1ZSH(1) General Commands Manual ZSH(1)
2
6 zsh - the Z shell
7
9 Because zsh contains many features, the zsh manual has been split into
10 a number of sections:
11 zsh Zsh overview (this section)
13 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 zshall Meta-man page containing all of the above
29
31 Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter (shell) usable as an interactive
32 login shell and as a shell script command processor. Of the standard
33 shells, zsh most closely resembles ksh but includes many enhancements.
34 Zsh has command line editing, builtin spelling correction, programmable
35 command completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a history mech‐
36 anism, and a host of other features.
37
39 Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pf@zsh.org>. Zsh is now
40 maintained by the members of the zsh-workers mailing list <zsh-work‐
41 ers@zsh.org>. The development is currently coordinated by Peter
42 Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. The coordinator can be contacted at <coordi‐
43 nator@zsh.org>, but matters relating to the code should generally go to
44 the mailing list.
45
47 Zsh is available from the following anonymous FTP sites. These mirror
48 sites are kept frequently up to date. The sites marked with (H) may be
49 mirroring ftp.cs.elte.hu instead of the primary site.
50 Primary site
52 ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
53 http://www.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
54 Australia
56 ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
57 http://www.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
58 Finland
60 ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
61 Germany
63 ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/unix/shells/zsh/ (H)
64 ftp://ftp.gmd.de/packages/zsh/
65 ftp://ftp.uni-trier.de/pub/unix/shell/zsh/
66 Hungary
68 ftp://ftp.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
69 http://www.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
70 ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/packages/zsh/
71 Israel
73 ftp://ftp.math.technion.ac.il/pub/zsh/
74 http://www.math.technion.ac.il/pub/zsh/
75 Japan
77 ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/shell/zsh/
78 Korea
80 ftp://linux.sarang.net/mirror/system/shell/zsh/
81 Netherlands
83 ftp://ftp.demon.nl/pub/mirrors/zsh/
84 Norway
86 ftp://ftp.uit.no/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
87 Poland
89 ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
90 Romania
92 ftp://ftp.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
93 ftp://ftp.kappa.ro/pub/mirrors/ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
94 Slovenia
96 ftp://ftp.siol.net/mirrors/zsh/
97 Sweden
99 ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/unix/zsh/
100 UK
102 ftp://ftp.net.lut.ac.uk/zsh/
103 ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/zsh/
104 USA
106 http://zsh.open-mirror.com/
107 The up-to-date source code is available via anonymous CVS and Git from
109 Sourceforge. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/zsh/ for details. A
110 summary of instructions for the CVS and Git archives can be found at
111 http://zsh.sourceforget.net/.
112
114 Zsh has 3 mailing lists:
115 <zsh-announce@zsh.org>
117 Announcements about releases, major changes in the shell and the
118 monthly posting of the Zsh FAQ. (moderated)
119 <zsh-users@zsh.org>
121 User discussions.
122 <zsh-workers@zsh.org>
124 Hacking, development, bug reports and patches.
125 To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to the associated administrative
127 address for the mailing list.
128 <zsh-announce-subscribe@zsh.org>
130 <zsh-users-subscribe@zsh.org>
131 <zsh-workers-subscribe@zsh.org>
132 <zsh-announce-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
133 <zsh-users-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
134 <zsh-workers-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
135 YOU ONLY NEED TO JOIN ONE OF THE MAILING LISTS AS THEY ARE NESTED. All
137 submissions to zsh-announce are automatically forwarded to zsh-users.
138 All submissions to zsh-users are automatically forwarded to zsh-work‐
139 ers.
140 If you have problems subscribing/unsubscribing to any of the mailing
142 lists, send mail to <listmaster@zsh.org>. The mailing lists are main‐
143 tained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@kom.auc.dk>.
144 The mailing lists are archived; the archives can be accessed via the
146 administrative addresses listed above. There is also a hypertext ar‐
147 chive, maintained by Geoff Wing <gcw@zsh.org>, available at
148 http://www.zsh.org/mla/.
149
151 Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), maintained by Peter
152 Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. It is regularly posted to the newsgroup
153 comp.unix.shell and the zsh-announce mailing list. The latest version
154 can be found at any of the Zsh FTP sites, or at
155 http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/. The contact address for FAQ-related matters
156 is <faqmaster@zsh.org>.
157
159 Zsh has a web page which is located at http://www.zsh.org/. This is
160 maintained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@zsh.org>, of SunSITE Denmark.
161 The contact address for web-related matters is <webmaster@zsh.org>.
162
164 A userguide is currently in preparation. It is intended to complement
165 the manual, with explanations and hints on issues where the manual can
166 be cabbalistic, hierographic, or downright mystifying (for example, the
167 word `hierographic' does not exist). It can be viewed in its current
168 state at http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/. At the time of writing,
169 chapters dealing with startup files and their contents and the new com‐
170 pletion system were essentially complete.
171
173 A `wiki' website for zsh has been created at http://www.zshwiki.org/.
174 This is a site which can be added to and modified directly by users
175 without any special permission. You can add your own zsh tips and con‐
176 figurations.
177
179 The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked to deter‐
180 mine where the shell will read commands from:
181 -c Take the first argument as a command to execute, rather than
183 reading commands from a script or standard input. If any fur‐
184 ther arguments are given, the first one is assigned to $0,
185 rather than being used as a positional parameter.
186 -i Force shell to be interactive. It is still possible to specify
188 a script to execute.
189 -s Force shell to read commands from the standard input. If the -s
191 flag is not present and an argument is given, the first argument
192 is taken to be the pathname of a script to execute.
193 If there are any remaining arguments after option processing, and nei‐
195 ther of the options -c or -s was supplied, the first argument is taken
196 as the file name of a script containing shell commands to be executed.
197 If the option PATH_SCRIPT is set, and the file name does not contain a
198 directory path (i.e. there is no `/' in the name), first the current
199 directory and then the command path given by the variable PATH are
200 searched for the script. If the option is not set or the file name
201 contains a `/' it is used directly.
202 After the first one or two arguments have been appropriated as
204 described above, the remaining arguments are assigned to the positional
205 parameters.
206 For further options, which are common to invocation and the set
208 builtin, see zshoptions(1).
209 Options may be specified by name using the -o option. -o acts like a
211 single-letter option, but takes a following string as the option name.
212 For example,
213 zsh -x -o shwordsplit scr
215 runs the script scr, setting the XTRACE option by the corresponding
217 letter `-x' and the SH_WORD_SPLIT option by name. Options may be
218 turned off by name by using +o instead of -o. -o can be stacked up
219 with preceding single-letter options, so for example `-xo shwordsplit'
220 or `-xoshwordsplit' is equivalent to `-x -o shwordsplit'.
221 Options may also be specified by name in GNU long option style,
223 `--option-name'. When this is done, `-' characters in the option name
224 are permitted: they are translated into `_', and thus ignored. So, for
225 example, `zsh --sh-word-split' invokes zsh with the SH_WORD_SPLIT
226 option turned on. Like other option syntaxes, options can be turned
227 off by replacing the initial `-' with a `+'; thus `+-sh-word-split' is
228 equivalent to `--no-sh-word-split'. Unlike other option syntaxes,
229 GNU-style long options cannot be stacked with any other options, so for
230 example `-x-shwordsplit' is an error, rather than being treated like
231 `-x --shwordsplit'.
232 The special GNU-style option `--version' is handled; it sends to stan‐
234 dard output the shell's version information, then exits successfully.
235 `--help' is also handled; it sends to standard output a list of options
236 that can be used when invoking the shell, then exits successfully.
237 Option processing may be finished, allowing following arguments that
239 start with `-' or `+' to be treated as normal arguments, in two ways.
240 Firstly, a lone `-' (or `+') as an argument by itself ends option pro‐
241 cessing. Secondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'), which may be spec‐
242 ified on its own (which is the standard POSIX usage) or may be stacked
243 with preceding options (so `-x-' is equivalent to `-x --'). Options
244 are not permitted to be stacked after `--' (so `-x-f' is an error), but
245 note the GNU-style option form discussed above, where `--shwordsplit'
246 is permitted and does not end option processing.
247 Except when the sh/ksh emulation single-letter options are in effect,
249 the option `-b' (or `+b') ends option processing. `-b' is like `--',
250 except that further single-letter options can be stacked after the `-b'
251 and will take effect as normal.
252
254 Zsh tries to emulate sh or ksh when it is invoked as sh or ksh respec‐
255 tively; more precisely, it looks at the first letter of the name by
256 which it was invoked, excluding any initial `r' (assumed to stand for
257 `restricted'), and if that is `b', `s' or `k' it will emulate sh or
258 ksh. Furthermore, if invoked as su (which happens on certain systems
259 when the shell is executed by the su command), the shell will try to
260 find an alternative name from the SHELL environment variable and per‐
261 form emulation based on that.
262 In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters are not spe‐
264 cial and not initialized by the shell: ARGC, argv, cdpath, fignore,
265 fpath, HISTCHARS, mailpath, MANPATH, manpath, path, prompt, PROMPT,
266 PROMPT2, PROMPT3, PROMPT4, psvar, status, watch.
267 The usual zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed. Login shells
269 source /etc/profile followed by $HOME/.profile. If the ENV environment
270 variable is set on invocation, $ENV is sourced after the profile
271 scripts. The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, command
272 substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a
273 pathname. Note that the PRIVILEGED option also affects the execution
274 of startup files.
275 The following options are set if the shell is invoked as sh or ksh:
277 NO_BAD_PATTERN, NO_BANG_HIST, NO_BG_NICE, NO_EQUALS, NO_FUNC‐
278 TION_ARGZERO, GLOB_SUBST, NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT, NO_HUP, INTERACTIVE_COM‐
279 MENTS, KSH_ARRAYS, NO_MULTIOS, NO_NOMATCH, NO_NOTIFY, POSIX_BUILTINS,
280 NO_PROMPT_PERCENT, RM_STAR_SILENT, SH_FILE_EXPANSION, SH_GLOB,
281 SH_OPTION_LETTERS, SH_WORD_SPLIT. Additionally the BSD_ECHO and
282 IGNORE_BRACES options are set if zsh is invoked as sh. Also, the
283 KSH_OPTION_PRINT, LOCAL_OPTIONS, PROMPT_BANG, PROMPT_SUBST and SIN‐
284 GLE_LINE_ZLE options are set if zsh is invoked as ksh.
285
287 When the basename of the command used to invoke zsh starts with the
288 letter `r' or the `-r' command line option is supplied at invocation,
289 the shell becomes restricted. Emulation mode is determined after
290 stripping the letter `r' from the invocation name. The following are
291 disabled in restricted mode:
292 · changing directories with the cd builtin
294 · changing or unsetting the PATH, path, MODULE_PATH, module_path,
296 SHELL, HISTFILE, HISTSIZE, GID, EGID, UID, EUID, USERNAME,
297 LD_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_PRELOAD and
298 LD_AOUT_PRELOAD parameters
299 · specifying command names containing /
301 · specifying command pathnames using hash
303 · redirecting output to files
305 · using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another
307 command
308 · using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process' argument and envi‐
310 ronment space
311 · using the ARGV0 parameter to override argv[0] for external com‐
313 mands
314 · turning off restricted mode with set +r or unsetopt RESTRICTED
316 These restrictions are enforced after processing the startup files.
318 The startup files should set up PATH to point to a directory of com‐
319 mands which can be safely invoked in the restricted environment. They
320 may also add further restrictions by disabling selected builtins.
321 Restricted mode can also be activated any time by setting the
323 RESTRICTED option. This immediately enables all the restrictions
324 described above even if the shell still has not processed all startup
325 files.
326
328 Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden.
329 Subsequent behaviour is modified by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options; the
330 former affects all startup files, while the second only affects global
331 startup files (those shown here with an path starting with a /). If
332 one of the options is unset at any point, any subsequent startup
333 file(s) of the corresponding type will not be read. It is also possi‐
334 ble for a file in $ZDOTDIR to re-enable GLOBAL_RCS. Both RCS and
335 GLOBAL_RCS are set by default.
336 Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login
338 shell, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zpro‐
339 file. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from
340 /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login
341 shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.
342 When a login shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout and then
344 /etc/zlogout are read. This happens with either an explicit exit via
345 the exit or logout commands, or an implicit exit by reading end-of-file
346 from the terminal. However, if the shell terminates due to exec'ing
347 another process, the logout files are not read. These are also
348 affected by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options. Note also that the RCS
349 option affects the saving of history files, i.e. if RCS is unset when
350 the shell exits, no history file will be saved.
351 If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead. Files listed above as being
353 in /etc may be in another directory, depending on the installation.
354 As /etc/zshenv is run for all instances of zsh, it is important that it
356 be kept as small as possible. In particular, it is a good idea to put
357 code that does not need to be run for every single shell behind a test
358 of the form `if [[ -o rcs ]]; then ...' so that it will not be executed
359 when zsh is invoked with the `-f' option.
360 Any of these files may be pre-compiled with the zcompile builtin com‐
362 mand (see zshbuiltins(1)). If a compiled file exists (named for the
363 original file plus the .zwc extension) and it is newer than the origi‐
364 nal file, the compiled file will be used instead.
365
367 $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
368 $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
369 $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
370 $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin
371 $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout
372 ${TMPPREFIX}* (default is /tmp/zsh*)
373 /etc/zshenv
374 /etc/zprofile
375 /etc/zshrc
376 /etc/zlogin
377 /etc/zlogout (installation-specific - /etc is the default)
378
380 sh(1), csh(1), tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1), zshbuiltins(1), zshcom‐
381 pwid(1), zshcompsys(1), zshcompctl(1), zshexpn(1), zshmisc(1), zshmod‐
382 ules(1), zshoptions(1), zshparam(1), zshzle(1)
383 IEEE Standard for information Technology - Portable Operating System
385 Interface (POSIX) - Part 2: Shell and Utilities, IEEE Inc, 1993, ISBN
386 1-55937-255-9.
387zsh 4.3.11 December 20, 2010 ZSH(1)