changing my default shell:

su
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/zsh user

Then log out (restart X) for it to be effective.

Notes ∞

You probably don't want .zshrc to produce output, either, since there are occasions when this can be a problem, such as when using rsh from another host.

See this https://zsh.sourceforge.io/FAQ/zshfaq03.html#321 [ 4 ] was http://zsh.sourceforge.net/FAQ/zshfaq03.html#321 to see what I should put in .zshrc to save my history.

Tab completion ∞

pressing tab on a blank line should cycle through executables in the current directory

  • cd <tab> should cycle through directories in the current directory

  • compctl -g '*.(ps|eps)' ghostview -- this will limit the ghostview command to tab-complete certain file extensions.

Prompt notes ∞

# Left prompt
PS1='B(%h) %m%#%b'

# Right prompt
RPS1='(%20<...<%~)'

Footnotes

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