The Zsh Pony

The Zsh defaults to a minimalistic configuration which doesn't show the potential behind this powerful and flexible shell. The Zsh pony project provides a list of really hot stuff of what's possible with Zsh.

Grab a fully featured Zsh configuration:

% wget -O .zshrc        https://git.grml.org/f/grml-etc-core/etc/zsh/zshrc

% setopt autocd && /tmp

% setopt append_history share_history histignorealldups

% setopt $OPTION
% man zshoptions

% autoload -U zmv
% touch 1\ 2  3\ 4\ 5
% zmv '* *' '$f:gs/ /_'

% autoload run-help
% echo foo | xargs <esc-h>

and then:

% git commit<esc-h>

or even ('g' being an alias for git and 'co' and git alias for commit):

% g co<esc-h>

Makes find(1) useless for many jobs.

% setopt extendedglob
% rm ../debianpackage(.)   # remove files only
% ls -d *(/)               # list directories only
% ls /etc/*(@)             # list symlinks only
% ls -l *.(png|jpg|gif)    # list pictures only
% ls *(*)                  # list executables only
% ls /etc/**/zsh           # which directories contain 'zsh'?
% ls **/*(-@)              # list dangling symlinks ('**' recurses down directory trees)
% ls foo*~*bar*            # match everything that starts with foo but doesn't contain bar

The e glob qualifier - e.g. to match all files of which file says that they are JPEGs:

% ls *(e:'file $REPLY | grep -q JPEG':)

• (#s) or (#e) for what ^ and $ are in regexps (beginning of line/end of line)
• (#b) or (#m) to enable backreferences
• (#i) to match case insensitive
• (#a) to match approximately (certain errors are ignored, e.g. "(#a1)foo*" matches the string "ofobar")

Tip: run e.g. `ls *(<tab>` to get help regarding globbing.

% autoload -U promptinit
% promptinit
% prompt fire
% prompt <tab>

autoload -Uz vcs_info
precmd() {
  psvar=()
  vcs_info
  [[ -n $vcs_info_msg_0_ ]] && psvar[1]="$vcs_info_msg_0_"
}
PS1="%m%(1v.%F{green}%1v%f.)%# "

% hash -d doc=/usr/share/doc
% cd ~doc
% hash -d deb=/var/cache/apt/archives
% sudo dpkg -i ~deb/foobar*deb

% vared PATH

Supports csh style bang history expansion.

% history  # last 16 events
% history -E 0  # all history events including date/time information
% !23      # Re-execute history command 23
% !!       # The last command.
% !$       # Last word of the last command.
% !-2      # The last but one command.
% !-2$     # The last word of the command before the last command.
% !#$      # The last word of the current command line.
% !#0      # The first word of the current command line.
% !?foo    # The last command that matches the pattern `foo'.
% !?foo?1  # The second word of the last command line that matches `foo'.

…and that's really just the start. History expansion is extremely versatile and powerful - but also a bit cryptic for the untrained eye. Practice, young padawan, makes perfect. .o( man zshexpn | less -p '^HISTO.*ANSION$' )

% mkdir -p /tmp/linux-2.6.3{8,9}/demo
% cd /tmp/linux-2.6.38/demo
% cd 38 <tab>

% echo foo
% ^foo^bar

% echo foo_bar
% echo !$:s/foo/baz/

% alias -s txt=vim
% foobar.txt
% alias -s pdf=xpdf
% print.pdf

% cd -<tab>

1. Q: How to I get a listing of all my currently in use options?

   Answer:

     setopt ksh_option_print && setopt
   
   or:
   
     printf '%s=%s\n' "${(@kv)options}"
   

2. Q: Why do I get "zsh: command not found:" even though I just installed the program?

   Answer: execute:

   % rehash
   

   or use completion system as provided by grml-zshrc (completion will rehash automatically).

3. Q: What's this strange word splitting thing?

   Answer: see http://zsh.sourceforge.net/FAQ/zshfaq03.html

   % var="foo bar"
   % args() { echo $#; }
   % args $var
   1
   % setopt shwordsplit
   % args $var
   2
   

1. Zsh Homepage: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/
2. Zsh Wiki: http://zshwiki.org
3. Zsh Manpages: man zshall
4. Zsh Reference Card: http://www.bash2zsh.com/zsh_refcard/refcard.pdf
5. User's Guide to ZSH: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/ (old but still interesting)
6. Zsh Talk by caphuso: http://ft.bewatermyfriend.org/comp/zshtalk.html
7. English Book: http://www.bash2zsh.com/
8. German Book: http://zshbuch.org/
9. Grml's Zsh stuff: http://grml.org/zsh/

Thanks to Frank Terbeck for reviewing and his valuable feedback (which isn't limited to this document :)).

(c) 2011 by Michael Prokop <mika@grml.org>