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 Zsh has command line editing, builtin spelling correction, programmable
34 command completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a history mech‐
35 anism, and a host of other features.
36
38 Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pf@zsh.org>. Zsh is now
39 maintained by the members of the zsh-workers mailing list <zsh-work‐
40 ers@zsh.org>. The development is currently coordinated by Peter
41 Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. The coordinator can be contacted at <coordi‐
42 nator@zsh.org>, but matters relating to the code should generally go to
43 the mailing list.
44
46 Zsh is available from the following anonymous FTP sites. These mirror
47 sites are kept frequently up to date. The sites marked with (H) may be
48 mirroring ftp.cs.elte.hu instead of the primary site.
49 Primary site
51 ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/
52 http://www.zsh.org/pub/
53 Australia
55 ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/
56 http://www.zsh.org/pub/
57 http://mirror.dejanseo.com.au/pub/zsh/
58 Hungary
60 ftp://ftp.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
61 http://www.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
62 The up-to-date source code is available via anonymous CVS and
64 Git from Sourceforge. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/zsh/
65 for details. A summary of instructions for the CVS and Git ar‐
66 chives can be found at http://zsh.sourceforget.net/.
67
69 Zsh has 3 mailing lists:
70 <zsh-announce@zsh.org>
72 Announcements about releases, major changes in the shell and the
73 monthly posting of the Zsh FAQ. (moderated)
74 <zsh-users@zsh.org>
76 User discussions.
77 <zsh-workers@zsh.org>
79 Hacking, development, bug reports and patches.
80 To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to the associated administrative
82 address for the mailing list.
83 <zsh-announce-subscribe@zsh.org>
85 <zsh-users-subscribe@zsh.org>
86 <zsh-workers-subscribe@zsh.org>
87 <zsh-announce-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
88 <zsh-users-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
89 <zsh-workers-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
90 YOU ONLY NEED TO JOIN ONE OF THE MAILING LISTS AS THEY ARE NESTED. All
92 submissions to zsh-announce are automatically forwarded to zsh-users.
93 All submissions to zsh-users are automatically forwarded to zsh-work‐
94 ers.
95 If you have problems subscribing/unsubscribing to any of the mailing
97 lists, send mail to <listmaster@zsh.org>. The mailing lists are main‐
98 tained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@kom.auc.dk>.
99 The mailing lists are archived; the archives can be accessed via the
101 administrative addresses listed above. There is also a hypertext ar‐
102 chive, maintained by Geoff Wing <gcw@zsh.org>, available at
103 http://www.zsh.org/mla/.
104
106 Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), maintained by Peter
107 Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. It is regularly posted to the newsgroup
108 comp.unix.shell and the zsh-announce mailing list. The latest version
109 can be found at any of the Zsh FTP sites, or at
110 http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/. The contact address for FAQ-related matters
111 is <faqmaster@zsh.org>.
112
114 Zsh has a web page which is located at http://www.zsh.org/. This is
115 maintained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@zsh.org>, of SunSITE Denmark.
116 The contact address for web-related matters is <webmaster@zsh.org>.
117
119 A userguide is currently in preparation. It is intended to complement
120 the manual, with explanations and hints on issues where the manual can
121 be cabbalistic, hierographic, or downright mystifying (for example, the
122 word `hierographic' does not exist). It can be viewed in its current
123 state at http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/. At the time of writing,
124 chapters dealing with startup files and their contents and the new com‐
125 pletion system were essentially complete.
126
128 A `wiki' website for zsh has been created at http://www.zshwiki.org/.
129 This is a site which can be added to and modified directly by users
130 without any special permission. You can add your own zsh tips and con‐
131 figurations.
132
134 The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked to deter‐
135 mine where the shell will read commands from:
136 -c Take the first argument as a command to execute, rather than
138 reading commands from a script or standard input. If any fur‐
139 ther arguments are given, the first one is assigned to $0,
140 rather than being used as a positional parameter.
141 -i Force shell to be interactive. It is still possible to specify
143 a script to execute.
144 -s Force shell to read commands from the standard input. If the -s
146 flag is not present and an argument is given, the first argument
147 is taken to be the pathname of a script to execute.
148 If there are any remaining arguments after option processing, and nei‐
150 ther of the options -c or -s was supplied, the first argument is taken
151 as the file name of a script containing shell commands to be executed.
152 If the option PATH_SCRIPT is set, and the file name does not contain a
153 directory path (i.e. there is no `/' in the name), first the current
154 directory and then the command path given by the variable PATH are
155 searched for the script. If the option is not set or the file name
156 contains a `/' it is used directly.
157 After the first one or two arguments have been appropriated as
159 described above, the remaining arguments are assigned to the positional
160 parameters.
161 For further options, which are common to invocation and the set
163 builtin, see zshoptions(1).
164 Options may be specified by name using the -o option. -o acts like a
166 single-letter option, but takes a following string as the option name.
167 For example,
168 zsh -x -o shwordsplit scr
170 runs the script scr, setting the XTRACE option by the corresponding
172 letter `-x' and the SH_WORD_SPLIT option by name. Options may be
173 turned off by name by using +o instead of -o. -o can be stacked up
174 with preceding single-letter options, so for example `-xo shwordsplit'
175 or `-xoshwordsplit' is equivalent to `-x -o shwordsplit'.
176 Options may also be specified by name in GNU long option style,
178 `--option-name'. When this is done, `-' characters in the option name
179 are permitted: they are translated into `_', and thus ignored. So, for
180 example, `zsh --sh-word-split' invokes zsh with the SH_WORD_SPLIT
181 option turned on. Like other option syntaxes, options can be turned
182 off by replacing the initial `-' with a `+'; thus `+-sh-word-split' is
183 equivalent to `--no-sh-word-split'. Unlike other option syntaxes,
184 GNU-style long options cannot be stacked with any other options, so for
185 example `-x-shwordsplit' is an error, rather than being treated like
186 `-x --shwordsplit'.
187 The special GNU-style option `--version' is handled; it sends to stan‐
189 dard output the shell's version information, then exits successfully.
190 `--help' is also handled; it sends to standard output a list of options
191 that can be used when invoking the shell, then exits successfully.
192 Option processing may be finished, allowing following arguments that
194 start with `-' or `+' to be treated as normal arguments, in two ways.
195 Firstly, a lone `-' (or `+') as an argument by itself ends option pro‐
196 cessing. Secondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'), which may be spec‐
197 ified on its own (which is the standard POSIX usage) or may be stacked
198 with preceding options (so `-x-' is equivalent to `-x --'). Options
199 are not permitted to be stacked after `--' (so `-x-f' is an error), but
200 note the GNU-style option form discussed above, where `--shwordsplit'
201 is permitted and does not end option processing.
202 Except when the sh/ksh emulation single-letter options are in effect,
204 the option `-b' (or `+b') ends option processing. `-b' is like `--',
205 except that further single-letter options can be stacked after the `-b'
206 and will take effect as normal.
207
209 Zsh tries to emulate sh or ksh when it is invoked as sh or ksh respec‐
210 tively; more precisely, it looks at the first letter of the name by
211 which it was invoked, excluding any initial `r' (assumed to stand for
212 `restricted'), and if that is `b', `s' or `k' it will emulate sh or
213 ksh. Furthermore, if invoked as su (which happens on certain systems
214 when the shell is executed by the su command), the shell will try to
215 find an alternative name from the SHELL environment variable and per‐
216 form emulation based on that.
217 In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters are not spe‐
219 cial and not initialized by the shell: ARGC, argv, cdpath, fignore,
220 fpath, HISTCHARS, mailpath, MANPATH, manpath, path, prompt, PROMPT,
221 PROMPT2, PROMPT3, PROMPT4, psvar, status, watch.
222 The usual zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed. Login shells
224 source /etc/profile followed by $HOME/.profile. If the ENV environment
225 variable is set on invocation, $ENV is sourced after the profile
226 scripts. The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, command
227 substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a
228 pathname. Note that the PRIVILEGED option also affects the execution
229 of startup files.
230 The following options are set if the shell is invoked as sh or ksh:
232 NO_BAD_PATTERN, NO_BANG_HIST, NO_BG_NICE, NO_EQUALS, NO_FUNC‐
233 TION_ARGZERO, GLOB_SUBST, NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT, NO_HUP, INTERACTIVE_COM‐
234 MENTS, KSH_ARRAYS, NO_MULTIOS, NO_NOMATCH, NO_NOTIFY, POSIX_BUILTINS,
235 NO_PROMPT_PERCENT, RM_STAR_SILENT, SH_FILE_EXPANSION, SH_GLOB,
236 SH_OPTION_LETTERS, SH_WORD_SPLIT. Additionally the BSD_ECHO and
237 IGNORE_BRACES options are set if zsh is invoked as sh. Also, the
238 KSH_OPTION_PRINT, LOCAL_OPTIONS, PROMPT_BANG, PROMPT_SUBST and SIN‐
239 GLE_LINE_ZLE options are set if zsh is invoked as ksh.
240
242 When the basename of the command used to invoke zsh starts with the
243 letter `r' or the `-r' command line option is supplied at invocation,
244 the shell becomes restricted. Emulation mode is determined after
245 stripping the letter `r' from the invocation name. The following are
246 disabled in restricted mode:
247 · changing directories with the cd builtin
249 · changing or unsetting the PATH, path, MODULE_PATH, module_path,
251 SHELL, HISTFILE, HISTSIZE, GID, EGID, UID, EUID, USERNAME,
252 LD_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_PRELOAD and
253 LD_AOUT_PRELOAD parameters
254 · specifying command names containing /
256 · specifying command pathnames using hash
258 · redirecting output to files
260 · using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another
262 command
263 · using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process' argument and envi‐
265 ronment space
266 · using the ARGV0 parameter to override argv[0] for external com‐
268 mands
269 · turning off restricted mode with set +r or unsetopt RESTRICTED
271 These restrictions are enforced after processing the startup files.
273 The startup files should set up PATH to point to a directory of com‐
274 mands which can be safely invoked in the restricted environment. They
275 may also add further restrictions by disabling selected builtins.
276 Restricted mode can also be activated any time by setting the
278 RESTRICTED option. This immediately enables all the restrictions
279 described above even if the shell still has not processed all startup
280 files.
281
283 Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden.
284 Subsequent behaviour is modified by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options; the
285 former affects all startup files, while the second only affects global
286 startup files (those shown here with an path starting with a /). If
287 one of the options is unset at any point, any subsequent startup
288 file(s) of the corresponding type will not be read. It is also possi‐
289 ble for a file in $ZDOTDIR to re-enable GLOBAL_RCS. Both RCS and
290 GLOBAL_RCS are set by default.
291 Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login
293 shell, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zpro‐
294 file. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from
295 /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login
296 shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.
297 When a login shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout and then
299 /etc/zlogout are read. This happens with either an explicit exit via
300 the exit or logout commands, or an implicit exit by reading end-of-file
301 from the terminal. However, if the shell terminates due to exec'ing
302 another process, the logout files are not read. These are also
303 affected by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options. Note also that the RCS
304 option affects the saving of history files, i.e. if RCS is unset when
305 the shell exits, no history file will be saved.
306 If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead. Files listed above as being
308 in /etc may be in another directory, depending on the installation.
309 As /etc/zshenv is run for all instances of zsh, it is important that it
311 be kept as small as possible. In particular, it is a good idea to put
312 code that does not need to be run for every single shell behind a test
313 of the form `if [[ -o rcs ]]; then ...' so that it will not be executed
314 when zsh is invoked with the `-f' option.
315 Any of these files may be pre-compiled with the zcompile builtin com‐
317 mand (see zshbuiltins(1)). If a compiled file exists (named for the
318 original file plus the .zwc extension) and it is newer than the origi‐
319 nal file, the compiled file will be used instead.
320ZSHROADMAP(1) General Commands Manual ZSHROADMAP(1)
324
328 zshroadmap - informal introduction to the zsh manual
329 The Zsh Manual, like the shell itself, is large and often complicated.
331 This section of the manual provides some pointers to areas of the shell
332 that are likely to be of particular interest to new users, and indi‐
333 cates where in the rest of the manual the documentation is to be found.
334
336 When it starts, the shell reads commands from various files. These can
337 be created or edited to customize the shell. See the section
338 Startup/Shutdown Files in zsh(1).
339 If no personal initialization files exist for the current user, a func‐
341 tion is run to help you change some of the most common settings. It
342 won't appear if your administrator has disabled the zsh/newuser module.
343 The function is designed to be self-explanatory. You can run it by
344 hand with `autoload -Uz zsh-newuser-install; zsh-newuser-install -f'.
345 See also the section User Configuration Functions in zshcontrib(1).
346
348 Interaction with the shell uses the builtin Zsh Line Editor, ZLE. This
349 is described in detail in zshzle(1).
350 The first decision a user must make is whether to use the Emacs or Vi
352 editing mode as the keys for editing are substantially different.
353 Emacs editing mode is probably more natural for beginners and can be
354 selected explicitly with the command bindkey -e.
355 A history mechanism for retrieving previously typed lines (most simply
357 with the Up or Down arrow keys) is available; note that, unlike other
358 shells, zsh will not save these lines when the shell exits unless you
359 set appropriate variables, and the number of history lines retained by
360 default is quite small (30 lines). See the description of the shell
361 variables (referred to in the documentation as parameters) HISTFILE,
362 HISTSIZE and SAVEHIST in zshparam(1).
363 The shell now supports the UTF-8 character set (and also others if sup‐
365 ported by the operating system). This is (mostly) handled transpar‐
366 ently by the shell, but the degree of support in terminal emulators is
367 variable. There is some discussion of this in the shell FAQ,
368 http://zsh.dotsrc.org/FAQ/ . Note in particular that for combining
369 characters to be handled the option COMBINING_CHARS needs to be set.
370 Because the shell is now more sensitive to the definition of the char‐
371 acter set, note that if you are upgrading from an older version of the
372 shell you should ensure that the appropriate variable, either LANG (to
373 affect all aspects of the shell's operation) or LC_CTYPE (to affect
374 only the handling of character sets) is set to an appropriate value.
375 This is true even if you are using a single-byte character set includ‐
376 ing extensions of ASCII such as ISO-8859-1 or ISO-8859-15. See the
377 description of LC_CTYPE in zshparam(1).
378 Completion
380 Completion is a feature present in many shells. It allows the user to
381 type only a part (usually the prefix) of a word and have the shell fill
382 in the rest. The completion system in zsh is programmable. For exam‐
383 ple, the shell can be set to complete email addresses in arguments to
384 the mail command from your ~/.abook/addressbook; usernames, hostnames,
385 and even remote paths in arguments to scp, and so on. Anything that
386 can be written in or glued together with zsh can be the source of what
387 the line editor offers as possible completions.
388 Zsh has two completion systems, an old, so called compctl completion
390 (named after the builtin command that serves as its complete and only
391 user interface), and a new one, referred to as compsys, organized as
392 library of builtin and user-defined functions. The two systems differ
393 in their interface for specifying the completion behavior. The new
394 system is more customizable and is supplied with completions for many
395 commonly used commands; it is therefore to be preferred.
396 The completion system must be enabled explicitly when the shell starts.
398 For more information see zshcompsys(1).
399 Extending the line editor
401 Apart from completion, the line editor is highly extensible by means of
402 shell functions. Some useful functions are provided with the shell;
403 they provide facilities such as:
404 insert-composed-char
406 composing characters not found on the keyboard
407 match-words-by-style
409 configuring what the line editor considers a word when moving or
410 deleting by word
411 history-beginning-search-backward-end, etc.
413 alternative ways of searching the shell history
414 replace-string, replace-pattern
416 functions for replacing strings or patterns globally in the com‐
417 mand line
418 edit-command-line
420 edit the command line with an external editor.
421 See the section `ZLE Functions' in zshcontrib(1) for descriptions of
423 these.
424
426 The shell has a large number of options for changing its behaviour.
427 These cover all aspects of the shell; browsing the full documentation
428 is the only good way to become acquainted with the many possibilities.
429 See zshoptions(1).
430
432 The shell has a rich set of patterns which are available for file
433 matching (described in the documentation as `filename generation' and
434 also known for historical reasons as `globbing') and for use when pro‐
435 gramming. These are described in the section `Filename Generation' in
436 zshexpn(1).
437 Of particular interest are the following patterns that are not commonly
439 supported by other systems of pattern matching:
440 ** for matching over multiple directories
442 ~, ^ the ability to exclude patterns from matching when the
444 EXTENDED_GLOB option is set
445 (...) glob qualifiers, included in parentheses at the end of the pat‐
447 tern, which select files by type (such as directories) or
448 attribute (such as size).
449
451 Although the syntax of zsh is in ways similar to the Korn shell, and
452 therefore more remotely to the original UNIX shell, the Bourne shell,
453 its default behaviour does not entirely correspond to those shells.
454 General shell syntax is introduced in the section `Shell Grammar' in
455 zshmisc(1).
456 One commonly encountered difference is that variables substituted onto
458 the command line are not split into words. See the description of the
459 shell option SH_WORD_SPLIT in the section `Parameter Expansion' in zsh‐
460 expn(1). In zsh, you can either explicitly request the splitting (e.g.
461 ${=foo}) or use an array when you want a variable to expand to more
462 than one word. See the section `Array Parameters' in zshparam(1).
463
465 The most convenient way of adding enhancements to the shell is typi‐
466 cally by writing a shell function and arranging for it to be
467 autoloaded. Functions are described in the section `Functions' in zsh‐
468 misc(1). Users changing from the C shell and its relatives should
469 notice that aliases are less used in zsh as they don't perform argument
470 substitution, only simple text replacement.
471 A few general functions, other than those for the line editor described
473 above, are provided with the shell and are described in zshcontrib(1).
474 Features include:
475 promptinit
477 a prompt theme system for changing prompts easily, see the sec‐
478 tion `Prompt Themes'
479 zsh-mime-setup
482 a MIME-handling system which dispatches commands according to
483 the suffix of a file as done by graphical file managers
484 zcalc a calculator
486 zargs a version of xargs that makes the find command redundant
488 zmv a command for renaming files by means of shell patterns.
490ZSHALL(1) General Commands Manual ZSHALL(1)
494
498 $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
499 $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
500 $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
501 $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin
502 $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout
503 ${TMPPREFIX}* (default is /tmp/zsh*)
504 /etc/zshenv
505 /etc/zprofile
506 /etc/zshrc
507 /etc/zlogin
508 /etc/zlogout (installation-specific - /etc is the default)
509
511 sh(1), csh(1), tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1)
512 IEEE Standard for information Technology - Portable Operating System
514 Interface (POSIX) - Part 2: Shell and Utilities, IEEE Inc, 1993, ISBN
515 1-55937-255-9.
516zsh 5.0.2 December 21, 2012 ZSHALL(1)