1ZSHALL(1) General Commands Manual ZSHALL(1)
2
6 zshall - the Z shell meta-man page
7
9 Because zsh contains many features, the zsh manual has been split into
10 a number of sections. This manual page includes all the separate man‐
11 ual pages in the following order:
12 zshroadmap Informal introduction to the manual
14 zshmisc Anything not fitting into the other sections
15 zshexpn Zsh command and parameter expansion
16 zshparam Zsh parameters
17 zshoptions Zsh options
18 zshbuiltins Zsh built-in functions
19 zshzle Zsh command line editing
20 zshcompwid Zsh completion widgets
21 zshcompsys Zsh completion system
22 zshcompctl Zsh completion control
23 zshmodules Zsh loadable modules
24 zshcalsys Zsh built-in calendar functions
25 zshtcpsys Zsh built-in TCP functions
26 zshzftpsys Zsh built-in FTP client
27 zshcontrib Additional zsh functions and utilities
28
30 Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter (shell) usable as an interactive
31 login shell and as a shell script command processor. Of the standard
32 shells, zsh most closely resembles ksh but includes many enhancements.
33 It does not provide compatibility with POSIX or other shells in its
34 default operating mode: see the section Compatibility below.
35 Zsh has command line editing, builtin spelling correction, programmable
37 command completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a history mech‐
38 anism, and a host of other features.
39
41 Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pf@zsh.org>. Zsh is now
42 maintained by the members of the zsh-workers mailing list <zsh-work‐
43 ers@zsh.org>. The development is currently coordinated by Peter
44 Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. The coordinator can be contacted at <coordi‐
45 nator@zsh.org>, but matters relating to the code should generally go to
46 the mailing list.
47
49 Zsh is available from the following HTTP and anonymous FTP site.
50 ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/
52 https://www.zsh.org/pub/
53 )
54 The up-to-date source code is available via Git from Sourceforge. See
56 https://sourceforge.net/projects/zsh/ for details. A summary of
57 instructions for the archive can be found at http://zsh.source‐
58 forge.net/.
59
61 Zsh has 3 mailing lists:
62 <zsh-announce@zsh.org>
64 Announcements about releases, major changes in the shell and the
65 monthly posting of the Zsh FAQ. (moderated)
66 <zsh-users@zsh.org>
68 User discussions.
69 <zsh-workers@zsh.org>
71 Hacking, development, bug reports and patches.
72 To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to the associated administrative
74 address for the mailing list.
75 <zsh-announce-subscribe@zsh.org>
77 <zsh-users-subscribe@zsh.org>
78 <zsh-workers-subscribe@zsh.org>
79 <zsh-announce-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
80 <zsh-users-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
81 <zsh-workers-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
82 YOU ONLY NEED TO JOIN ONE OF THE MAILING LISTS AS THEY ARE NESTED. All
84 submissions to zsh-announce are automatically forwarded to zsh-users.
85 All submissions to zsh-users are automatically forwarded to zsh-work‐
86 ers.
87 If you have problems subscribing/unsubscribing to any of the mailing
89 lists, send mail to <listmaster@zsh.org>. The mailing lists are main‐
90 tained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@kom.auc.dk>.
91 The mailing lists are archived; the archives can be accessed via the
93 administrative addresses listed above. There is also a hypertext ar‐
94 chive, maintained by Geoff Wing <gcw@zsh.org>, available at
95 https://www.zsh.org/mla/.
96
98 Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), maintained by Peter
99 Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. It is regularly posted to the newsgroup
100 comp.unix.shell and the zsh-announce mailing list. The latest version
101 can be found at any of the Zsh FTP sites, or at
102 http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/. The contact address for FAQ-related matters
103 is <faqmaster@zsh.org>.
104
106 Zsh has a web page which is located at https://www.zsh.org/. This is
107 maintained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@zsh.org>, of SunSITE Denmark.
108 The contact address for web-related matters is <webmaster@zsh.org>.
109
111 A userguide is currently in preparation. It is intended to complement
112 the manual, with explanations and hints on issues where the manual can
113 be cabbalistic, hierographic, or downright mystifying (for example, the
114 word `hierographic' does not exist). It can be viewed in its current
115 state at http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/. At the time of writing,
116 chapters dealing with startup files and their contents and the new com‐
117 pletion system were essentially complete.
118
120 The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked to deter‐
121 mine where the shell will read commands from:
122 -c Take the first argument as a command to execute, rather than
124 reading commands from a script or standard input. If any fur‐
125 ther arguments are given, the first one is assigned to $0,
126 rather than being used as a positional parameter.
127 -i Force shell to be interactive. It is still possible to specify
129 a script to execute.
130 -s Force shell to read commands from the standard input. If the -s
132 flag is not present and an argument is given, the first argument
133 is taken to be the pathname of a script to execute.
134 If there are any remaining arguments after option processing, and nei‐
136 ther of the options -c or -s was supplied, the first argument is taken
137 as the file name of a script containing shell commands to be executed.
138 If the option PATH_SCRIPT is set, and the file name does not contain a
139 directory path (i.e. there is no `/' in the name), first the current
140 directory and then the command path given by the variable PATH are
141 searched for the script. If the option is not set or the file name
142 contains a `/' it is used directly.
143 After the first one or two arguments have been appropriated as
145 described above, the remaining arguments are assigned to the positional
146 parameters.
147 For further options, which are common to invocation and the set
149 builtin, see zshoptions(1).
150 The long option `--emulate' followed (in a separate word) by an emula‐
152 tion mode may be passed to the shell. The emulation modes are those
153 described for the emulate builtin, see zshbuiltins(1). The `--emulate'
154 option must precede any other options (which might otherwise be over‐
155 ridden), but following options are honoured, so may be used to modify
156 the requested emulation mode. Note that certain extra steps are taken
157 to ensure a smooth emulation when this option is used compared with the
158 emulate command within the shell: for example, variables that conflict
159 with POSIX usage such as path are not defined within the shell.
160 Options may be specified by name using the -o option. -o acts like a
162 single-letter option, but takes a following string as the option name.
163 For example,
164 zsh -x -o shwordsplit scr
166 runs the script scr, setting the XTRACE option by the corresponding
168 letter `-x' and the SH_WORD_SPLIT option by name. Options may be
169 turned off by name by using +o instead of -o. -o can be stacked up
170 with preceding single-letter options, so for example `-xo shwordsplit'
171 or `-xoshwordsplit' is equivalent to `-x -o shwordsplit'.
172 Options may also be specified by name in GNU long option style,
174 `--option-name'. When this is done, `-' characters in the option name
175 are permitted: they are translated into `_', and thus ignored. So, for
176 example, `zsh --sh-word-split' invokes zsh with the SH_WORD_SPLIT
177 option turned on. Like other option syntaxes, options can be turned
178 off by replacing the initial `-' with a `+'; thus `+-sh-word-split' is
179 equivalent to `--no-sh-word-split'. Unlike other option syntaxes,
180 GNU-style long options cannot be stacked with any other options, so for
181 example `-x-shwordsplit' is an error, rather than being treated like
182 `-x --shwordsplit'.
183 The special GNU-style option `--version' is handled; it sends to stan‐
185 dard output the shell's version information, then exits successfully.
186 `--help' is also handled; it sends to standard output a list of options
187 that can be used when invoking the shell, then exits successfully.
188 Option processing may be finished, allowing following arguments that
190 start with `-' or `+' to be treated as normal arguments, in two ways.
191 Firstly, a lone `-' (or `+') as an argument by itself ends option pro‐
192 cessing. Secondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'), which may be spec‐
193 ified on its own (which is the standard POSIX usage) or may be stacked
194 with preceding options (so `-x-' is equivalent to `-x --'). Options
195 are not permitted to be stacked after `--' (so `-x-f' is an error), but
196 note the GNU-style option form discussed above, where `--shwordsplit'
197 is permitted and does not end option processing.
198 Except when the sh/ksh emulation single-letter options are in effect,
200 the option `-b' (or `+b') ends option processing. `-b' is like `--',
201 except that further single-letter options can be stacked after the `-b'
202 and will take effect as normal.
203
205 Zsh tries to emulate sh or ksh when it is invoked as sh or ksh respec‐
206 tively; more precisely, it looks at the first letter of the name by
207 which it was invoked, excluding any initial `r' (assumed to stand for
208 `restricted'), and if that is `b', `s' or `k' it will emulate sh or
209 ksh. Furthermore, if invoked as su (which happens on certain systems
210 when the shell is executed by the su command), the shell will try to
211 find an alternative name from the SHELL environment variable and per‐
212 form emulation based on that.
213 In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters are not spe‐
215 cial and not initialized by the shell: ARGC, argv, cdpath, fignore,
216 fpath, HISTCHARS, mailpath, MANPATH, manpath, path, prompt, PROMPT,
217 PROMPT2, PROMPT3, PROMPT4, psvar, status, watch.
218 The usual zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed. Login shells
220 source /etc/profile followed by $HOME/.profile. If the ENV environment
221 variable is set on invocation, $ENV is sourced after the profile
222 scripts. The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, command
223 substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a
224 pathname. Note that the PRIVILEGED option also affects the execution
225 of startup files.
226 The following options are set if the shell is invoked as sh or ksh:
228 NO_BAD_PATTERN, NO_BANG_HIST, NO_BG_NICE, NO_EQUALS, NO_FUNC‐
229 TION_ARGZERO, GLOB_SUBST, NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT, NO_HUP, INTERACTIVE_COM‐
230 MENTS, KSH_ARRAYS, NO_MULTIOS, NO_NOMATCH, NO_NOTIFY, POSIX_BUILTINS,
231 NO_PROMPT_PERCENT, RM_STAR_SILENT, SH_FILE_EXPANSION, SH_GLOB,
232 SH_OPTION_LETTERS, SH_WORD_SPLIT. Additionally the BSD_ECHO and
233 IGNORE_BRACES options are set if zsh is invoked as sh. Also, the
234 KSH_OPTION_PRINT, LOCAL_OPTIONS, PROMPT_BANG, PROMPT_SUBST and SIN‐
235 GLE_LINE_ZLE options are set if zsh is invoked as ksh.
236
238 When the basename of the command used to invoke zsh starts with the
239 letter `r' or the `-r' command line option is supplied at invocation,
240 the shell becomes restricted. Emulation mode is determined after
241 stripping the letter `r' from the invocation name. The following are
242 disabled in restricted mode:
243 · changing directories with the cd builtin
245 · changing or unsetting the EGID, EUID, GID, HISTFILE, HISTSIZE,
247 IFS, LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_AOUT_PRELOAD, LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
248 LD_PRELOAD, MODULE_PATH, module_path, PATH, path, SHELL, UID and
249 USERNAME parameters
250 · specifying command names containing /
252 · specifying command pathnames using hash
254 · redirecting output to files
256 · using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another
258 command
259 · using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process' argument and envi‐
261 ronment space
262 · using the ARGV0 parameter to override argv[0] for external com‐
264 mands
265 · turning off restricted mode with set +r or unsetopt RESTRICTED
267 These restrictions are enforced after processing the startup files.
269 The startup files should set up PATH to point to a directory of com‐
270 mands which can be safely invoked in the restricted environment. They
271 may also add further restrictions by disabling selected builtins.
272 Restricted mode can also be activated any time by setting the
274 RESTRICTED option. This immediately enables all the restrictions
275 described above even if the shell still has not processed all startup
276 files.
277
279 Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden.
280 Subsequent behaviour is modified by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options; the
281 former affects all startup files, while the second only affects global
282 startup files (those shown here with an path starting with a /). If
283 one of the options is unset at any point, any subsequent startup
284 file(s) of the corresponding type will not be read. It is also possi‐
285 ble for a file in $ZDOTDIR to re-enable GLOBAL_RCS. Both RCS and
286 GLOBAL_RCS are set by default.
287 Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login
289 shell, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zpro‐
290 file. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from
291 /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login
292 shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.
293 When a login shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout and then
295 /etc/zlogout are read. This happens with either an explicit exit via
296 the exit or logout commands, or an implicit exit by reading end-of-file
297 from the terminal. However, if the shell terminates due to exec'ing
298 another process, the logout files are not read. These are also
299 affected by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options. Note also that the RCS
300 option affects the saving of history files, i.e. if RCS is unset when
301 the shell exits, no history file will be saved.
302 If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead. Files listed above as being
304 in /etc may be in another directory, depending on the installation.
305 As /etc/zshenv is run for all instances of zsh, it is important that it
307 be kept as small as possible. In particular, it is a good idea to put
308 code that does not need to be run for every single shell behind a test
309 of the form `if [[ -o rcs ]]; then ...' so that it will not be executed
310 when zsh is invoked with the `-f' option.
311 Any of these files may be pre-compiled with the zcompile builtin com‐
313 mand (see zshbuiltins(1)). If a compiled file exists (named for the
314 original file plus the .zwc extension) and it is newer than the origi‐
315 nal file, the compiled file will be used instead.
316ZSHROADMAP(1) General Commands Manual ZSHROADMAP(1)
320
324 zshroadmap - informal introduction to the zsh manual The Zsh Manual,
325 like the shell itself, is large and often complicated. This section of
326 the manual provides some pointers to areas of the shell that are likely
327 to be of particular interest to new users, and indicates where in the
328 rest of the manual the documentation is to be found.
329
331 When it starts, the shell reads commands from various files. These can
332 be created or edited to customize the shell. See the section
333 Startup/Shutdown Files in zsh(1).
334 If no personal initialization files exist for the current user, a func‐
336 tion is run to help you change some of the most common settings. It
337 won't appear if your administrator has disabled the zsh/newuser module.
338 The function is designed to be self-explanatory. You can run it by
339 hand with `autoload -Uz zsh-newuser-install; zsh-newuser-install -f'.
340 See also the section User Configuration Functions in zshcontrib(1).
341
343 Interaction with the shell uses the builtin Zsh Line Editor, ZLE. This
344 is described in detail in zshzle(1).
345 The first decision a user must make is whether to use the Emacs or Vi
347 editing mode as the keys for editing are substantially different.
348 Emacs editing mode is probably more natural for beginners and can be
349 selected explicitly with the command bindkey -e.
350 A history mechanism for retrieving previously typed lines (most simply
352 with the Up or Down arrow keys) is available; note that, unlike other
353 shells, zsh will not save these lines when the shell exits unless you
354 set appropriate variables, and the number of history lines retained by
355 default is quite small (30 lines). See the description of the shell
356 variables (referred to in the documentation as parameters) HISTFILE,
357 HISTSIZE and SAVEHIST in zshparam(1). Note that it's currently only
358 possible to read and write files saving history when the shell is
359 interactive, i.e. it does not work from scripts.
360 The shell now supports the UTF-8 character set (and also others if sup‐
362 ported by the operating system). This is (mostly) handled transpar‐
363 ently by the shell, but the degree of support in terminal emulators is
364 variable. There is some discussion of this in the shell FAQ,
365 http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/. Note in particular that for combining charac‐
366 ters to be handled the option COMBINING_CHARS needs to be set. Because
367 the shell is now more sensitive to the definition of the character set,
368 note that if you are upgrading from an older version of the shell you
369 should ensure that the appropriate variable, either LANG (to affect all
370 aspects of the shell's operation) or LC_CTYPE (to affect only the han‐
371 dling of character sets) is set to an appropriate value. This is true
372 even if you are using a single-byte character set including extensions
373 of ASCII such as ISO-8859-1 or ISO-8859-15. See the description of
374 LC_CTYPE in zshparam(1).
375 Completion
377 Completion is a feature present in many shells. It allows the user to
378 type only a part (usually the prefix) of a word and have the shell fill
379 in the rest. The completion system in zsh is programmable. For exam‐
380 ple, the shell can be set to complete email addresses in arguments to
381 the mail command from your ~/.abook/addressbook; usernames, hostnames,
382 and even remote paths in arguments to scp, and so on. Anything that
383 can be written in or glued together with zsh can be the source of what
384 the line editor offers as possible completions.
385 Zsh has two completion systems, an old, so called compctl completion
387 (named after the builtin command that serves as its complete and only
388 user interface), and a new one, referred to as compsys, organized as
389 library of builtin and user-defined functions. The two systems differ
390 in their interface for specifying the completion behavior. The new
391 system is more customizable and is supplied with completions for many
392 commonly used commands; it is therefore to be preferred.
393 The completion system must be enabled explicitly when the shell starts.
395 For more information see zshcompsys(1).
396 Extending the line editor
398 Apart from completion, the line editor is highly extensible by means of
399 shell functions. Some useful functions are provided with the shell;
400 they provide facilities such as:
401 insert-composed-char
403 composing characters not found on the keyboard
404 match-words-by-style
406 configuring what the line editor considers a word when moving or
407 deleting by word
408 history-beginning-search-backward-end, etc.
410 alternative ways of searching the shell history
411 replace-string, replace-pattern
413 functions for replacing strings or patterns globally in the com‐
414 mand line
415 edit-command-line
417 edit the command line with an external editor.
418 See the section `ZLE Functions' in zshcontrib(1) for descriptions of
420 these.
421
423 The shell has a large number of options for changing its behaviour.
424 These cover all aspects of the shell; browsing the full documentation
425 is the only good way to become acquainted with the many possibilities.
426 See zshoptions(1).
427
429 The shell has a rich set of patterns which are available for file
430 matching (described in the documentation as `filename generation' and
431 also known for historical reasons as `globbing') and for use when pro‐
432 gramming. These are described in the section `Filename Generation' in
433 zshexpn(1).
434 Of particular interest are the following patterns that are not commonly
436 supported by other systems of pattern matching:
437 ** for matching over multiple directories
439 | for matching either of two alternatives
441 ~, ^ the ability to exclude patterns from matching when the
443 EXTENDED_GLOB option is set
444 (...) glob qualifiers, included in parentheses at the end of the pat‐
446 tern, which select files by type (such as directories) or
447 attribute (such as size).
448
450 Although the syntax of zsh is in ways similar to the Korn shell, and
451 therefore more remotely to the original UNIX shell, the Bourne shell,
452 its default behaviour does not entirely correspond to those shells.
453 General shell syntax is introduced in the section `Shell Grammar' in
454 zshmisc(1).
455 One commonly encountered difference is that variables substituted onto
457 the command line are not split into words. See the description of the
458 shell option SH_WORD_SPLIT in the section `Parameter Expansion' in zsh‐
459 expn(1). In zsh, you can either explicitly request the splitting (e.g.
460 ${=foo}) or use an array when you want a variable to expand to more
461 than one word. See the section `Array Parameters' in zshparam(1).
462
464 The most convenient way of adding enhancements to the shell is typi‐
465 cally by writing a shell function and arranging for it to be
466 autoloaded. Functions are described in the section `Functions' in zsh‐
467 misc(1). Users changing from the C shell and its relatives should
468 notice that aliases are less used in zsh as they don't perform argument
469 substitution, only simple text replacement.
470 A few general functions, other than those for the line editor described
472 above, are provided with the shell and are described in zshcontrib(1).
473 Features include:
474 promptinit
476 a prompt theme system for changing prompts easily, see the sec‐
477 tion `Prompt Themes'
478 zsh-mime-setup
481 a MIME-handling system which dispatches commands according to
482 the suffix of a file as done by graphical file managers
483 zcalc a calculator
485 zargs a version of xargs that makes the find command redundant
487 zmv a command for renaming files by means of shell patterns.
489ZSHALL(1) General Commands Manual ZSHALL(1)
493
497 $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
498 $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
499 $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
500 $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin
501 $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout
502 ${TMPPREFIX}* (default is /tmp/zsh*)
503 /etc/zshenv
504 /etc/zprofile
505 /etc/zshrc
506 /etc/zlogin
507 /etc/zlogout (installation-specific - /etc is the default)
508
510 sh(1), csh(1), tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1)
511 IEEE Standard for information Technology - Portable Operating System
513 Interface (POSIX) - Part 2: Shell and Utilities, IEEE Inc, 1993, ISBN
514 1-55937-255-9.
515zsh 5.7.1 February 3, 2019 ZSHALL(1)