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(on Wikipedia)
https://fishshell.com/

Why use fish? One word, from the fish design document: discoverability. This is the one thing which has held me back from transitioning my mindset from my old DOS CLI days to the Linux CLI.

• friendly interactive shell

• See also Zsh > zsh syntax highlighting, which is fish-like.

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• mailing list

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• 2008-12-31 - 1.23.0 on PCLinuxOS 2007 updated Jan 2009

2008-12-31 - 1.23.0 ∞

Installation ∞

Download the source .tar.bz2 ∞

wget www.fishshell.org/files/1.23.0/fish-1.23.0.tar.bz2

install dependencies ∞

apt-get install gettext libgettextmisc

This is to get gettext's msgfmt installed.

compile fish ∞

su
tar -xvvjf fish-1.23.0.tar.bz2
cd fish-1.23.0
./configure --without-xsel
make]] && make install

post-compilation installation ∞

su
# Changing the default shell.
echo "/usr/local/bin/fish" >> /etc/shells
chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish user

Configuration ∞

See Configuration

Configuration ∞

This wasn't really completed.. I stopped using Fish.

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Relevant files:

~/.config/fish
/usr/local/share/fish/config.fish

Adding to your PATH when using a login shell:

if status --is-login
  set PATH $PATH ~/linux/bin
end

Run commands when fish exits:

function on_exit --on-process %self
  echo fish is now exiting
end

(This doesn't work with my tests.)

Change the virtual term title:

function fish_title
	echo $_ ' '
	pwd
end

Issues ∞

• xsel -- It's not installed on my system, and I haven't bothered to get it yet. Without it, I suspect the link between the shell and the x-windows clipboard will be broken. It's not a big deal, but it'll be cool to fix later.

• tab completion takes forever on some executables, like cal.

completion ∞

Completion is stated to not be complete. One I'd like is a more sensible cd:

cd <tab>
Desktop/    (Directory in /root)  Pictures/  (Directory in /root)
Documents/  (Directory in /root)  three/         (Directory in .)
Movies/     (Directory in /root)  tmp/       (Directory in /root)
Music/      (Directory in /root)  two/           (Directory in .)
one/            (Directory in .)

This will spit out all the directories in . and my home directory.

I'm expecting it to begin alphabetically from the current directory and cycle back and forth through them.

cd <tab>
cd one
<tab>
cd three
<tab>
cd two
<tab>
cd one
<shift-tab>
cd two

• I'm not sure where to find better help.

• I'm not sure how to make my changes permanent.

keys don't all work ∞

notes:

• control-left / control-right

• home / end and control-home / control-end

  • home / end work when I make a new user that does not have the global variable stuff in fishd.localhost

xev and showkey might help here.

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The bind command is supposed to work. It doesn't seem sane to me. Some documentation:

```
/usr/local/share/doc/fish/index.html#editor
/usr/local/share/doc/fish/commands.html#bind
```

bind --function-names|leafpad&
bind --key-names|leafpad&

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Some of my keys don't work, and some keyboard activities don't work the way I expect.

The built-in documentation isn't doing it for me, and I'm just discovering most of this. I've run into some issues that I'd like another perspective on..

problem 1: ∞

I don't seem to be able to bind the way I expect. Example:

bind -k home beginning-of-line
test string<home>
test string[1~

So when I press <home> I just get [1~ printed.

BUG REPORT? It seems the named keys do not work when the corresponding character sequence is bound to something different. If so, then that is a bug.

It's odd, because I'd had home / end rebound successfully before, by pressing the actual keys during the bind process, like so:

bind <home> beginning-of-line
bind <end> end-of-line

I don't want to do things this way though. What if I have home and end already bound, and next year I want to re-bind them to something new? At that point, I couldn't get the 'home' or 'end' raw characters back. (I vaguely remember a way, but I cannot recall enough to search for it)

Am I forced to use bind's "erase mode" or is there some other solution? How would I do that?

Also, how would I make my bind changes permanent? Is there just some text file that I could edit? That would be easiest.

TODO: make changes to ~/.config/fish/config.fish

problem 2 ∞

On a blank line (new shell), I do this:

<UpArrow>
(previous command)
<control-c>
<UpArrow>
(second-to-previous command)

I am expecting to see the previous command.

I am currently forced to do this:

<UpArrow>
(previous command)
<control-c>
<Enter>
<UpArrow>
(previous command)

I very regularly press control-c to blank the line, and I want to avoid needing to press enter.

Instead of control-c, I could use control-u but that's not optimal as it will begin to insert junk in my clipboard, and it's not fast or easy to do with one hand.

problem 3 ∞

I bound home to beginning-of-line, and I want it to work when looking at the history.

This is what I see:

echo this is a test
this is a test
<UpArrow>
echo this is a test <Home>

So when viewing the command history and pressing <home> it wipes out the line.

I am expecting it to move my cursor to the beginning of the line.

I am forced to press up, then add a space, then press home. I want to just have home go to the beginning of the line.

TODO: this is a keybinding issue I think.

xterm still runs bash ∞

Setting the default shell to fish won't work with xterm. I'm using this command from an Openbox hotkey:

xterm -fn 9x15 -bg black -fg gray -sl 10000 -geometry 80x24+0+0

I solved it with this:

xterm -fn 9x15 -bg black -fg gray -sl 10000 -geometry 80x24+0+0 -exec fish

"help" doesn't work at the real CLI ∞

I cannot run help at the real CLI outside of X. It says:

kdeinit: Aborting.  is not set.
DCOPRef::call():  no DCOP client or client not attached error
WARNING: DCOPReply<>: cast to 'QCString' error

documentation ∞

help difference
The file or folder /usr/local/share/doc/fish/difference.html does not exist.

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near /usr/local/share/doc/fish/index.html#editor

If the environment variable DISPLAY is set, fish will try to connect to the X-windows server specified by this variable, and use the clipboard on the X server for copying and pasting.

Should this also mention xsel being needed for this?

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near /usr/local/share/doc/fish/index.html#editor

On startup, fish evaluates the files /usr/share/fish/config.fish (Or /usr/local/fish... if you installed fish in /usr/local)

Not true, it's /usr/local/share/fish on my system.

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bottom of /usr/local/share/doc/fish/index.html has a typo:

There have been stray reports of issues with strang values of the PATH variable during startup.
=>
There have been stray reports of issues with strange values of the PATH variable during startup.

Review ∞

What the hell is a .fish file? Sigh.

/usr/local/share/fish/config.fish
=>
/usr/local/share/fish/config

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• An auto-logout feature is on their possible features list: /usr/local/share/doc/fish/index.html

Fish vs Bash ∞

(Bash)

A lot of things destroy the compatibility that I require, forcing me to keep bash so that I can cut-and-paste simple scripts into the commandline.

• command isn't used. Uses (command).
• I can't use wget and paste a valid URL which has a ? in it. Maybe I have to quote it?

• ...

Last updated 2024-10-12 at 13:30:18