1ZSHCONTRIB(1) General Commands Manual ZSHCONTRIB(1)
2
6 zshcontrib - user contributions to zsh
7
9 The Zsh source distribution includes a number of items contributed by
10 the user community. These are not inherently a part of the shell, and
11 some may not be available in every zsh installation. The most signifi‐
12 cant of these are documented here. For documentation on other contrib‐
13 uted items such as shell functions, look for comments in the function
14 source files.
15
17 Accessing On-Line Help
18 The key sequence ESC h is normally bound by ZLE to execute the run-help
19 widget (see zshzle(1)). This invokes the run-help command with the
20 command word from the current input line as its argument. By default,
21 run-help is an alias for the man command, so this often fails when the
22 command word is a shell builtin or a user-defined function. By
23 redefining the run-help alias, one can improve the on-line help pro‐
24 vided by the shell.
25 The helpfiles utility, found in the Util directory of the distribution,
27 is a Perl program that can be used to process the zsh manual to produce
28 a separate help file for each shell builtin and for many other shell
29 features as well. The autoloadable run-help function, found in Func‐
30 tions/Misc, searches for these helpfiles and performs several other
31 tests to produce the most complete help possible for the command.
32 There may already be a directory of help files on your system; look in
34 /usr/share/zsh or /usr/local/share/zsh and subdirectories below those,
35 or ask your system administrator.
36 To create your own help files with helpfiles, choose or create a direc‐
38 tory where the individual command help files will reside. For example,
39 you might choose ~/zsh_help. If you unpacked the zsh distribution in
40 your home directory, you would use the commands:
41 mkdir ~/zsh_help
43 cd ~/zsh_help
44 man zshall | colcrt - | \
45 perl ~/zsh-5.0.2/Util/helpfiles
46 Next, to use the run-help function, you need to add lines something
48 like the following to your .zshrc or equivalent startup file:
49 unalias run-help
51 autoload run-help
52 HELPDIR=~/zsh_help
53 The HELPDIR parameter tells run-help where to look for the help files.
55 If your system already has a help file directory installed, set HELPDIR
56 to the path of that directory instead.
57 Note that in order for `autoload run-help' to work, the run-help file
59 must be in one of the directories named in your fpath array (see zsh‐
60 param(1)). This should already be the case if you have a standard zsh
61 installation; if it is not, copy Functions/Misc/run-help to an appro‐
62 priate directory.
63 Recompiling Functions
65 If you frequently edit your zsh functions, or periodically update your
66 zsh installation to track the latest developments, you may find that
67 function digests compiled with the zcompile builtin are frequently out
68 of date with respect to the function source files. This is not usually
69 a problem, because zsh always looks for the newest file when loading a
70 function, but it may cause slower shell startup and function loading.
71 Also, if a digest file is explicitly used as an element of fpath, zsh
72 won't check whether any of its source files has changed.
73 The zrecompile autoloadable function, found in Functions/Misc, can be
75 used to keep function digests up to date.
76 zrecompile [ -qt ] [ name ... ]
78 zrecompile [ -qt ] -p args [ -- args ... ]
79 This tries to find *.zwc files and automatically re-compile them
80 if at least one of the original files is newer than the compiled
81 file. This works only if the names stored in the compiled files
82 are full paths or are relative to the directory that contains
83 the .zwc file.
84 In the first form, each name is the name of a compiled file or a
86 directory containing *.zwc files that should be checked. If no
87 arguments are given, the directories and *.zwc files in fpath
88 are used.
89 When -t is given, no compilation is performed, but a return sta‐
91 tus of zero (true) is set if there are files that need to be
92 re-compiled and non-zero (false) otherwise. The -q option qui‐
93 ets the chatty output that describes what zrecompile is doing.
94 Without the -t option, the return status is zero if all files
96 that needed re-compilation could be compiled and non-zero if
97 compilation for at least one of the files failed.
98 If the -p option is given, the args are interpreted as one or
100 more sets of arguments for zcompile, separated by `--'. For
101 example:
102 zrecompile -p \
104 -R ~/.zshrc -- \
105 -M ~/.zcompdump -- \
106 ~/zsh/comp.zwc ~/zsh/Completion/*/_*
107 This compiles ~/.zshrc into ~/.zshrc.zwc if that doesn't exist
109 or if it is older than ~/.zshrc. The compiled file will be
110 marked for reading instead of mapping. The same is done for
111 ~/.zcompdump and ~/.zcompdump.zwc, but this compiled file is
112 marked for mapping. The last line re-creates the file
113 ~/zsh/comp.zwc if any of the files matching the given pattern is
114 newer than it.
115 Without the -p option, zrecompile does not create function
117 digests that do not already exist, nor does it add new functions
118 to the digest.
119 The following shell loop is an example of a method for creating func‐
121 tion digests for all functions in your fpath, assuming that you have
122 write permission to the directories:
123 for ((i=1; i <= $#fpath; ++i)); do
125 dir=$fpath[i]
126 zwc=${dir:t}.zwc
127 if [[ $dir == (.|..) || $dir == (.|..)/* ]]; then
128 continue
129 fi
130 files=($dir/*(N-.))
131 if [[ -w $dir:h && -n $files ]]; then
132 files=(${${(M)files%/*/*}#/})
133 if ( cd $dir:h &&
134 zrecompile -p -U -z $zwc $files ); then
135 fpath[i]=$fpath[i].zwc
136 fi
137 fi
138 done
139 The -U and -z options are appropriate for functions in the default zsh
141 installation fpath; you may need to use different options for your per‐
142 sonal function directories.
143 Once the digests have been created and your fpath modified to refer to
145 them, you can keep them up to date by running zrecompile with no argu‐
146 ments.
147 Keyboard Definition
149 The large number of possible combinations of keyboards, workstations,
150 terminals, emulators, and window systems makes it impossible for zsh to
151 have built-in key bindings for every situation. The zkbd utility,
152 found in Functions/Misc, can help you quickly create key bindings for
153 your configuration.
154 Run zkbd either as an autoloaded function, or as a shell script:
156 zsh -f ~/zsh-5.0.2/Functions/Misc/zkbd
158 When you run zkbd, it first asks you to enter your terminal type; if
160 the default it offers is correct, just press return. It then asks you
161 to press a number of different keys to determine characteristics of
162 your keyboard and terminal; zkbd warns you if it finds anything out of
163 the ordinary, such as a Delete key that sends neither ^H nor ^?.
164 The keystrokes read by zkbd are recorded as a definition for an asso‐
166 ciative array named key, written to a file in the subdirectory .zkbd
167 within either your HOME or ZDOTDIR directory. The name of the file is
168 composed from the TERM, VENDOR and OSTYPE parameters, joined by
169 hyphens.
170 You may read this file into your .zshrc or another startup file with
172 the `source' or `.' commands, then reference the key parameter in bind‐
173 key commands, like this:
174 source ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zkbd/$TERM-$VENDOR-$OSTYPE
176 [[ -n ${key[Left]} ]] && bindkey "${key[Left]}" backward-char
177 [[ -n ${key[Right]} ]] && bindkey "${key[Right]}" forward-char
178 # etc.
179 Note that in order for `autoload zkbd' to work, the zkdb file must be
181 in one of the directories named in your fpath array (see zshparam(1)).
182 This should already be the case if you have a standard zsh installa‐
183 tion; if it is not, copy Functions/Misc/zkbd to an appropriate direc‐
184 tory.
185 Dumping Shell State
187 Occasionally you may encounter what appears to be a bug in the shell,
188 particularly if you are using a beta version of zsh or a development
189 release. Usually it is sufficient to send a description of the problem
190 to one of the zsh mailing lists (see zsh(1)), but sometimes one of the
191 zsh developers will need to recreate your environment in order to track
192 the problem down.
193 The script named reporter, found in the Util directory of the distribu‐
195 tion, is provided for this purpose. (It is also possible to autoload
196 reporter, but reporter is not installed in fpath by default.) This
197 script outputs a detailed dump of the shell state, in the form of
198 another script that can be read with `zsh -f' to recreate that state.
199 To use reporter, read the script into your shell with the `.' command
201 and redirect the output into a file:
202 . ~/zsh-5.0.2/Util/reporter > zsh.report
204 You should check the zsh.report file for any sensitive information such
206 as passwords and delete them by hand before sending the script to the
207 developers. Also, as the output can be voluminous, it's best to wait
208 for the developers to ask for this information before sending it.
209 You can also use reporter to dump only a subset of the shell state.
211 This is sometimes useful for creating startup files for the first time.
212 Most of the output from reporter is far more detailed than usually is
213 necessary for a startup file, but the aliases, options, and zstyles
214 states may be useful because they include only changes from the
215 defaults. The bindings state may be useful if you have created any of
216 your own keymaps, because reporter arranges to dump the keymap creation
217 commands as well as the bindings for every keymap.
218 As is usual with automated tools, if you create a startup file with
220 reporter, you should edit the results to remove unnecessary commands.
221 Note that if you're using the new completion system, you should not
222 dump the functions state to your startup files with reporter; use the
223 compdump function instead (see zshcompsys(1)).
224 reporter [ state ... ]
226 Print to standard output the indicated subset of the current
227 shell state. The state arguments may be one or more of:
228 all Output everything listed below.
230 aliases
231 Output alias definitions.
232 bindings
233 Output ZLE key maps and bindings.
234 completion
235 Output old-style compctl commands. New completion is
236 covered by functions and zstyles.
237 functions
238 Output autoloads and function definitions.
239 limits Output limit commands.
240 options
241 Output setopt commands.
242 styles Same as zstyles.
243 variables
244 Output shell parameter assignments, plus export commands
245 for any environment variables.
246 zstyles
247 Output zstyle commands.
248 If the state is omitted, all is assumed.
250 With the exception of `all', every state can be abbreviated by any pre‐
252 fix, even a single letter; thus a is the same as aliases, z is the same
253 as zstyles, etc.
254 Manipulating Hook Functions
256 add-zsh-hook [-dD] hook function
257 Several functions are special to the shell, as described in the
258 section SPECIAL FUNCTIONS, see zshmisc(1), in that they are
259 automatic called at a specific point during shell execution.
260 Each has an associated array consisting of names of functions to
261 be called at the same point; these are so-called `hook func‐
262 tions'. The shell function add-zsh-hook provides a simple way
263 of adding or removing functions from the array.
264 hook is one of chpwd, periodic, precmd, preexec, zshaddhistory,
266 zshexit, or zsh_directory_name, the special functions in ques‐
267 tion. Note that zsh_directory_name is called in a different way
268 from the other functions, but may still be manipulated as a
269 hook.
270 function is name of an ordinary shell function. If no options
272 are given this will be added to the array of functions to be
273 executed in the given context.
274 If the option -d is given, the function is removed from the
276 array of functions to be executed.
277 If the option -D is given, the function is treated as a pattern
279 and any matching names of functions are removed from the array
280 of functions to be executed.
281 The options -U, -z and -k are passed as arguments to autoload
283 for function. For functions contributed with zsh, the options
284 -Uz are appropriate.
285
287 The function cdr allows you to change the working directory to a previ‐
288 ous working directory from a list maintained automatically. It is sim‐
289 ilar in concept to the directory stack controlled by the pushd, popd
290 and dirs builtins, but is more configurable, and as it stores all
291 entries in files it is maintained across sessions and (by default)
292 between terminal emulators in the current session. (The pushd direc‐
293 tory stack is not actually modified or used by cdr unless you configure
294 it to do so as described in the configuration section below.)
295 Installation
297 The system works by means of a hook function that is called every time
298 the directory changes. To install the system, autoload the required
299 functions and use the add-zsh-hook function described above:
300 autoload -Uz chpwd_recent_dirs cdr add-zsh-hook
302 add-zsh-hook chpwd chpwd_recent_dirs
303 Now every time you change directly interactively, no matter which com‐
305 mand you use, the directory to which you change will be remembered in
306 most-recent-first order.
307 Use
309 All direct user interaction is via the cdr function.
310 The argument to cdr is a number N corresponding to the Nth most
312 recently changed-to directory. 1 is the immediately preceding direc‐
313 tory; the current directory is remembered but is not offered as a des‐
314 tination. Note that if you have multiple windows open 1 may refer to a
315 directory changed to in another window; you can avoid this by having
316 per-terminal files for storing directory as described for the
317 recent-dirs-file style below.
318 If you set the recent-dirs-default style described below cdr will
320 behave the same as cd if given a non-numeric argument, or more than one
321 argument. The recent directory list is updated just the same however
322 you change directory.
323 If the argument is omitted, 1 is assumed. This is similar to pushd's
325 behaviour of swapping the two most recent directories on the stack.
326 Completion for the argument to cdr is available if compinit has been
328 run; menu selection is recommended, using:
329 zstyle ':completion:*:*:cdr:*:*' menu selection
331 to allow you to cycle through recent directories; the order is pre‐
333 served, so the first choice is the most recent directory before the
334 current one. The verbose style is also recommended to ensure the
335 directory is shown; this style is on by default so no action is
336 required unless you have changed it.
337 Options
339 The behaviour of cdr may be modified by the following options.
340 -l lists the numbers and the corresponding directories in abbrevi‐
342 ated form (i.e. with ~ substitution reapplied), one per line.
343 The directories here are not quoted (this would only be an issue
344 if a directory name contained a newline). This is used by the
345 completion system.
346 -r sets the variable reply to the current set of directories.
348 Nothing is printed and the directory is not changed.
349 -e allows you to edit the list of directories, one per line. The
351 list can be edited to any extent you like; no sanity checking is
352 performed. Completion is available. No quoting is necessary
353 (except for newlines, where I have in any case no sympathy);
354 directories are in unabbreviated from and contain an absolute
355 path, i.e. they start with /. Usually the first entry should be
356 left as the current directory.
357 Configuration
359 Configuration is by means of the styles mechanism that should be famil‐
360 iar from completion; if not, see the description of the zstyle command
361 in see zshmodules(1). The context for setting styles should be
362 ':chpwd:*' in case the meaning of the context is extended in future,
363 for example:
364 zstyle ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-max 0
366 sets the value of the recent-dirs-max style to 0. In practice the
368 style name is specific enough that a context of '*' should be fine.
369 An exception is recent-dirs-insert, which is used exclusively by the
371 completion system and so has the usual completion system context
372 (':completion:*' if nothing more specific is needed), though again '*'
373 should be fine in practice.
374 recent-dirs-default
376 If true, and the command is expecting a recent directory index,
377 and either there is more than one argument or the argument is
378 not an integer, then fall through to "cd". This allows the lazy
379 to use only one command for directory changing. Completion
380 recognises this, too; see recent-dirs-insert for how to control
381 completion when this option is in use.
382 recent-dirs-file
384 The file where the list of directories is saved. The default is
385 ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.chpwd-recent-dirs, i.e. this is in your home
386 directory unless you have set the variable ZDOTDIR to point
387 somewhere else. Directory names are saved in $'...' quoted
388 form, so each line in the file can be supplied directly to the
389 shell as an argument.
390 The value of this style may be an array. In this case, the
392 first file in the list will always be used for saving directo‐
393 ries while any other files are left untouched. When reading the
394 recent directory list, if there are fewer than the maximum num‐
395 ber of entries in the first file, the contents of later files in
396 the array will be appended with duplicates removed from the list
397 shown. The contents of the two files are not sorted together,
398 i.e. all the entries in the first file are shown first. The
399 special value + can appear in the list to indicate the default
400 file should be read at that point. This allows effects like the
401 following:
402 zstyle ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-file \
404 ~/.chpwd-recent-dirs-${TTY##*/} +
405 Recent directories are read from a file numbered according to
407 the terminal. If there are insufficient entries the list is
408 supplemented from the default file.
409 It is possible to use zstyle -e to make the directory config‐
411 urable at run time:
412 zstyle -e ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-file pick-recent-dirs-file
414 pick-recent-dirs-file() {
415 if [[ $PWD = ~/text/writing(|/*) ]]; then
416 reply=(~/.chpwd-recent-dirs-writing)
417 else
418 reply=(+)
419 fi
420 }
421 In this example, if the current directory is ~/text/writing or a
423 directory under it, then use a special file for saving recent
424 directories, else use the default.
425 recent-dirs-insert
427 Used by completion. If recent-dirs-default is true, then set‐
428 ting this to true causes the actual directory, rather than its
429 index, to be inserted on the command line; this has the same
430 effect as using the corresponding index, but makes the history
431 clearer and the line easier to edit. With this setting, if part
432 of an argument was already typed, normal directory completion
433 rather than recent directory completion is done; this is because
434 recent directory completion is expected to be done by cycling
435 through entries menu fashion.
436 If the value of the style is always, then only recent directo‐
438 ries will be completed; in that case, use the cd command when
439 you want to complete other directories.
440 If the value is fallback, recent directories will be tried
442 first, then normal directory completion is performed if recent
443 directory completion failed to find a match.
444 Finally, if the value is both then both sets of completions are
446 presented; the usual tag mechanism can be used to distinguish
447 results, with recent directories tagged as recent-dirs. Note
448 that the recent directories inserted are abbreviated with direc‐
449 tory names where appropriate.
450 recent-dirs-max
452 The maximum number of directories to save to the file. If this
453 is zero or negative there is no maximum. The default is 20.
454 Note this includes the current directory, which isn't offered,
455 so the highest number of directories you will be offered is one
456 less than the maximum.
457 recent-dirs-prune
459 This style is an array determining what directories should (or
460 should not) be added to the recent list. Elements of the array
461 can include:
462 parent Prune parents (more accurately, ancestors) from the
464 recent list. If present, changing directly down by any
465 number of directories causes the current directory to be
466 overwritten. For example, changing from ~pws to
467 ~pws/some/other/dir causes ~pws not to be left on the
468 recent directory stack. This only applies to direct
469 changes to descendant directories; earlier directories on
470 the list are not pruned. For example, changing from
471 ~pws/yet/another to ~pws/some/other/dir does not cause
472 ~pws to be pruned.
473 pattern:pattern
475 Gives a zsh pattern for directories that should not be
476 added to the recent list (if not already there). This
477 element can be repeated to add different patterns. For
478 example, 'pattern:/tmp(|/*)' stops /tmp or its descen‐
479 dants from being added. The EXTENDED_GLOB option is
480 always turned on for these patterns.
481 recent-dirs-pushd
483 If set to true, cdr will use pushd instead of cd to change the
484 directory, so the directory is saved on the directory stack. As
485 the directory stack is completely separate from the list of
486 files saved by the mechanism used in this file there is no obvi‐
487 ous reason to do this.
488 Use with dynamic directory naming
490 It is possible to refer to recent directories using the dynamic direc‐
491 tory name syntax by using the supplied function zsh_directory_name_cdr
492 a hook:
493 autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook
495 add-zsh-hook -Uz zsh_directory_name zsh_directory_name_cdr
496 When this is done, ~[1] will refer to the most recent directory other
498 than $PWD, and so on. Completion after ~[... also works.
499 Details of directory handling
501 This section is for the curious or confused; most users will not need
502 to know this information.
503 Recent directories are saved to a file immediately and hence are pre‐
505 served across sessions. Note currently no file locking is applied: the
506 list is updated immediately on interactive commands and nowhere else
507 (unlike history), and it is assumed you are only going to change direc‐
508 tory in one window at once. This is not safe on shared accounts, but
509 in any case the system has limited utility when someone else is chang‐
510 ing to a different set of directories behind your back.
511 To make this a little safer, only directory changes instituted from the
513 command line, either directly or indirectly through shell function
514 calls (but not through subshells, evals, traps, completion functions
515 and the like) are saved. Shell functions should use cd -q or pushd -q
516 to avoid side effects if the change to the directory is to be invisible
517 at the command line. See the contents of the function
518 chpwd_recent_dirs for more details.
519
521 In a lot of cases, it is nice to automatically retrieve information
522 from version control systems (VCSs), such as subversion, CVS or git, to
523 be able to provide it to the user; possibly in the user's prompt. So
524 that you can instantly tell which branch you are currently on, for
525 example.
526 In order to do that, you may use the vcs_info function.
528 The following VCSs are supported, showing the abbreviated name by which
530 they are referred to within the system:
531 Bazaar (bzr)
532 http://bazaar-vcs.org/
533 Codeville (cdv)
534 http://codeville.org/
535 Concurrent Versioning System (cvs)
536 http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/
537 Darcs (darcs)
538 http://darcs.net/
539 Fossil (fossil)
540 http://fossil-scm.org/
541 Git (git)
542 http://git-scm.com/
543 GNU arch (tla)
544 http://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/
545 Mercurial (hg)
546 http://mercurial.selenic.com/
547 Monotone (mtn)
548 http://monotone.ca/
549 Perforce (p4)
550 http://www.perforce.com/
551 Subversion (svn)
552 http://subversion.tigris.org/
553 SVK (svk)
554 http://svk.bestpractical.com/
555 There is also support for the patch management system quilt
557 (http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt). See Quilt Support below
558 for details.
559 To load vcs_info:
561 autoload -Uz vcs_info
563 It can be used in any existing prompt, because it does not require any
565 $psvar entries to be left available.
566 Quickstart
568 To get this feature working quickly (including colors), you can do the
569 following (assuming, you loaded vcs_info properly - see above):
570 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' actionformats \
572 '%F{5}(%f%s%F{5})%F{3}-%F{5}[%F{2}%b%F{3}|%F{1}%a%F{5}]%f '
573 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' formats \
574 '%F{5}(%f%s%F{5})%F{3}-%F{5}[%F{2}%b%F{5}]%f '
575 zstyle ':vcs_info:(sv[nk]|bzr):*' branchformat '%b%F{1}:%F{3}%r'
576 precmd () { vcs_info }
577 PS1='%F{5}[%F{2}%n%F{5}] %F{3}%3~ ${vcs_info_msg_0_}%f%# '
578 Obviously, the last two lines are there for demonstration. You need to
580 call vcs_info from your precmd function. Once that is done you need a
581 single quoted '${vcs_info_msg_0_}' in your prompt.
582 To be able to use '${vcs_info_msg_0_}' directly in your prompt like
584 this, you will need to have the PROMPT_SUBST option enabled.
585 Now call the vcs_info_printsys utility from the command line:
587 % vcs_info_printsys
589 ## list of supported version control backends:
590 ## disabled systems are prefixed by a hash sign (#)
591 bzr
592 cdv
593 cvs
594 darcs
595 fossil
596 git
597 hg
598 mtn
599 p4
600 svk
601 svn
602 tla
603 ## flavours (cannot be used in the enable or disable styles; they
604 ## are enabled and disabled with their master [git-svn -> git])
605 ## they *can* be used in contexts: ':vcs_info:git-svn:*'.
606 git-p4
607 git-svn
608 hg-git
609 hg-hgsubversion
610 hg-hgsvn
611 You may not want all of these because there is no point in running the
613 code to detect systems you do not use. So there is a way to disable
614 some backends altogether:
615 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr cdv darcs mtn svk tla
617 You may also pick a few from that list and enable only those:
619 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable git cvs svn
621 If you rerun vcs_info_printsys after one of these commands, you will
623 see the backends listed in the disable style (or backends not in the
624 enable style - if you used that) marked as disabled by a hash sign.
625 That means the detection of these systems is skipped completely. No
626 wasted time there.
627 Configuration
629 The vcs_info feature can be configured via zstyle.
630 First, the context in which we are working:
632 :vcs_info:vcs-string:user-context:repo-root-name
633 vcs-string
635 is one of: git, git-svn, git-p4, hg, hg-git, hg-hgsubversion,
636 hg-hgsvn, darcs, bzr, cdv, mtn, svn, cvs, svk, tla, p4 or fos‐
637 sil. When hooks are active the hooks name is added after a `+'.
638 (See Hooks in vcs_info below.)
639 user-context
641 is a freely configurable string, assignable by the user as the
642 first argument to vcs_info (see its description below).
643 repo-root-name
645 is the name of a repository in which you want a style to match.
646 So, if you want a setting specific to /usr/src/zsh, with that
647 being a CVS checkout, you can set repo-root-name to zsh to make
648 it so.
649 There are three special values for vcs-string: The first is named
651 -init-, that is in effect as long as there was no decision what VCS
652 backend to use. The second is -preinit-; it is used before vcs_info is
653 run, when initializing the data exporting variables. The third special
654 value is formats and is used by the vcs_info_lastmsg for looking up its
655 styles.
656 The initial value of repo-root-name is -all- and it is replaced with
658 the actual name, as soon as it is known. Only use this part of the con‐
659 text for defining the formats, actionformats or branchformat styles, as
660 it is guaranteed that repo-root-name is set up correctly for these
661 only. For all other styles, just use '*' instead.
662 There are two pre-defined values for user-context:
664 default
665 the one used if none is specified
666 command
667 used by vcs_info_lastmsg to lookup its styles
668 You can of course use ':vcs_info:*' to match all VCSs in all user-con‐
670 texts at once.
671 This is a description of all styles that are looked up.
673 formats
675 A list of formats, used when actionformats is not used (which is
676 most of the time).
677 actionformats
679 A list of formats, used if there is a special action going on in
680 your current repository; like an interactive rebase or a merge
681 conflict.
682 branchformat
684 Some backends replace %b in the formats and actionformats styles
685 above, not only by a branch name but also by a revision number.
686 This style lets you modify how that string should look.
687 nvcsformats
689 These "formats" are exported when we didn't detect a version
690 control system for the current directory or vcs_info was dis‐
691 abled. This is useful if you want vcs_info to completely take
692 over the generation of your prompt. You would do something like
693 PS1='${vcs_info_msg_0_}' to accomplish that.
694 hgrevformat
696 hg uses both a hash and a revision number to reference a spe‐
697 cific changeset in a repository. With this style you can format
698 the revision string (see branchformat) to include either or
699 both. It's only useful when get-revision is true. Note, the full
700 40-character revision id is not available (except when using the
701 use-simple option) because executing hg more than once per
702 prompt is too slow; you may customize this behavior using hooks.
703 max-exports
705 Defines the maximum number of vcs_info_msg_*_ variables vcs_info
706 will export.
707 enable A list of backends you want to use. Checked in the -init- con‐
709 text. If this list contains an item called NONE no backend is
710 used at all and vcs_info will do nothing. If this list contains
711 ALL, vcs_info will use all known backends. Only with ALL in
712 enable will the disable style have any effect. ALL and NONE are
713 case insensitive.
714 disable
716 A list of VCSs you don't want vcs_info to test for repositories
717 (checked in the -init- context, too). Only used if enable con‐
718 tains ALL.
719 disable-patterns
721 A list of patterns that are checked against $PWD. If a pattern
722 matches, vcs_info will be disabled. This style is checked in the
723 :vcs_info:-init-:*:-all- context.
724 Say, ~/.zsh is a directory under version control, in which you
726 do not want vcs_info to be active, do:
727 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable-patterns "$HOME/.zsh(|/*)"
728 use-quilt
730 If enabled, the quilt support code is active in `addon' mode.
731 See Quilt Support for details.
732 quilt-standalone
734 If enabled, `standalone' mode detection is attempted if no VCS
735 is active in a given directory. See Quilt Support for details.
736 quilt-patch-dir
738 Overwrite the value of the $QUILT_PATCHES environment variable.
739 See Quilt Support for details.
740 quiltcommand
742 When quilt itself is called in quilt support the value of this
743 style is used as the command name.
744 check-for-changes
746 If enabled, this style causes the %c and %u format escapes to
747 show when the working directory has uncommitted changes. The
748 strings displayed by these escapes can be controlled via the
749 stagedstr and unstagedstr styles. The only backends that cur‐
750 rently support this option are git and hg (hg only supports
751 unstaged).
752 For this style to be evaluated with the hg backend, the
754 get-revision style needs to be set and the use-simple style
755 needs to be unset. The latter is the default; the former is not.
756 Note, the actions taken if this style is enabled are potentially
758 expensive (read: they may be slow, depending on how big the cur‐
759 rent repository is). Therefore, it is disabled by default.
760 stagedstr
762 This string will be used in the %c escape if there are staged
763 changes in the repository.
764 unstagedstr
766 This string will be used in the %u escape if there are unstaged
767 changes in the repository.
768 command
770 This style causes vcs_info to use the supplied string as the
771 command to use as the VCS's binary. Note, that setting this in
772 ':vcs_info:*' is not a good idea.
773 If the value of this style is empty (which is the default), the
775 used binary name is the name of the backend in use (e.g. svn is
776 used in an svn repository).
777 The repo-root-name part in the context is always the default
779 -all- when this style is looked up.
780 For example, this style can be used to use binaries from
782 non-default installation directories. Assume, git is installed
783 in /usr/bin but your sysadmin installed a newer version in
784 /usr/bin/local. Instead of changing the order of your $PATH
785 parameter, you can do this:
786 zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*:-all-' command /usr/local/bin/git
787 use-server
789 This is used by the Perforce backend (p4) to decide if it should
790 contact the Perforce server to find out if a directory is man‐
791 aged by Perforce. This is the only reliable way of doing this,
792 but runs the risk of a delay if the server name cannot be found.
793 If the server (more specifically, the host:port pair describing
794 the server) cannot be contacted, its name is put into the asso‐
795 ciative array vcs_info_p4_dead_servers and is not contacted
796 again during the session until it is removed by hand. If you do
797 not set this style, the p4 backend is only usable if you have
798 set the environment variable P4CONFIG to a file name and have
799 corresponding files in the root directories of each Perforce
800 client. See comments in the function VCS_INFO_detect_p4 for
801 more detail.
802 use-simple
804 If there are two different ways of gathering information, you
805 can select the simpler one by setting this style to true; the
806 default is to use the not-that-simple code, which is potentially
807 a lot slower but might be more accurate in all possible cases.
808 This style is used by the bzr and hg backends. In the case of hg
809 it will invoke the external hexdump program to parse the binary
810 dirstate cache file; this method will not return the local revi‐
811 sion number.
812 get-revision
814 If set to true, vcs_info goes the extra mile to figure out the
815 revision of a repository's work tree (currently for the git and
816 hg backends, where this kind of information is not always
817 vital). For git, the hash value of the currently checked out
818 commit is available via the %i expansion. With hg, the local
819 revision number and the corresponding global hash are available
820 via %i.
821 get-mq If set to true, the hg backend will look for a Mercurial Queue
823 (mq) patch directory. Information will be available via the `%m'
824 replacement.
825 get-bookmarks
827 If set to true, the hg backend will try to get a list of current
828 bookmarks. They will be available via the `%m' replacement.
829 use-prompt-escapes
831 Determines if we assume that the assembled string from vcs_info
832 includes prompt escapes. (Used by vcs_info_lastmsg.)
833 debug Enable debugging output to track possible problems. Currently
835 this style is only used by vcs_info's hooks system.
836 hooks A list style that defines hook-function names. See Hooks in
838 vcs_info below for details.
839 The default values for these styles in all contexts are:
841 formats
843 " (%s)-[%b]%u%c-"
844 actionformats
845 " (%s)-[%b|%a]%u%c-"
846 branchformat
847 "%b:%r" (for bzr, svn, svk and hg)
848 nvcsformats
849 ""
850 hgrevformat
851 "%r:%h"
852 max-exports
853 2
854 enable ALL
855 disable
856 (empty list)
857 disable-patterns
858 (empty list)
859 check-for-changes
860 false
861 stagedstr
862 (string: "S")
863 unstagedstr
864 (string: "U")
865 command
866 (empty string)
867 use-server
868 false
869 use-simple
870 false
871 get-revision
872 false
873 get-mq true
874 get-bookmarks
875 false
876 use-prompt-escapes
877 true
878 debug false
879 hooks (empty list)
880 use-quilt
881 false
882 quilt-standalone
883 false
884 quilt-patch-dir
885 empty - use $QUILT_PATCHES
886 quiltcommand
887 quilt
888 In normal formats and actionformats the following replacements are
890 done:
891 %s The VCS in use (git, hg, svn, etc.).
893 %b Information about the current branch.
894 %a An identifier that describes the action. Only makes sense in
895 actionformats.
896 %i The current revision number or identifier. For hg the hgrevfor‐
897 mat style may be used to customize the output.
898 %c The string from the stagedstr style if there are staged changes
899 in the repository.
900 %u The string from the unstagedstr style if there are unstaged
901 changes in the repository.
902 %R The base directory of the repository.
903 %r The repository name. If %R is /foo/bar/repoXY, %r is repoXY.
904 %S A subdirectory within a repository. If $PWD is
905 /foo/bar/repoXY/beer/tasty, %S is beer/tasty.
906 %m A "misc" replacement. It is at the discretion of the backend to
907 decide what this replacement expands to. It is currently used by
908 the hg and git backends to display patch information from the mq
909 and stgit extensions.
910 In branchformat these replacements are done:
912 %b The branch name.
914 %r The current revision number or the hgrevformat style for hg.
915 In hgrevformat these replacements are done:
917 %r The current local revision number.
919 %h The current global revision identifier.
920 In patch-format and nopatch-format these replacements are done:
922 %p The name of the top-most applied patch (applied-string).
924 %u The number of unapplied patches (unapplied-string).
925 %n The number of applied patches.
926 %c The number of unapplied patches.
927 %a The number of all patches.
928 %g The names of active mq guards (hg backend).
929 %G The number of active mq guards (hg backend).
930 Not all VCS backends have to support all replacements. For nvcsformats
932 no replacements are performed at all, it is just a string.
933 Oddities
935 If you want to use the %b (bold off) prompt expansion in formats, which
936 expands %b itself, use %%b. That will cause the vcs_info expansion to
937 replace %%b with %b, so that zsh's prompt expansion mechanism can han‐
938 dle it. Similarly, to hand down %b from branchformat, use %%%%b. Sorry
939 for this inconvenience, but it cannot be easily avoided. Luckily we do
940 not clash with a lot of prompt expansions and this only needs to be
941 done for those.
942 Quilt Support
944 Quilt is not a version control system, therefore this is not imple‐
945 mented as a backend. It can help keeping track of a series of patches.
946 People use it to keep a set of changes they want to use on top of soft‐
947 ware packages (which is tightly integrated into the package build
948 process - the Debian project does this for a large number of packages).
949 Quilt can also help individual developers keep track of their own
950 patches on top of real version control systems.
951 The vcs_info integration tries to support both ways of using quilt by
953 having two slightly different modes of operation: `addon' mode and
954 `standalone' mode).
955 For `addon' mode to become active vcs_info must have already detected a
957 real version control system controlling the directory. If that is the
958 case, a directory that holds quilt's patches needs to be found. That
959 directory is configurable via the `QUILT_PATCHES' environment variable.
960 If that variable exists its value is used, otherwise the value
961 `patches' is assumed. The value from $QUILT_PATCHES can be overwritten
962 using the `quilt-patches' style. (Note: you can use vcs_info to keep
963 the value of $QUILT_PATCHES correct all the time via the post-quilt
964 hook).
965 When the directory in question is found, quilt is assumed to be active.
967 To gather more information, vcs_info looks for a directory called
968 `.pc'; Quilt uses that directory to track its current state. If this
969 directory does not exist we know that quilt has not done anything to
970 the working directory (read: no patches have been applied yet).
971 If patches are applied, vcs_info will try to find out which. If you
973 want to know which patches of a series are not yet applied, you need to
974 activate the get-unapplied style in the appropriate context.
975 vcs_info allows for very detailed control over how the gathered infor‐
977 mation is presented (see the below sections, Styles and Hooks in
978 vcs_info), all of which are documented below. Note there are a number
979 of other patch tracking systems that work on top of a certain version
980 control system (like stgit for git, or mq for hg); the configuration
981 for systems like that are generally configured the same way as the
982 quilt support.
983 If the quilt support is working in `addon' mode, the produced string is
985 available as a simple format replacement (%Q to be precise), which can
986 be used in formats and actionformats; see below for details).
987 If, on the other hand, the support code is working in `standalone'
989 mode, vcs_info will pretend as if quilt were an actual version control
990 system. That means that the version control system identifier (which
991 otherwise would be something like `svn' or `cvs') will be set to
992 `-quilt-'. This has implications on the used style context where this
993 identifier is the second element. vcs_info will have filled in a proper
994 value for the "repository's" root directory and the string containing
995 the information about quilt's state will be available as the `misc'
996 replacement (and %Q for compatibility with `addon' mode.
997 What is left to discuss is how `standalone' mode is detected. The
999 detection itself is a series of searches for directories. You can have
1000 this detection enabled all the time in every directory that is not oth‐
1001 erwise under version control. If you know there is only a limited set
1002 of trees where you would like vcs_info to try and look for Quilt in
1003 `standalone' mode to minimise the amount of searching on every call to
1004 vcs_info, there are a number of ways to do that:
1005 Essentially, `standalone' mode detection is controlled by a style
1007 called `quilt-standalone'. It is a string style and its value can have
1008 different effects. The simplest values are: `always' to run detection
1009 every time vcs_info is run, and `never' to turn the detection off
1010 entirely.
1011 If the value of quilt-standalone is something else, it is interpreted
1013 differently. If the value is the name of a scalar variable the value of
1014 that variable is checked and that value is used in the same
1015 `always'/`never' way as described above.
1016 If the value of quilt-standalone is an array, the elements of that
1018 array are used as directory names under which you want the detection to
1019 be active.
1020 If quilt-standalone is an associative array, the keys are taken as
1022 directory names under which you want the detection to be active, but
1023 only if the corresponding value is the string `true'.
1024 Last, but not least, if the value of quilt-standalone is the name of a
1026 function, the function is called without arguments and the return value
1027 decides whether detection should be active. A `0' return value is true;
1028 a non-zero return value is interpreted as false.
1029 Note, if there is both a function and a variable by the name of
1031 quilt-standalone, the function will take precedence.
1032 Function Descriptions (Public API)
1034 vcs_info [user-context]
1035 The main function, that runs all backends and assembles all data
1036 into ${vcs_info_msg_*_}. This is the function you want to call
1037 from precmd if you want to include up-to-date information in
1038 your prompt (see Variable description below). If an argument is
1039 given, that string will be used instead of default in the
1040 user-context field of the style context.
1041 vcs_info_hookadd
1043 Statically registers a number of functions to a given hook. The
1044 hook needs to be given as the first argument; what follows is a
1045 list of hook-function names to register to the hook. The `+vi-'
1046 prefix needs to be left out here. See Hooks in vcs_info below
1047 for details.
1048 vcs_info_hookdel
1050 Remove hook-functions from a given hook. The hook needs to be
1051 given as the first non-option argument; what follows is a list
1052 of hook-function names to un-register from the hook. If `-a' is
1053 used as the first argument, all occurances of the functions are
1054 unregistered. Otherwise only the last occurance is removed (if a
1055 function was registered to a hook more than once) . The `+vi-'
1056 prefix needs to be left out here. See Hooks in vcs_info below
1057 for details.
1058 vcs_info_lastmsg
1060 Outputs the last ${vcs_info_msg_*_} value. Takes into account
1061 the value of the use-prompt-escapes style in ':vcs_info:for‐
1062 mats:command:-all-'. It also only prints max-exports values.
1063 vcs_info_printsys [user-context]
1065 Prints a list of all supported version control systems. Useful
1066 to find out possible contexts (and which of them are enabled) or
1067 values for the disable style.
1068 vcs_info_setsys
1070 Initializes vcs_info's internal list of available backends. With
1071 this function, you can add support for new VCSs without restart‐
1072 ing the shell.
1073 All functions named VCS_INFO_* are for internal use only.
1075 Variable Description
1077 ${vcs_info_msg_N_} (Note the trailing underscore)
1078 Where N is an integer, e.g., vcs_info_msg_0_. These variables
1079 are the storage for the informational message the last vcs_info
1080 call has assembled. These are strongly connected to the formats,
1081 actionformats and nvcsformats styles described above. Those
1082 styles are lists. The first member of that list gets expanded
1083 into ${vcs_info_msg_0_}, the second into ${vcs_info_msg_1_} and
1084 the Nth into ${vcs_info_msg_N-1_}. These parameters are exported
1085 into the environment. (See the max-exports style above.)
1086 All variables named VCS_INFO_* are for internal use only.
1088 Hooks in vcs_info
1090 Hooks are places in vcs_info where you can run your own code. That code
1091 can communicate with the code that called it and through that, change
1092 the system's behaviour.
1093 For configuration, hooks change the style context:
1095 :vcs_info:vcs-string+hook-name:user-context:repo-root-name
1096 To register functions to a hook, you need to list them in the hooks
1098 style in the appropriate context.
1099 Example:
1101 zstyle ':vcs_info:*+foo:*' hooks bar baz
1102 This registers functions to the hook `foo' for all backends. In order
1104 to avoid namespace problems, all registered function names are
1105 prepended by a `+vi-', so the actual functions called for the `foo'
1106 hook are `+vi-bar' and `+vi-baz'.
1107 If you would like to register a function to a hook regardless of the
1109 current context, you may use the vcs_info_hookadd function. To remove a
1110 function that was added like that, the vcs_info_hookdel function can be
1111 used.
1112 If something seems weird, you can enable the `debug' boolean style in
1114 the proper context and the hook-calling code will print what it tried
1115 to execute and whether the function in question existed.
1116 When you register more than one function to a hook, all functions are
1118 executed one after another until one function returns non-zero or until
1119 all functions have been called. Context-sensitive hook functions are
1120 executed before statically registered ones (the ones added by
1121 vcs_info_hookadd).
1122 You may pass data between functions via an associative array,
1124 user_data. For example:
1125 +vi-git-myfirsthook(){
1126 user_data[myval]=$myval
1127 }
1128 +vi-git-mysecondhook(){
1129 # do something with ${user_data[myval]}
1130 }
1131 There are a number of variables that are special in hook contexts:
1133 ret The return value that the hooks system will return to the call‐
1135 er. The default is an integer `zero'. If and how a changed ret
1136 value changes the execution of the caller depends on the spe‐
1137 cific hook. See the hook documentation below for details.
1138 hook_com
1140 An associated array which is used for bidirectional communica‐
1141 tion from the caller to hook functions. The used keys depend on
1142 the specific hook.
1143 context
1145 The active context of the hook. Functions that wish to change
1146 this variable should make it local scope first.
1147 vcs The current VCS after it was detected. The same values as in the
1149 enable/disable style are used. Available in all hooks except
1150 start-up.
1151 Finally, the full list of currently available hooks:
1153 start-up
1155 Called after starting vcs_info but before the VCS in this direc‐
1156 tory is determined. It can be used to deactivate vcs_info tempo‐
1157 rarily if necessary. When ret is set to 1, vcs_info aborts and
1158 does nothing; when set to 2, vcs_info sets up everything as if
1159 no version control were active and exits.
1160 pre-get-data
1162 Same as start-up but after the VCS was detected.
1163 gen-hg-bookmark-string
1165 Called in the Mercurial backend when a bookmark string is gener‐
1166 ated; the get-revision and get-bookmarks styles must be true.
1167 This hook gets the names of the Mercurial bookmarks that
1169 vcs_info collected from `hg'.
1170 When setting ret to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[hg-book‐
1172 mark-string]} will be used in the %m escape in formats and
1173 actionformats and will be availabe in the global backend_misc
1174 array as ${backend_misc[bookmarks]}.
1175 gen-applied-string
1177 Called in the git (with stgit), and hg (with mq) backends and in
1178 quilt support when the applied-string is generated; the
1179 use-quilt zstyle must be true for quilt (the mq and stgit back‐
1180 ends are active by default).
1181 This hook gets the names of all applied patches which vcs_info
1183 collected so far in the opposite order, which means that the
1184 first argument is the top-most patch and so forth.
1185 When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
1187 ${hook_com[applied-string]} will be used in the %m escape in
1188 formats and actionformats; it will be available in the global
1189 backend_misc array as $backend_misc[patches]}; and it will be
1190 available as %p in the patch-format and nopatch-format styles.
1191 gen-unapplied-string
1193 Called in the git (with stgit), and hg (with mq) backend and in
1194 quilt support when the unapplied-string is generated; the
1195 get-unapplied style must be true.
1196 This hook gets the names of all unapplied patches which vcs_info
1198 collected so far in the opposite order, which mean that the
1199 first argument is the patch next-in-line to be applied and so
1200 forth.
1201 When setting ret to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[unap‐
1203 plied-string]} will be available as %u in the patch-format and
1204 nopatch-format styles.
1205 gen-mqguards-string
1207 Called in the hg backend when guards-string is generated; the
1208 get-mq style must be true (default).
1209 This hook gets the names of any active mq guards.
1211 When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
1213 ${hook_com[guards-string]} will be used in the %g escape in the
1214 patch-format and nopatch-format styles.
1215 no-vcs This hooks is called when no version control system was
1217 detected.
1218 The `hook_com' parameter is not used.
1220 post-quilt
1222 Called after the quilt support is done. The following informa‐
1223 tion is passed as arguments to the hook: 1. the quilt-support
1224 mode (`addon' or `standalone'); 2. the directory that contains
1225 the patch series; 3. the directory that holds quilt's status
1226 information (the `.pc' directory) or the string "-nopc-" if that
1227 directory wasn't found.
1228 The `hook_com' parameter is not used.
1230 set-branch-format
1232 Called before `branchformat' is set. The only argument to the
1233 hook is the format that is configured at this point.
1234 The `hook_com' keys considered are `branch' and `revision'.
1236 They are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and
1237 any change will be used directly when the actual replacement is
1238 done.
1239 If ret is set to non-zero, the string in
1241 ${hook_com[branch-replace]} will be used unchanged as the `%b'
1242 replacement in the variables set by vcs_info.
1243 set-hgrev-format
1245 Called before a `hgrevformat' is set. The only argument to the
1246 hook is the format that is configured at this point.
1247 The `hook_com' keys considered are `hash' and `localrev'. They
1249 are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and any
1250 change will be used directly when the actual replacement is
1251 done.
1252 If ret is set to non-zero, the string in
1254 ${hook_com[rev-replace]} will be used unchanged as the `%i'
1255 replacement in the variables set by vcs_info.
1256 set-message
1258 Called each time before a `vcs_info_msg_N_' message is set. It
1259 takes two arguments; the first being the `N' in the message
1260 variable name, the second is the currently configured formats or
1261 actionformats.
1262 There are a number of `hook_com' keys, that are used here:
1264 `action', `branch', `base', `base-name', `subdir', `staged',
1265 `unstaged', `revision', `misc', `vcs' and one `miscN' entry for
1266 each backend-specific data field (N starting at zero). They are
1267 set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and any change
1268 will be used directly when the actual replacement is done.
1269 Since this hook is triggered multiple times (once for each con‐
1271 figured formats or actionformats), each of the `hook_com' keys
1272 mentioned above (except for the miscN entries) has an `_orig'
1273 counterpart, so even if you changed a value to your liking you
1274 can still get the original value in the next run. Changing the
1275 `_orig' values is probably not a good idea.
1276 If ret is set to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[message]}
1278 will be used unchanged as the message by vcs_info.
1279 If all of this sounds rather confusing, take a look at the Examples
1281 section below and also in the Misc/vcs_info-examples file in the Zsh
1282 source. They contain some explanatory code.
1283 Examples
1285 Don't use vcs_info at all (even though it's in your prompt):
1286 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable NONE
1287 Disable the backends for bzr and svk:
1289 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr svk
1290 Disable everything but bzr and svk:
1292 zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable bzr svk
1293 Provide a special formats for git:
1295 zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' formats ' GIT, BABY! [%b]'
1296 zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' actionformats ' GIT ACTION! [%b|%a]'
1297 All %x expansion in all sorts of formats ("formats", "actionformats",
1299 branchformat, you name it) are done using the `zformat' builtin from
1300 the `zsh/zutil' module. That means you can do everything with these %x
1301 items what zformat supports. In particular, if you want something that
1302 is really long to have a fixed width, like a hash in a mercurial
1303 branchformat, you can do this: %12.12i. That'll shrink the 40 character
1304 hash to its 12 leading characters. The form is actually `%min.maxx'.
1305 More is possible. See the section `The zsh/zutil Module' in zshmod‐
1306 ules(1) for details.
1307 Use the quicker bzr backend
1309 zstyle ':vcs_info:bzr:*' use-simple true
1310 If you do use use-simple, please report if it does
1312 `the-right-thing[tm]'.
1313 Display the revision number in yellow for bzr and svn:
1315 zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' branchformat '%b%{'${fg[yellow]}'%}:%r'
1316 If you want colors, make sure you enclose the color codes in %{...%} if
1318 you want to use the string provided by vcs_info in prompts.
1319 Here is how to print the VCS information as a command (not in a
1321 prompt):
1322 alias vcsi='vcs_info command; vcs_info_lastmsg'
1323 This way, you can even define different formats for output via
1325 vcs_info_lastmsg in the ':vcs_info:*:command:*' namespace.
1326 Now as promised, some code that uses hooks: say, you'd like to replace
1328 the string `svn' by `subversion' in vcs_info's %s formats replacement.
1329 First, we will tell vcs_info to call a function when populating the
1331 message variables with the gathered information:
1332 zstyle ':vcs_info:*+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
1333 Nothing happens. Which is reasonable, since we didn't define the actual
1335 function yet. To see what the hooks subsystem is trying to do, enable
1336 the `debug' style:
1337 zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug true
1338 That should give you an idea what is going on. Specifically, the func‐
1340 tion that we are looking for is `+vi-svn2subversion'. Note, the `+vi-'
1341 prefix. So, everything is in order, just as documented. When you are
1342 done checking out the debugging output, disable it again:
1343 zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug false
1344 Now, let's define the function:
1346 function +vi-svn2subversion() {
1347 [[ ${hook_com[vcs_orig]} == svn ]] && hook_com[vcs]=subversion
1348 }
1349 Simple enough. And it could have even been simpler, if only we had reg‐
1351 istered our function in a less generic context. If we do it only in the
1352 `svn' backend's context, we don't need to test which the active backend
1353 is:
1354 zstyle ':vcs_info:svn+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
1355 function +vi-svn2subversion() {
1356 hook_com[vcs]=subversion
1357 }
1358 And finally a little more elaborate example, that uses a hook to create
1360 a customised bookmark string for the hg backend.
1361 Again, we start off by registering a function:
1363 zstyle ':vcs_info:hg+gen-hg-bookmark-string:*' hooks hgbookmarks
1364 And then we define the `+vi-hgbookmarks function:
1366 function +vi-hgbookmarks() {
1367 # The default is to connect all bookmark names by
1368 # commas. This mixes things up a little.
1369 # Imagine, there's one type of bookmarks that is
1370 # special to you. Say, because it's *your* work.
1371 # Those bookmarks look always like this: "sh/*"
1372 # (because your initials are sh, for example).
1373 # This makes the bookmarks string use only those
1374 # bookmarks. If there's more than one, it
1375 # concatenates them using commas.
1376 local s i
1377 # The bookmarks returned by `hg' are available in
1378 # the functions positional parameters.
1379 (( $# == 0 )) && return 0
1380 for i in "$@"; do
1381 if [[ $i == sh/* ]]; then
1382 [[ -n $s ]] && s=$s,
1383 s=${s}$i
1384 fi
1385 done
1386 # Now, the communication with the code that calls
1387 # the hook functions is done via the hook_com[]
1388 # hash. The key, at which the `gen-hg-bookmark-string'
1389 # hook looks at is `hg-bookmark-string'. So:
1390 hook_com[hg-bookmark-string]=$s
1391 # And to signal, that we want to use the sting we
1392 # just generated, set the special variable `ret' to
1393 # something other than the default zero:
1394 ret=1
1395 return 0
1396 }
1397 Some longer examples and code snippets which might be useful are avail‐
1399 able in the examples file located at Misc/vcs_info-examples in the Zsh
1400 source directory.
1401 This concludes our guided tour through zsh's vcs_info.
1403
1405 Installation
1406 You should make sure all the functions from the Functions/Prompts
1407 directory of the source distribution are available; they all begin with
1408 the string `prompt_' except for the special function`promptinit'. You
1409 also need the `colors' function from Functions/Misc. All of these
1410 functions may already have been installed on your system; if not, you
1411 will need to find them and copy them. The directory should appear as
1412 one of the elements of the fpath array (this should already be the case
1413 if they were installed), and at least the function promptinit should be
1414 autoloaded; it will autoload the rest. Finally, to initialize the use
1415 of the system you need to call the promptinit function. The following
1416 code in your .zshrc will arrange for this; assume the functions are
1417 stored in the directory ~/myfns:
1418 fpath=(~/myfns $fpath)
1420 autoload -U promptinit
1421 promptinit
1422 Theme Selection
1424 Use the prompt command to select your preferred theme. This command
1425 may be added to your .zshrc following the call to promptinit in order
1426 to start zsh with a theme already selected.
1427 prompt [ -c | -l ]
1429 prompt [ -p | -h ] [ theme ... ]
1430 prompt [ -s ] theme [ arg ... ]
1431 Set or examine the prompt theme. With no options and a theme
1432 argument, the theme with that name is set as the current theme.
1433 The available themes are determined at run time; use the -l
1434 option to see a list. The special theme `random' selects at
1435 random one of the available themes and sets your prompt to that.
1436 In some cases the theme may be modified by one or more argu‐
1438 ments, which should be given after the theme name. See the help
1439 for each theme for descriptions of these arguments.
1440 Options are:
1442 -c Show the currently selected theme and its parameters, if
1444 any.
1445 -l List all available prompt themes.
1446 -p Preview the theme named by theme, or all themes if no
1447 theme is given.
1448 -h Show help for the theme named by theme, or for the prompt
1449 function if no theme is given.
1450 -s Set theme as the current theme and save state.
1451 prompt_theme_setup
1453 Each available theme has a setup function which is called by the
1454 prompt function to install that theme. This function may define
1455 other functions as necessary to maintain the prompt, including
1456 functions used to preview the prompt or provide help for its
1457 use. You should not normally call a theme's setup function
1458 directly.
1459
1461 Widgets
1462 These functions all implement user-defined ZLE widgets (see zshzle(1))
1463 which can be bound to keystrokes in interactive shells. To use them,
1464 your .zshrc should contain lines of the form
1465 autoload function
1467 zle -N function
1468 followed by an appropriate bindkey command to associate the function
1470 with a key sequence. Suggested bindings are described below.
1471 bash-style word functions
1473 If you are looking for functions to implement moving over and
1474 editing words in the manner of bash, where only alphanumeric
1475 characters are considered word characters, you can use the func‐
1476 tions described in the next section. The following is suffi‐
1477 cient:
1478 autoload -U select-word-style
1480 select-word-style bash
1481 forward-word-match, backward-word-match
1483 kill-word-match, backward-kill-word-match
1484 transpose-words-match, capitalize-word-match
1485 up-case-word-match, down-case-word-match
1486 select-word-style, match-word-context, match-words-by-style
1487 The eight `-match' functions are drop-in replacements for the
1488 builtin widgets without the suffix. By default they behave in a
1489 similar way. However, by the use of styles and the function
1490 select-word-style, the way words are matched can be altered.
1491 The simplest way of configuring the functions is to use
1493 select-word-style, which can either be called as a normal func‐
1494 tion with the appropriate argument, or invoked as a user-defined
1495 widget that will prompt for the first character of the word
1496 style to be used. The first time it is invoked, the eight
1497 -match functions will automatically replace the builtin ver‐
1498 sions, so they do not need to be loaded explicitly.
1499 The word styles available are as follows. Only the first char‐
1501 acter is examined.
1502 bash Word characters are alphanumeric characters only.
1504 normal As in normal shell operation: word characters are
1506 alphanumeric characters plus any characters present in
1507 the string given by the parameter $WORDCHARS.
1508 shell Words are complete shell command arguments, possibly
1510 including complete quoted strings, or any tokens special
1511 to the shell.
1512 whitespace
1514 Words are any set of characters delimited by whitespace.
1515 default
1517 Restore the default settings; this is usually the same as
1518 `normal'.
1519 All but `default' can be input as an upper case character, which
1521 has the same effect but with subword matching turned on. In
1522 this case, words with upper case characters are treated spe‐
1523 cially: each separate run of upper case characters, or an upper
1524 case character followed by any number of other characters, is
1525 considered a word. The style subword-range can supply an alter‐
1526 native character range to the default `[:upper:]'; the value of
1527 the style is treated as the contents of a `[...]' pattern (note
1528 that the outer brackets should not be supplied, only those sur‐
1529 rounding named ranges).
1530 More control can be obtained using the zstyle command, as
1532 described in zshmodules(1). Each style is looked up in the con‐
1533 text :zle:widget where widget is the name of the user-defined
1534 widget, not the name of the function implementing it, so in the
1535 case of the definitions supplied by select-word-style the appro‐
1536 priate contexts are :zle:forward-word, and so on. The function
1537 select-word-style itself always defines styles for the context
1538 `:zle:*' which can be overridden by more specific (longer) pat‐
1539 terns as well as explicit contexts.
1540 The style word-style specifies the rules to use. This may have
1542 the following values.
1543 normal Use the standard shell rules, i.e. alphanumerics and
1545 $WORDCHARS, unless overridden by the styles word-chars or
1546 word-class.
1547 specified
1549 Similar to normal, but only the specified characters, and
1550 not also alphanumerics, are considered word characters.
1551 unspecified
1553 The negation of specified. The given characters are
1554 those which will not be considered part of a word.
1555 shell Words are obtained by using the syntactic rules for gen‐
1557 erating shell command arguments. In addition, special
1558 tokens which are never command arguments such as `()' are
1559 also treated as words.
1560 whitespace
1562 Words are whitespace-delimited strings of characters.
1563 The first three of those rules usually use $WORDCHARS, but the
1565 value in the parameter can be overridden by the style
1566 word-chars, which works in exactly the same way as $WORDCHARS.
1567 In addition, the style word-class uses character class syntax to
1568 group characters and takes precedence over word-chars if both
1569 are set. The word-class style does not include the surrounding
1570 brackets of the character class; for example, `-:[:alnum:]' is a
1571 valid word-class to include all alphanumerics plus the charac‐
1572 ters `-' and `:'. Be careful including `]', `^' and `-' as
1573 these are special inside character classes.
1574 word-style may also have `-subword' appended to its value to
1576 turn on subword matching, as described above.
1577 The style skip-chars is mostly useful for transpose-words and
1579 similar functions. If set, it gives a count of characters
1580 starting at the cursor position which will not be considered
1581 part of the word and are treated as space, regardless of what
1582 they actually are. For example, if
1583 zstyle ':zle:transpose-words' skip-chars 1
1585 has been set, and transpose-words-match is called with the cur‐
1587 sor on the X of fooXbar, where X can be any character, then the
1588 resulting expression is barXfoo.
1589 Finer grained control can be obtained by setting the style
1591 word-context to an array of pairs of entries. Each pair of
1592 entries consists of a pattern and a subcontext. The shell argu‐
1593 ment the cursor is on is matched against each pattern in turn
1594 until one matches; if it does, the context is extended by a
1595 colon and the corresponding subcontext. Note that the test is
1596 made against the original word on the line, with no stripping of
1597 quotes. Special handling is done between words: the current
1598 context is examined and if it contains the string back, the word
1599 before the cursor is considered, else the word after cursor is
1600 considered. Some examples are given below.
1601 The style skip-whitespace-first is only used with the for‐
1603 ward-word widget. If it is set to true, then forward-word skips
1604 any non-word-characters, followed by any non-word-characters:
1605 this is similar to the behaviour of other word-orientated wid‐
1606 gets, and also that used by other editors, however it differs
1607 from the standard zsh behaviour. When using select-word-style
1608 the widget is set in the context :zle:* to true if the word
1609 style is bash and false otherwise. It may be overridden by set‐
1610 ting it in the more specific context :zle:forward-word*.
1611 Here are some examples of use of the styles, actually taken from
1613 the simplified interface in select-word-style:
1614 zstyle ':zle:*' word-style standard
1616 zstyle ':zle:*' word-chars ''
1617 Implements bash-style word handling for all widgets, i.e. only
1619 alphanumerics are word characters; equivalent to setting the
1620 parameter WORDCHARS empty for the given context.
1621 style ':zle:*kill*' word-style space
1623 Uses space-delimited words for widgets with the word `kill' in
1625 the name. Neither of the styles word-chars nor word-class is
1626 used in this case.
1627 Here are some examples of use of the word-context style to
1629 extend the context.
1630 zstyle ':zle:*' word-context "*/*" file "[[:space:]]" whitespace
1632 zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:whitespace' word-style shell
1633 zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:filename' word-style normal
1634 zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:filename' word-chars ''
1635 This provides two different ways of using transpose-words
1637 depending on whether the cursor is on whitespace between words
1638 or on a filename, here any word containing a /. On whitespace,
1639 complete arguments as defined by standard shell rules will be
1640 transposed. In a filename, only alphanumerics will be trans‐
1641 posed. Elsewhere, words will be transposed using the default
1642 style for :zle:transpose-words.
1643 The word matching and all the handling of zstyle settings is
1645 actually implemented by the function match-words-by-style. This
1646 can be used to create new user-defined widgets. The calling
1647 function should set the local parameter curcontext to :zle:wid‐
1648 get, create the local parameter matched_words and call
1649 match-words-by-style with no arguments. On return,
1650 matched_words will be set to an array with the elements: (1) the
1651 start of the line (2) the word before the cursor (3) any
1652 non-word characters between that word and the cursor (4) any
1653 non-word character at the cursor position plus any remaining
1654 non-word characters before the next word, including all charac‐
1655 ters specified by the skip-chars style, (5) the word at or fol‐
1656 lowing the cursor (6) any non-word characters following that
1657 word (7) the remainder of the line. Any of the elements may be
1658 an empty string; the calling function should test for this to
1659 decide whether it can perform its function.
1660 It is possible to pass options with arguments to
1662 match-words-by-style to override the use of styles. The options
1663 are:
1664 -w word-style
1665 -s skip-chars
1666 -c word-class
1667 -C word-chars
1668 -r subword-range
1669 For example, match-words-by-style -w shell -c 0 may be used to
1671 extract the command argument around the cursor.
1672 The word-context style is implemented by the function
1674 match-word-context. This should not usually need to be called
1675 directly.
1676 copy-earlier-word
1678 This widget works like a combination of insert-last-word and
1679 copy-prev-shell-word. Repeated invocations of the widget
1680 retrieve earlier words on the relevant history line. With a
1681 numeric argument N, insert the Nth word from the history line; N
1682 may be negative to count from the end of the line.
1683 If insert-last-word has been used to retrieve the last word on a
1685 previous history line, repeated invocations will replace that
1686 word with earlier words from the same line.
1687 Otherwise, the widget applies to words on the line currently
1689 being edited. The widget style can be set to the name of
1690 another widget that should be called to retrieve words. This
1691 widget must accept the same three arguments as insert-last-word.
1692 cycle-completion-positions
1694 After inserting an unambiguous string into the command line, the
1695 new function based completion system may know about multiple
1696 places in this string where characters are missing or differ
1697 from at least one of the possible matches. It will then place
1698 the cursor on the position it considers to be the most interest‐
1699 ing one, i.e. the one where one can disambiguate between as many
1700 matches as possible with as little typing as possible.
1701 This widget allows the cursor to be easily moved to the other
1703 interesting spots. It can be invoked repeatedly to cycle
1704 between all positions reported by the completion system.
1705 delete-whole-word-match
1707 This is another function which works like the -match functions
1708 described immediately above, i.e. using styles to decide the
1709 word boundaries. However, it is not a replacement for any
1710 existing function.
1711 The basic behaviour is to delete the word around the cursor.
1713 There is no numeric prefix handling; only the single word around
1714 the cursor is considered. If the widget contains the string
1715 kill, the removed text will be placed in the cutbuffer for
1716 future yanking. This can be obtained by defining
1717 kill-whole-word-match as follows:
1718 zle -N kill-whole-word-match delete-whole-word-match
1720 and then binding the widget kill-whole-word-match.
1722 up-line-or-beginning-search, down-line-or-beginning-search
1724 These widgets are similar to the builtin functions
1725 up-line-or-search and down-line-or-search: if in a multiline
1726 buffer they move up or down within the buffer, otherwise they
1727 search for a history line matching the start of the current
1728 line. In this case, however, they search for a line which
1729 matches the current line up to the current cursor position, in
1730 the manner of history-beginning-search-backward and -forward,
1731 rather than the first word on the line.
1732 edit-command-line
1734 Edit the command line using your visual editor, as in ksh.
1735 bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line
1737 history-search-end
1739 This function implements the widgets history-begin‐
1740 ning-search-backward-end and history-beginning-search-for‐
1741 ward-end. These commands work by first calling the correspond‐
1742 ing builtin widget (see `History Control' in zshzle(1)) and then
1743 moving the cursor to the end of the line. The original cursor
1744 position is remembered and restored before calling the builtin
1745 widget a second time, so that the same search is repeated to
1746 look farther through the history.
1747 Although you autoload only one function, the commands to use it
1749 are slightly different because it implements two widgets.
1750 zle -N history-beginning-search-backward-end \
1752 history-search-end
1753 zle -N history-beginning-search-forward-end \
1754 history-search-end
1755 bindkey '\e^P' history-beginning-search-backward-end
1756 bindkey '\e^N' history-beginning-search-forward-end
1757 history-beginning-search-menu
1759 This function implements yet another form of history searching.
1760 The text before the cursor is used to select lines from the his‐
1761 tory, as for history-beginning-search-backward except that all
1762 matches are shown in a numbered menu. Typing the appropriate
1763 digits inserts the full history line. Note that leading zeroes
1764 must be typed (they are only shown when necessary for removing
1765 ambiguity). The entire history is searched; there is no dis‐
1766 tinction between forwards and backwards.
1767 With a prefix argument, the search is not anchored to the start
1769 of the line; the string typed by the use may appear anywhere in
1770 the line in the history.
1771 If the widget name contains `-end' the cursor is moved to the
1773 end of the line inserted. If the widget name contains `-space'
1774 any space in the text typed is treated as a wildcard and can
1775 match anything (hence a leading space is equivalent to giving a
1776 prefix argument). Both forms can be combined, for example:
1777 zle -N history-beginning-search-menu-space-end \
1779 history-beginning-search-menu
1780 history-pattern-search
1782 The function history-pattern-search implements widgets which
1783 prompt for a pattern with which to search the history backwards
1784 or forwards. The pattern is in the usual zsh format, however
1785 the first character may be ^ to anchor the search to the start
1786 of the line, and the last character may be $ to anchor the
1787 search to the end of the line. If the search was not anchored
1788 to the end of the line the cursor is positioned just after the
1789 pattern found.
1790 The commands to create bindable widgets are similar to those in
1792 the example immediately above:
1793 autoload -U history-pattern-search
1795 zle -N history-pattern-search-backward history-pattern-search
1796 zle -N history-pattern-search-forward history-pattern-search
1797 incarg Typing the keystrokes for this widget with the cursor placed on
1799 or to the left of an integer causes that integer to be incre‐
1800 mented by one. With a numeric prefix argument, the number is
1801 incremented by the amount of the argument (decremented if the
1802 prefix argument is negative). The shell parameter incarg may be
1803 set to change the default increment to something other than one.
1804 bindkey '^X+' incarg
1806 incremental-complete-word
1808 This allows incremental completion of a word. After starting
1809 this command, a list of completion choices can be shown after
1810 every character you type, which you can delete with ^H or DEL.
1811 Pressing return accepts the completion so far and returns you to
1812 normal editing (that is, the command line is not immediately
1813 executed). You can hit TAB to do normal completion, ^G to abort
1814 back to the state when you started, and ^D to list the matches.
1815 This works only with the new function based completion system.
1817 bindkey '^Xi' incremental-complete-word
1819 insert-composed-char
1821 This function allows you to compose characters that don't appear
1822 on the keyboard to be inserted into the command line. The com‐
1823 mand is followed by two keys corresponding to ASCII characters
1824 (there is no prompt). For accented characters, the two keys are
1825 a base character followed by a code for the accent, while for
1826 other special characters the two characters together form a
1827 mnemonic for the character to be inserted. The two-character
1828 codes are a subset of those given by RFC 1345 (see for example
1829 http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1345.html).
1830 The function may optionally be followed by up to two characters
1832 which replace one or both of the characters read from the key‐
1833 board; if both characters are supplied, no input is read. For
1834 example, insert-composed-char a: can be used within a widget to
1835 insert an a with umlaut into the command line. This has the
1836 advantages over use of a literal character that it is more por‐
1837 table.
1838 For best results zsh should have been built with support for
1840 multibyte characters (configured with --enable-multibyte); how‐
1841 ever, the function works for the limited range of characters
1842 available in single-byte character sets such as ISO-8859-1.
1843 The character is converted into the local representation and
1845 inserted into the command line at the cursor position. (The
1846 conversion is done within the shell, using whatever facilities
1847 the C library provides.) With a numeric argument, the character
1848 and its code are previewed in the status line
1849 The function may be run outside zle in which case it prints the
1851 character (together with a newline) to standard output. Input
1852 is still read from keystrokes.
1853 See insert-unicode-char for an alternative way of inserting Uni‐
1855 code characters using their hexadecimal character number.
1856 The set of accented characters is reasonably complete up to Uni‐
1858 code character U+0180, the set of special characters less so.
1859 However, it is very sporadic from that point. Adding new char‐
1860 acters is easy, however; see the function define-composed-chars.
1861 Please send any additions to zsh-workers@zsh.org.
1862 The codes for the second character when used to accent the first
1864 are as follows. Note that not every character can take every
1865 accent.
1866 ! Grave.
1867 ' Acute.
1868 > Circumflex.
1869 ? Tilde. (This is not ~ as RFC 1345 does not assume that
1870 character is present on the keyboard.)
1871 - Macron. (A horizontal bar over the base character.)
1872 ( Breve. (A shallow dish shape over the base character.)
1873 . Dot above the base character, or in the case of i no dot,
1874 or in the case of L and l a centered dot.
1875 : Diaeresis (Umlaut).
1876 c Cedilla.
1877 _ Underline, however there are currently no underlined
1878 characters.
1879 / Stroke through the base character.
1880 " Double acute (only supported on a few letters).
1881 ; Ogonek. (A little forward facing hook at the bottom
1882 right of the character.)
1883 < Caron. (A little v over the letter.)
1884 0 Circle over the base character.
1885 2 Hook over the base character.
1886 9 Horn over the base character.
1887 The most common characters from the Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek and
1889 Hebrew alphabets are available; consult RFC 1345 for the appro‐
1890 priate sequences. In addition, a set of two letter codes not in
1891 RFC 1345 are available for the double-width characters corre‐
1892 sponding to ASCII characters from ! to ~ (0x21 to 0x7e) by pre‐
1893 ceding the character with ^, for example ^A for a double-width
1894 A.
1895 The following other two-character sequences are understood.
1897 ASCII characters
1899 These are already present on most keyboards:
1900 <( Left square bracket
1901 // Backslash (solidus)
1902 )> Right square bracket
1903 (! Left brace (curly bracket)
1904 !! Vertical bar (pipe symbol)
1905 !) Right brace (curly bracket)
1906 '? Tilde
1907 Special letters
1909 Characters found in various variants of the Latin alpha‐
1910 bet:
1911 ss Eszett (scharfes S)
1912 D-, d- Eth
1913 TH, th Thorn
1914 kk Kra
1915 'n 'n
1916 NG, ng Ng
1917 OI, oi Oi
1918 yr yr
1919 ED ezh
1920 Currency symbols
1922 Ct Cent
1923 Pd Pound sterling (also lira and others)
1924 Cu Currency
1925 Ye Yen
1926 Eu Euro (N.B. not in RFC 1345)
1927 Punctuation characters
1929 References to "right" quotes indicate the shape (like a 9
1930 rather than 6) rather than their grammatical use. (For
1931 example, a "right" low double quote is used to open quo‐
1932 tations in German.)
1933 !I Inverted exclamation mark
1934 BB Broken vertical bar
1935 SE Section
1936 Co Copyright
1937 -a Spanish feminine ordinal indicator
1938 << Left guillemet
1939 -- Soft hyphen
1940 Rg Registered trade mark
1941 PI Pilcrow (paragraph)
1942 -o Spanish masculine ordinal indicator
1943 >> Right guillemet
1944 ?I Inverted question mark
1945 -1 Hyphen
1946 -N En dash
1947 -M Em dash
1948 -3 Horizontal bar
1949 :3 Vertical ellipsis
1950 .3 Horizontal midline ellipsis
1951 !2 Double vertical line
1952 =2 Double low line
1953 '6 Left single quote
1954 '9 Right single quote
1955 .9 "Right" low quote
1956 9' Reversed "right" quote
1957 "6 Left double quote
1958 "9 Right double quote
1959 :9 "Right" low double quote
1960 9" Reversed "right" double quote
1961 /- Dagger
1962 /= Double dagger
1963 Mathematical symbols
1965 DG Degree
1966 -2, +-, -+
1967 - sign, +/- sign, -/+ sign
1968 2S Superscript 2
1969 3S Superscript 3
1970 1S Superscript 1
1971 My Micro
1972 .M Middle dot
1973 14 Quarter
1974 12 Half
1975 34 Three quarters
1976 *X Multiplication
1977 -: Division
1978 %0 Per mille
1979 FA, TE, /0
1980 For all, there exists, empty set
1981 dP, DE, NB
1982 Partial derivative, delta (increment), del (nabla)
1983 (-, -) Element of, contains
1984 *P, +Z Product, sum
1985 *-, Ob, Sb
1986 Asterisk, ring, bullet
1987 RT, 0(, 00
1988 Root sign, proportional to, infinity
1989 Other symbols
1991 cS, cH, cD, cC
1992 Card suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs
1993 Md, M8, M2, Mb, Mx, MX
1994 Musical notation: crotchet (quarter note), quaver (eighth
1995 note), semiquavers (sixteenth notes), flag sign, natural
1996 sign, sharp sign
1997 Fm, Ml Female, male
1998 Accents on their own
2000 '> Circumflex (same as caret, ^)
2001 '! Grave (same as backtick, `)
2002 ', Cedilla
2003 ': Diaeresis (Umlaut)
2004 'm Macron
2005 '' Acute
2006 insert-files
2008 This function allows you type a file pattern, and see the
2009 results of the expansion at each step. When you hit return, all
2010 expansions are inserted into the command line.
2011 bindkey '^Xf' insert-files
2013 insert-unicode-char
2015 When first executed, the user inputs a set of hexadecimal dig‐
2016 its. This is terminated with another call to insert-uni‐
2017 code-char. The digits are then turned into the corresponding
2018 Unicode character. For example, if the widget is bound to ^XU,
2019 the character sequence `^XU 4 c ^XU' inserts L (Unicode U+004c).
2020 See insert-composed-char for a way of inserting characters using
2022 a two-character mnemonic.
2023 narrow-to-region [ -p pre ] [ -P post ]
2025 [ -S statepm | -R statepm ] [ -n ] [ start end ])
2026 narrow-to-region-invisible
2027 Narrow the editable portion of the buffer to the region between
2028 the cursor and the mark, which may be in either order. The
2029 region may not be empty.
2030 narrow-to-region may be used as a widget or called as a function
2032 from a user-defined widget; by default, the text outside the
2033 editable area remains visible. A recursive-edit is performed
2034 and the original widening status is then restored. Various
2035 options and arguments are available when it is called as a func‐
2036 tion.
2037 The options -p pretext and -P posttext may be used to replace
2039 the text before and after the display for the duration of the
2040 function; either or both may be an empty string.
2041 If the option -n is also given, pretext or posttext will only be
2043 inserted if there is text before or after the region respec‐
2044 tively which will be made invisible.
2045 Two numeric arguments may be given which will be used instead of
2047 the cursor and mark positions.
2048 The option -S statepm is used to narrow according to the other
2050 options while saving the original state in the parameter with
2051 name statepm, while the option -R statepm is used to restore the
2052 state from the parameter; note in both cases the name of the
2053 parameter is required. In the second case, other options and
2054 arguments are irrelevant. When this method is used, no recur‐
2055 sive-edit is performed; the calling widget should call this
2056 function with the option -S, perform its own editing on the com‐
2057 mand line or pass control to the user via `zle recursive-edit',
2058 then call this function with the option -R. The argument
2059 statepm must be a suitable name for an ordinary parameter,
2060 except that parameters beginning with the prefix _ntr_ are
2061 reserved for use within narrow-to-region. Typically the parame‐
2062 ter will be local to the calling function.
2063 narrow-to-region-invisible is a simple widget which calls nar‐
2065 row-to-region with arguments which replace any text outside the
2066 region with `...'.
2067 The display is restored (and the widget returns) upon any zle
2069 command which would usually cause the line to be accepted or
2070 aborted. Hence an additional such command is required to accept
2071 or abort the current line.
2072 The return status of both widgets is zero if the line was
2074 accepted, else non-zero.
2075 Here is a trivial example of a widget using this feature.
2077 local state
2078 narrow-to-region -p $'Editing restricted region\n' \
2079 -P '' -S state
2080 zle recursive-edit
2081 narrow-to-region -R state
2082 predict-on
2084 This set of functions implements predictive typing using history
2085 search. After predict-on, typing characters causes the editor
2086 to look backward in the history for the first line beginning
2087 with what you have typed so far. After predict-off, editing
2088 returns to normal for the line found. In fact, you often don't
2089 even need to use predict-off, because if the line doesn't match
2090 something in the history, adding a key performs standard comple‐
2091 tion, and then inserts itself if no completions were found.
2092 However, editing in the middle of a line is liable to confuse
2093 prediction; see the toggle style below.
2094 With the function based completion system (which is needed for
2096 this), you should be able to type TAB at almost any point to
2097 advance the cursor to the next ``interesting'' character posi‐
2098 tion (usually the end of the current word, but sometimes some‐
2099 where in the middle of the word). And of course as soon as the
2100 entire line is what you want, you can accept with return, with‐
2101 out needing to move the cursor to the end first.
2102 The first time predict-on is used, it creates several additional
2104 widget functions:
2105 delete-backward-and-predict
2107 Replaces the backward-delete-char widget. You do not
2108 need to bind this yourself.
2109 insert-and-predict
2110 Implements predictive typing by replacing the self-insert
2111 widget. You do not need to bind this yourself.
2112 predict-off
2113 Turns off predictive typing.
2114 Although you autoload only the predict-on function, it is neces‐
2116 sary to create a keybinding for predict-off as well.
2117 zle -N predict-on
2119 zle -N predict-off
2120 bindkey '^X^Z' predict-on
2121 bindkey '^Z' predict-off
2122 read-from-minibuffer
2124 This is most useful when called as a function from inside a wid‐
2125 get, but will work correctly as a widget in its own right. It
2126 prompts for a value below the current command line; a value may
2127 be input using all of the standard zle operations (and not
2128 merely the restricted set available when executing, for example,
2129 execute-named-cmd). The value is then returned to the calling
2130 function in the parameter $REPLY and the editing buffer restored
2131 to its previous state. If the read was aborted by a keyboard
2132 break (typically ^G), the function returns status 1 and $REPLY
2133 is not set.
2134 If one argument is supplied to the function it is taken as a
2136 prompt, otherwise `? ' is used. If two arguments are supplied,
2137 they are the prompt and the initial value of $LBUFFER, and if a
2138 third argument is given it is the initial value of $RBUFFER.
2139 This provides a default value and starting cursor placement.
2140 Upon return the entire buffer is the value of $REPLY.
2141 One option is available: `-k num' specifies that num characters
2143 are to be read instead of a whole line. The line editor is not
2144 invoked recursively in this case, so depending on the terminal
2145 settings the input may not be visible, and only the input keys
2146 are placed in $REPLY, not the entire buffer. Note that unlike
2147 the read builtin num must be given; there is no default.
2148 The name is a slight misnomer, as in fact the shell's own
2150 minibuffer is not used. Hence it is still possible to call exe‐
2151 cuted-named-cmd and similar functions while reading a value.
2152 replace-string, replace-pattern
2154 replace-string-again, replace-pattern-again
2155 The function replace-string implements three widgets. If
2156 defined under the same name as the function, it prompts for two
2157 strings; the first (source) string will be replaced by the sec‐
2158 ond everywhere it occurs in the line editing buffer.
2159 If the widget name contains the word `pattern', for example by
2161 defining the widget using the command `zle -N replace-pattern
2162 replace-string', then the matching is performed using zsh pat‐
2163 terns. All zsh extended globbing patterns can be used in the
2164 source string; note that unlike filename generation the pattern
2165 does not need to match an entire word, nor do glob qualifiers
2166 have any effect. In addition, the replacement string can con‐
2167 tain parameter or command substitutions. Furthermore, a `&' in
2168 the replacement string will be replaced with the matched source
2169 string, and a backquoted digit `\N' will be replaced by the Nth
2170 parenthesised expression matched. The form `\{N}' may be used
2171 to protect the digit from following digits.
2172 If the widget instead contains the word `regex' (or `regexp'),
2174 then the matching is performed using regular expressions,
2175 respecting the setting of the option RE_MATCH_PCRE (see the
2176 description of the function regexp-replace below). The special
2177 replacement facilities described above for pattern matching are
2178 available.
2179 By default the previous source or replacement string will not be
2181 offered for editing. However, this feature can be activated by
2182 setting the style edit-previous in the context :zle:widget (for
2183 example, :zle:replace-string) to true. In addition, a positive
2184 numeric argument forces the previous values to be offered, a
2185 negative or zero argument forces them not to be.
2186 The function replace-string-again can be used to repeat the pre‐
2188 vious replacement; no prompting is done. As with
2189 replace-string, if the name of the widget contains the word
2190 `pattern' or `regex', pattern or regular expression matching is
2191 performed, else a literal string replacement. Note that the
2192 previous source and replacement text are the same whether pat‐
2193 tern, regular expression or string matching is used.
2194 In addition, replace-string shows the previous replacement above
2196 the prompt, so long as there was one during the current session;
2197 if the source string is empty, that replacement will be repeated
2198 without the widget prompting for a replacement string.
2199 For example, starting from the line:
2201 print This line contains fan and fond
2203 and invoking replace-pattern with the source string `f(?)n' and
2205 the replacement string `c\1r' produces the not very useful line:
2206 print This line contains car and cord
2208 The range of the replacement string can be limited by using the
2210 narrow-to-region-invisible widget. One limitation of the cur‐
2211 rent version is that undo will cycle through changes to the
2212 replacement and source strings before undoing the replacement
2213 itself.
2214 send-invisible
2216 This is similar to read-from-minibuffer in that it may be called
2217 as a function from a widget or as a widget of its own, and
2218 interactively reads input from the keyboard. However, the input
2219 being typed is concealed and a string of asterisks (`*') is
2220 shown instead. The value is saved in the parameter $INVISIBLE
2221 to which a reference is inserted into the editing buffer at the
2222 restored cursor position. If the read was aborted by a keyboard
2223 break (typically ^G) or another escape from editing such as
2224 push-line, $INVISIBLE is set to empty and the original buffer is
2225 restored unchanged.
2226 If one argument is supplied to the function it is taken as a
2228 prompt, otherwise `Non-echoed text: ' is used (as in emacs). If
2229 a second and third argument are supplied they are used to begin
2230 and end the reference to $INVISIBLE that is inserted into the
2231 buffer. The default is to open with ${, then INVISIBLE, and
2232 close with }, but many other effects are possible.
2233 smart-insert-last-word
2235 This function may replace the insert-last-word widget, like so:
2236 zle -N insert-last-word smart-insert-last-word
2238 With a numeric prefix, or when passed command line arguments in
2240 a call from another widget, it behaves like insert-last-word,
2241 except that words in comments are ignored when INTERACTIVE_COM‐
2242 MENTS is set.
2243 Otherwise, the rightmost ``interesting'' word from the previous
2245 command is found and inserted. The default definition of
2246 ``interesting'' is that the word contains at least one alpha‐
2247 betic character, slash, or backslash. This definition may be
2248 overridden by use of the match style. The context used to look
2249 up the style is the widget name, so usually the context is
2250 :insert-last-word. However, you can bind this function to dif‐
2251 ferent widgets to use different patterns:
2252 zle -N insert-last-assignment smart-insert-last-word
2254 zstyle :insert-last-assignment match '[[:alpha:]][][[:alnum:]]#=*'
2255 bindkey '\e=' insert-last-assignment
2256 If no interesting word is found and the auto-previous style is
2258 set to a true value, the search continues upward through the
2259 history. When auto-previous is unset or false (the default),
2260 the widget must be invoked repeatedly in order to search earlier
2261 history lines.
2262 transpose-lines
2264 Only useful with a multi-line editing buffer; the lines here are
2265 lines within the current on-screen buffer, not history lines.
2266 The effect is similar to the function of the same name in Emacs.
2267 Transpose the current line with the previous line and move the
2269 cursor to the start of the next line. Repeating this (which can
2270 be done by providing a positive numeric prefix argument) has the
2271 effect of moving the line above the cursor down by a number of
2272 lines.
2273 With a negative numeric prefix argument, requires two lines
2275 above the cursor. These two lines are transposed and the cursor
2276 moved to the start of the previous line. Using a numeric prefix
2277 less than -1 has the effect of moving the line above the cursor
2278 up by minus that number of lines.
2279 which-command
2281 This function is a drop-in replacement for the builtin widget
2282 which-command. It has enhanced behaviour, in that it correctly
2283 detects whether or not the command word needs to be expanded as
2284 an alias; if so, it continues tracing the command word from the
2285 expanded alias until it reaches the command that will be exe‐
2286 cuted.
2287 The style whence is available in the context :zle:$WIDGET; this
2289 may be set to an array to give the command and options that will
2290 be used to investigate the command word found. The default is
2291 whence -c.
2292 Utility Functions
2294 These functions are useful in constructing widgets. They should be
2295 loaded with `autoload -U function' and called as indicated from
2296 user-defined widgets.
2297 split-shell-arguments
2299 This function splits the line currently being edited into shell
2300 arguments and whitespace. The result is stored in the array
2301 reply. The array contains all the parts of the line in order,
2302 starting with any whitespace before the first argument, and fin‐
2303 ishing with any whitespace after the last argument. Hence (so
2304 long as the option KSH_ARRAYS is not set) whitespace is given by
2305 odd indices in the array and arguments by even indices. Note
2306 that no stripping of quotes is done; joining together all the
2307 elements of reply in order is guaranteed to produce the original
2308 line.
2309 The parameter REPLY is set to the index of the word in reply
2311 which contains the character after the cursor, where the first
2312 element has index 1. The parameter REPLY2 is set to the index
2313 of the character under the cursor in that word, where the first
2314 character has index 1.
2315 Hence reply, REPLY and REPLY2 should all be made local to the
2317 enclosing function.
2318 See the function modify-current-argument, described below, for
2320 an example of how to call this function.
2321 modify-current-argument expr-using-$ARG
2323 This function provides a simple method of allowing user-defined
2324 widgets to modify the command line argument under the cursor (or
2325 immediately to the left of the cursor if the cursor is between
2326 arguments). The argument should be an expression which when
2327 evaluated operates on the shell parameter ARG, which will have
2328 been set to the command line argument under the cursor. The
2329 expression should be suitably quoted to prevent it being evalu‐
2330 ated too early.
2331 For example, a user-defined widget containing the following code
2333 converts the characters in the argument under the cursor into
2334 all upper case:
2335 modify-current-argument '${(U)ARG}'
2337 The following strips any quoting from the current word (whether
2339 backslashes or one of the styles of quotes), and replaces it
2340 with single quoting throughout:
2341 modify-current-argument '${(qq)${(Q)ARG}}'
2343 Styles
2345 The behavior of several of the above widgets can be controlled by the
2346 use of the zstyle mechanism. In particular, widgets that interact with
2347 the completion system pass along their context to any completions that
2348 they invoke.
2349 break-keys
2351 This style is used by the incremental-complete-word widget. Its
2352 value should be a pattern, and all keys matching this pattern
2353 will cause the widget to stop incremental completion without the
2354 key having any further effect. Like all styles used directly by
2355 incremental-complete-word, this style is looked up using the
2356 context `:incremental'.
2357 completer
2359 The incremental-complete-word and insert-and-predict widgets set
2360 up their top-level context name before calling completion. This
2361 allows one to define different sets of completer functions for
2362 normal completion and for these widgets. For example, to use
2363 completion, approximation and correction for normal completion,
2364 completion and correction for incremental completion and only
2365 completion for prediction one could use:
2366 zstyle ':completion:*' completer \
2368 _complete _correct _approximate
2369 zstyle ':completion:incremental:*' completer \
2370 _complete _correct
2371 zstyle ':completion:predict:*' completer \
2372 _complete
2373 It is a good idea to restrict the completers used in prediction,
2375 because they may be automatically invoked as you type. The
2376 _list and _menu completers should never be used with prediction.
2377 The _approximate, _correct, _expand, and _match completers may
2378 be used, but be aware that they may change characters anywhere
2379 in the word behind the cursor, so you need to watch carefully
2380 that the result is what you intended.
2381 cursor The insert-and-predict widget uses this style, in the context
2383 `:predict', to decide where to place the cursor after completion
2384 has been tried. Values are:
2385 complete
2387 The cursor is left where it was when completion finished,
2388 but only if it is after a character equal to the one just
2389 inserted by the user. If it is after another character,
2390 this value is the same as `key'.
2391 key The cursor is left after the nth occurrence of the char‐
2393 acter just inserted, where n is the number of times that
2394 character appeared in the word before completion was
2395 attempted. In short, this has the effect of leaving the
2396 cursor after the character just typed even if the comple‐
2397 tion code found out that no other characters need to be
2398 inserted at that position.
2399 Any other value for this style unconditionally leaves the cursor
2401 at the position where the completion code left it.
2402 list When using the incremental-complete-word widget, this style says
2404 if the matches should be listed on every key press (if they fit
2405 on the screen). Use the context prefix `:completion:incremen‐
2406 tal'.
2407 The insert-and-predict widget uses this style to decide if the
2409 completion should be shown even if there is only one possible
2410 completion. This is done if the value of this style is the
2411 string always. In this case the context is `:predict' (not
2412 `:completion:predict').
2413 match This style is used by smart-insert-last-word to provide a pat‐
2415 tern (using full EXTENDED_GLOB syntax) that matches an interest‐
2416 ing word. The context is the name of the widget to which
2417 smart-insert-last-word is bound (see above). The default behav‐
2418 ior of smart-insert-last-word is equivalent to:
2419 zstyle :insert-last-word match '*[[:alpha:]/\\]*'
2421 However, you might want to include words that contain spaces:
2423 zstyle :insert-last-word match '*[[:alpha:][:space:]/\\]*'
2425 Or include numbers as long as the word is at least two charac‐
2427 ters long:
2428 zstyle :insert-last-word match '*([[:digit:]]?|[[:alpha:]/\\])*'
2430 The above example causes redirections like "2>" to be included.
2432 prompt The incremental-complete-word widget shows the value of this
2434 style in the status line during incremental completion. The
2435 string value may contain any of the following substrings in the
2436 manner of the PS1 and other prompt parameters:
2437 %c Replaced by the name of the completer function that gen‐
2439 erated the matches (without the leading underscore).
2440 %l When the list style is set, replaced by `...' if the list
2442 of matches is too long to fit on the screen and with an
2443 empty string otherwise. If the list style is `false' or
2444 not set, `%l' is always removed.
2445 %n Replaced by the number of matches generated.
2447 %s Replaced by `-no match-', `-no prefix-', or an empty
2449 string if there is no completion matching the word on the
2450 line, if the matches have no common prefix different from
2451 the word on the line, or if there is such a common pre‐
2452 fix, respectively.
2453 %u Replaced by the unambiguous part of all matches, if there
2455 is any, and if it is different from the word on the line.
2456 Like `break-keys', this uses the `:incremental' context.
2458 stop-keys
2460 This style is used by the incremental-complete-word widget. Its
2461 value is treated similarly to the one for the break-keys style
2462 (and uses the same context: `:incremental'). However, in this
2463 case all keys matching the pattern given as its value will stop
2464 incremental completion and will then execute their usual func‐
2465 tion.
2466 toggle This boolean style is used by predict-on and its related widgets
2468 in the context `:predict'. If set to one of the standard `true'
2469 values, predictive typing is automatically toggled off in situa‐
2470 tions where it is unlikely to be useful, such as when editing a
2471 multi-line buffer or after moving into the middle of a line and
2472 then deleting a character. The default is to leave prediction
2473 turned on until an explicit call to predict-off.
2474 verbose
2476 This boolean style is used by predict-on and its related widgets
2477 in the context `:predict'. If set to one of the standard `true'
2478 values, these widgets display a message below the prompt when
2479 the predictive state is toggled. This is most useful in combi‐
2480 nation with the toggle style. The default does not display
2481 these messages.
2482 widget This style is similar to the command style: For widget functions
2484 that use zle to call other widgets, this style can sometimes be
2485 used to override the widget which is called. The context for
2486 this style is the name of the calling widget (not the name of
2487 the calling function, because one function may be bound to mul‐
2488 tiple widget names).
2489 zstyle :copy-earlier-word widget smart-insert-last-word
2491 Check the documentation for the calling widget or function to
2493 determine whether the widget style is used.
2494
2496 Two functions are provided to enable zsh to provide exception handling
2497 in a form that should be familiar from other languages.
2498 throw exception
2500 The function throw throws the named exception. The name is an
2501 arbitrary string and is only used by the throw and catch func‐
2502 tions. An exception is for the most part treated the same as a
2503 shell error, i.e. an unhandled exception will cause the shell to
2504 abort all processing in a function or script and to return to
2505 the top level in an interactive shell.
2506 catch exception-pattern
2508 The function catch returns status zero if an exception was
2509 thrown and the pattern exception-pattern matches its name. Oth‐
2510 erwise it returns status 1. exception-pattern is a standard
2511 shell pattern, respecting the current setting of the
2512 EXTENDED_GLOB option. An alias catch is also defined to prevent
2513 the argument to the function from matching filenames, so pat‐
2514 terns may be used unquoted. Note that as exceptions are not
2515 fundamentally different from other shell errors it is possible
2516 to catch shell errors by using an empty string as the exception
2517 name. The shell variable CAUGHT is set by catch to the name of
2518 the exception caught. It is possible to rethrow an exception by
2519 calling the throw function again once an exception has been
2520 caught.
2521 The functions are designed to be used together with the always con‐
2523 struct described in zshmisc(1). This is important as only this con‐
2524 struct provides the required support for exceptions. A typical example
2525 is as follows.
2526 {
2528 # "try" block
2529 # ... nested code here calls "throw MyExcept"
2530 } always {
2531 # "always" block
2532 if catch MyExcept; then
2533 print "Caught exception MyExcept"
2534 elif catch ''; then
2535 print "Caught a shell error. Propagating..."
2536 throw ''
2537 fi
2538 # Other exceptions are not handled but may be caught further
2539 # up the call stack.
2540 }
2541 If all exceptions should be caught, the following idiom might be
2543 preferable.
2544 {
2546 # ... nested code here throws an exception
2547 } always {
2548 if catch *; then
2549 case $CAUGHT in
2550 (MyExcept)
2551 print "Caught my own exception"
2552 ;;
2553 (*)
2554 print "Caught some other exception"
2555 ;;
2556 esac
2557 fi
2558 }
2559 In common with exception handling in other languages, the exception may
2561 be thrown by code deeply nested inside the `try' block. However, note
2562 that it must be thrown inside the current shell, not in a subshell
2563 forked for a pipeline, parenthesised current-shell construct, or some
2564 form of command or process substitution.
2565 The system internally uses the shell variable EXCEPTION to record the
2567 name of the exception between throwing and catching. One drawback of
2568 this scheme is that if the exception is not handled the variable EXCEP‐
2569 TION remains set and may be incorrectly recognised as the name of an
2570 exception if a shell error subsequently occurs. Adding unset EXCEPTION
2571 at the start of the outermost layer of any code that uses exception
2572 handling will eliminate this problem.
2573
2575 Three functions are available to provide handling of files recognised
2576 by extension, for example to dispatch a file text.ps when executed as a
2577 command to an appropriate viewer.
2578 zsh-mime-setup [ -fv ] [ -l [ suffix ... ] ]
2580 zsh-mime-handler [-l] command arguments ...
2581 These two functions use the files ~/.mime.types and
2582 /etc/mime.types, which associate types and extensions, as well
2583 as ~/.mailcap and /etc/mailcap files, which associate types and
2584 the programs that handle them. These are provided on many sys‐
2585 tems with the Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions.
2586 To enable the system, the function zsh-mime-setup should be
2588 autoloaded and run. This allows files with extensions to be
2589 treated as executable; such files be completed by the function
2590 completion system. The function zsh-mime-handler should not
2591 need to be called by the user.
2592 The system works by setting up suffix aliases with `alias -s'.
2594 Suffix aliases already installed by the user will not be over‐
2595 written.
2596 For suffixes defined in lower case, upper case variants will
2598 also automatically be handled (e.g. PDF is automatically handled
2599 if handling for the suffix pdf is defined), but not vice versa.
2600 Repeated calls to zsh-mime-setup do not override the existing
2602 mapping between suffixes and executable files unless the option
2603 -f is given. Note, however, that this does not override exist‐
2604 ing suffix aliases assigned to handlers other than zsh-mime-han‐
2605 dler.
2606 Calling zsh-mime-setup with the option -l lists the existing
2608 mappings without altering them. Suffixes to list (which may
2609 contain pattern characters that should be quoted from immediate
2610 interpretation on the command line) may be given as additional
2611 arguments, otherwise all suffixes are listed.
2612 Calling zsh-mime-setup with the option -v causes verbose output
2614 to be shown during the setup operation.
2615 The system respects the mailcap flags needsterminal and copi‐
2617 ousoutput, see mailcap(4).
2618 The functions use the following styles, which are defined with
2620 the zstyle builtin command (see zshmodules(1)). They should be
2621 defined before zsh-mime-setup is run. The contexts used all
2622 start with :mime:, with additional components in some cases. It
2623 is recommended that a trailing * (suitably quoted) be appended
2624 to style patterns in case the system is extended in future.
2625 Some examples are given below.
2626 For files that have multiple suffixes, e.g. .pdf.gz, where the
2628 context includes the suffix it will be looked up starting with
2629 the longest possible suffix until a match for the style is
2630 found. For example, if .pdf.gz produces a match for the han‐
2631 dler, that will be used; otherwise the handler for .gz will be
2632 used. Note that, owing to the way suffix aliases work, it is
2633 always required that there be a handler for the shortest possi‐
2634 ble suffix, so in this example .pdf.gz can only be handled if
2635 .gz is also handled (though not necessarily in the same way).
2636 Alternatively, if no handling for .gz on its own is needed, sim‐
2637 ply adding the command
2638 alias -s gz=zsh-mime-handler
2640 to the initialisation code is sufficient; .gz will not be han‐
2642 dled on its own, but may be in combination with other suffixes.
2643 current-shell
2645 If this boolean style is true, the mailcap handler for
2646 the context in question is run using the eval builtin
2647 instead of by starting a new sh process. This is more
2648 efficient, but may not work in the occasional cases where
2649 the mailcap handler uses strict POSIX syntax.
2650 execute-as-is
2652 This style gives a list of patterns to be matched against
2653 files passed for execution with a handler program. If
2654 the file matches the pattern, the entire command line is
2655 executed in its current form, with no handler. This is
2656 useful for files which might have suffixes but nonethe‐
2657 less be executable in their own right. If the style is
2658 not set, the pattern *(*) *(/) is used; hence executable
2659 files are executed directly and not passed to a handler,
2660 and the option AUTO_CD may be used to change to directo‐
2661 ries that happen to have MIME suffixes.
2662 file-path
2664 Used if the style find-file-in-path is true for the same
2665 context. Set to an array of directories that are used
2666 for searching for the file to be handled; the default is
2667 the command path given by the special parameter path.
2668 The shell option PATH_DIRS is respected; if that is set,
2669 the appropriate path will be searched even if the name of
2670 the file to be handled as it appears on the command line
2671 contains a `/'. The full context is :mime:.suffix:, as
2672 described for the style handler.
2673 find-file-in-path
2675 If set, allows files whose names do not contain absolute
2676 paths to be searched for in the command path or the path
2677 specified by the file-path style. If the file is not
2678 found in the path, it is looked for locally (whether or
2679 not the current directory is in the path); if it is not
2680 found locally, the handler will abort unless the han‐
2681 dle-nonexistent style is set. Files found in the path
2682 are tested as described for the style execute-as-is. The
2683 full context is :mime:.suffix:, as described for the
2684 style handler.
2685 flags Defines flags to go with a handler; the context is as for
2687 the handler style, and the format is as for the flags in
2688 mailcap.
2689 handle-nonexistent
2691 By default, arguments that don't correspond to files are
2692 not passed to the MIME handler in order to prevent it
2693 from intercepting commands found in the path that happen
2694 to have suffixes. This style may be set to an array of
2695 extended glob patterns for arguments that will be passed
2696 to the handler even if they don't exist. If it is not
2697 explicitly set it defaults to [[:alpha:]]#:/* which
2698 allows URLs to be passed to the MIME handler even though
2699 they don't exist in that format in the file system. The
2700 full context is :mime:.suffix:, as described for the
2701 style handler.
2702 handler
2704 Specifies a handler for a suffix; the suffix is given by
2705 the context as :mime:.suffix:, and the format of the han‐
2706 dler is exactly that in mailcap. Note in particular the
2707 `.' and trailing colon to distinguish this use of the
2708 context. This overrides any handler specified by the
2709 mailcap files. If the handler requires a terminal, the
2710 flags style should be set to include the word needstermi‐
2711 nal, or if the output is to be displayed through a pager
2712 (but not if the handler is itself a pager), it should
2713 include copiousoutput.
2714 mailcap
2716 A list of files in the format of ~/.mailcap and
2717 /etc/mailcap to be read during setup, replacing the
2718 default list which consists of those two files. The con‐
2719 text is :mime:. A + in the list will be replaced by the
2720 default files.
2721 mailcap-priorities
2723 This style is used to resolve multiple mailcap entries
2724 for the same MIME type. It consists of an array of the
2725 following elements, in descending order of priority;
2726 later entries will be used if earlier entries are unable
2727 to resolve the entries being compared. If none of the
2728 tests resolve the entries, the first entry encountered is
2729 retained.
2730 files The order of files (entries in the mailcap style)
2732 read. Earlier files are preferred. (Note this
2733 does not resolve entries in the same file.)
2734 priority
2736 The priority flag from the mailcap entry. The
2737 priority is an integer from 0 to 9 with the
2738 default value being 5.
2739 flags The test given by the mailcap-prio-flags option is
2741 used to resolve entries.
2742 place Later entries are preferred; as the entries are
2744 strictly ordered, this test always succeeds.
2745 Note that as this style is handled during initialisation,
2747 the context is always :mime:, with no discrimination by
2748 suffix.
2749 mailcap-prio-flags
2751 This style is used when the keyword flags is encountered
2752 in the list of tests specified by the mailcap-priorities
2753 style. It should be set to a list of patterns, each of
2754 which is tested against the flags specified in the mail‐
2755 cap entry (in other words, the sets of assignments found
2756 with some entries in the mailcap file). Earlier patterns
2757 in the list are preferred to later ones, and matched pat‐
2758 terns are preferred to unmatched ones.
2759 mime-types
2761 A list of files in the format of ~/.mime.types and
2762 /etc/mime.types to be read during setup, replacing the
2763 default list which consists of those two files. The con‐
2764 text is :mime:. A + in the list will be replaced by the
2765 default files.
2766 never-background
2768 If this boolean style is set, the handler for the given
2769 context is always run in the foreground, even if the
2770 flags provided in the mailcap entry suggest it need not
2771 be (for example, it doesn't require a terminal).
2772 pager If set, will be used instead of $PAGER or more to handle
2774 suffixes where the copiousoutput flag is set. The con‐
2775 text is as for handler, i.e. :mime:.suffix: for handling
2776 a file with the given suffix.
2777 Examples:
2779 zstyle ':mime:*' mailcap ~/.mailcap /usr/local/etc/mailcap
2781 zstyle ':mime:.txt:' handler less %s
2782 zstyle ':mime:.txt:' flags needsterminal
2783 When zsh-mime-setup is subsequently run, it will look for mail‐
2785 cap entries in the two files given. Files of suffix .txt will
2786 be handled by running `less file.txt'. The flag needsterminal
2787 is set to show that this program must run attached to a termi‐
2788 nal.
2789 As there are several steps to dispatching a command, the follow‐
2791 ing should be checked if attempting to execute a file by exten‐
2792 sion .ext does not have the expected effect.
2793 The command `alias -s ext' should show `ps=zsh-mime-handler'.
2795 If it shows something else, another suffix alias was already
2796 installed and was not overwritten. If it shows nothing, no han‐
2797 dler was installed: this is most likely because no handler was
2798 found in the .mime.types and mailcap combination for .ext files.
2799 In that case, appropriate handling should be added to
2800 ~/.mime.types and mailcap.
2801 If the extension is handled by zsh-mime-handler but the file is
2803 not opened correctly, either the handler defined for the type is
2804 incorrect, or the flags associated with it are in appropriate.
2805 Running zsh-mime-setup -l will show the handler and, if there
2806 are any, the flags. A %s in the handler is replaced by the file
2807 (suitably quoted if necessary). Check that the handler program
2808 listed lists and can be run in the way shown. Also check that
2809 the flags needsterminal or copiousoutput are set if the handler
2810 needs to be run under a terminal; the second flag is used if the
2811 output should be sent to a pager. An example of a suitable
2812 mailcap entry for such a program is:
2813 text/html; /usr/bin/lynx '%s'; needsterminal
2815 Running `zsh-mime-handler -l command line' prints the command
2817 line that would be executed, simplified to remove the effect of
2818 any flags, and quoted so that the output can be run as a com‐
2819 plete zsh command line. This is used by the completion system
2820 to decide how to complete after a file handled by zsh-mime-set‐
2821 up.
2822 pick-web-browser
2824 This function is separate from the two MIME functions described
2825 above and can be assigned directly to a suffix:
2826 autoload -U pick-web-browser
2828 alias -s html=pick-web-browser
2829 It is provided as an intelligent front end to dispatch a web
2831 browser. It may be run as either a function or a shell script.
2832 The status 255 is returned if no browser could be started.
2833 Various styles are available to customize the choice of
2835 browsers:
2836 browser-style
2838 The value of the style is an array giving preferences in
2839 decreasing order for the type of browser to use. The
2840 values of elements may be
2841 running
2843 Use a GUI browser that is already running when an
2844 X Window display is available. The browsers
2845 listed in the x-browsers style are tried in order
2846 until one is found; if it is, the file will be
2847 displayed in that browser, so the user may need to
2848 check whether it has appeared. If no running
2849 browser is found, one is not started. Browsers
2850 other than Firefox, Opera and Konqueror are
2851 assumed to understand the Mozilla syntax for open‐
2852 ing a URL remotely.
2853 x Start a new GUI browser when an X Window display
2855 is available. Search for the availability of one
2856 of the browsers listed in the x-browsers style and
2857 start the first one that is found. No check is
2858 made for an already running browser.
2859 tty Start a terminal-based browser. Search for the
2861 availability of one of the browsers listed in the
2862 tty-browsers style and start the first one that is
2863 found.
2864 If the style is not set the default running x tty is
2866 used.
2867 x-browsers
2869 An array in decreasing order of preference of browsers to
2870 use when running under the X Window System. The array
2871 consists of the command name under which to start the
2872 browser. They are looked up in the context :mime: (which
2873 may be extended in future, so appending `*' is recom‐
2874 mended). For example,
2875 zstyle ':mime:*' x-browsers opera konqueror firefox
2877 specifies that pick-web-browser should first look for a
2879 running instance of Opera, Konqueror or Firefox, in that
2880 order, and if it fails to find any should attempt to
2881 start Opera. The default is firefox mozilla netscape
2882 opera konqueror.
2883 tty-browsers
2885 An array similar to x-browsers, except that it gives
2886 browsers to use when no X Window display is available.
2887 The default is elinks links lynx.
2888 command
2890 If it is set this style is used to pick the command used
2891 to open a page for a browser. The context is
2892 :mime:browser:new:$browser: to start a new browser or
2893 :mime:browser:running:$browser: to open a URL in a
2894 browser already running on the current X display, where
2895 $browser is the value matched in the x-browsers or
2896 tty-browsers style. The escape sequence %b in the
2897 style's value will be replaced by the browser, while %u
2898 will be replaced by the URL. If the style is not set,
2899 the default for all new instances is equivalent to %b %u
2900 and the defaults for using running browsers are equiva‐
2901 lent to the values kfmclient openURL %u for Konqueror,
2902 firefox -new-tab %u for Firefox, opera -newpage %u for
2903 Opera, and %b -remote "openUrl(%u)" for all others.
2904
2906 zcalc [ expression ... ]
2907 A reasonably powerful calculator based on zsh's arithmetic eval‐
2908 uation facility. The syntax is similar to that of formulae in
2909 most programming languages; see the section `Arithmetic Evalua‐
2910 tion' in zshmisc(1) for details. The mathematical library
2911 zsh/mathfunc will be loaded if it is available; see the section
2912 `The zsh/mathfunc Module' in zshmodules(1). The mathematical
2913 functions correspond to the raw system libraries, so trigonomet‐
2914 ric functions are evaluated using radians, and so on.
2915 Each line typed is evaluated as an expression. The prompt shows
2917 a number, which corresponds to a positional parameter where the
2918 result of that calculation is stored. For example, the result
2919 of the calculation on the line preceded by `4> ' is available as
2920 $4. The last value calculated is available as ans. Full com‐
2921 mand line editing, including the history of previous calcula‐
2922 tions, is available; the history is saved in the file
2923 ~/.zcalc_history. To exit, enter a blank line or type `:q' on
2924 its own (`q' is allowed for historical compatibility).
2925 If arguments are given to zcalc on start up, they are used to
2927 prime the first few positional parameters. A visual indication
2928 of this is given when the calculator starts.
2929 The constants PI (3.14159...) and E (2.71828...) are provided.
2931 Parameter assignment is possible, but note that all parameters
2932 will be put into the global namespace.
2933 The output base can be initialised by passing the option
2935 `-#base', for example `zcalc -#16' (the `#' may have to be
2936 quoted, depending on the globbing options set).
2937 The prompt is configurable via the parameter ZCALCPROMPT, which
2939 undergoes standard prompt expansion. The index of the current
2940 entry is stored locally in the first element of the array psvar,
2941 which can be referred to in ZCALCPROMPT as `%1v'. The default
2942 prompt is `%1v> '.
2943 A few special commands are available; these are introduced by a
2945 colon. For backward compatibility, the colon may be omitted for
2946 certain commands. Completion is available if compinit has been
2947 run.
2948 The output precision may be specified within zcalc by special
2950 commands familiar from many calculators.
2951 :norm The default output format. It corresponds to the printf
2952 %g specification. Typically this shows six decimal dig‐
2953 its.
2954 :sci digits
2956 Scientific notation, corresponding to the printf %g out‐
2957 put format with the precision given by digits. This pro‐
2958 duces either fixed point or exponential notation depend‐
2959 ing on the value output.
2960 :fix digits
2962 Fixed point notation, corresponding to the printf %f out‐
2963 put format with the precision given by digits.
2964 :eng digits
2966 Exponential notation, corresponding to the printf %E out‐
2967 put format with the precision given by digits.
2968 :raw Raw output: this is the default form of the output from
2970 a math evaluation. This may show more precision than the
2971 number actually possesses.
2972 Other special commands:
2974 :!line...
2975 Execute line... as a normal shell command line. Note
2976 that it is executed in the context of the function, i.e.
2977 with local variables. Space is optional after :!.
2978 :local arg ...
2980 Declare variables local to the function. Note that cer‐
2981 tain variables are used by the function for its own pur‐
2982 poses. Other variables may be used, too, but they will
2983 be taken from or put into the global scope.
2984 :function name [ body ]
2986 Define a mathematical function or (with no body) delete
2987 it. The function is defined using zmathfuncdef, see
2988 below.
2989 Note that zcalc takes care of all quoting. Hence for
2991 example:
2992 function cube $1 * $1 * $1
2994 defines a function to cube the sole argument.
2996 [#base]
2998 This is not a special command, rather part of normal
2999 arithmetic syntax; however, when this form appears on a
3000 line by itself the default output radix is set to base.
3001 Use, for example, `[#16]' to display hexadecimal output
3002 preceded by an indication of the base, or `[##16]' just
3003 to display the raw number in the given base. Bases them‐
3004 selves are always specified in decimal. `[#]' restores
3005 the normal output format. Note that setting an output
3006 base suppresses floating point output; use `[#]' to
3007 return to normal operation.
3008 See the comments in the function for a few extra tips.
3010 zmathfuncdef [ mathfunc [ body ] ]
3012 A convenient front end to functions -M.
3013 With two arguments, define a mathematical function named math‐
3015 func which can be used in any form of arithmetic evaluation.
3016 body is a mathematical expression to implement the function. It
3017 may contain references to position parameters $1, $2, ... to
3018 refer to mandatory parameters and ${1:-defvalue} ... to refer
3019 to optional parameters. Note that the forms must be strictly
3020 adhered to for the function to calculate the correct number of
3021 arguments. The implementation is held in a shell function named
3022 zsh_math_func_mathfunc; usually the user will not need to refer
3023 to the shell function directly. Any existing function of the
3024 same name is silently replaced.
3025 With one argument, remove the mathematical function mathfunc as
3027 well as the shell function implementation.
3028 With no arguments, list all mathfunc functions in a form suit‐
3030 able for restoring the definition. The functions have not nec‐
3031 essarily been defined by zmathfuncdef.
3032
3034 The zsh/newuser module comes with a function to aid in configuring
3035 shell options for new users. If the module is installed, this function
3036 can also be run by hand. It is available even if the module's default
3037 behaviour, namely running the function for a new user logging in with‐
3038 out startup files, is inhibited.
3039 zsh-newuser-install [ -f ]
3041 The function presents the user with various options for cus‐
3042 tomizing their initialization scripts. Currently only ~/.zshrc
3043 is handled. $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc is used instead if the parameter
3044 ZDOTDIR is set; this provides a way for the user to configure a
3045 file without altering an existing .zshrc.
3046 By default the function exits immediately if it finds any of the
3048 files .zshenv, .zprofile, .zshrc, or .zlogin in the appropriate
3049 directory. The option -f is required in order to force the
3050 function to continue. Note this may happen even if .zshrc
3051 itself does not exist.
3052 As currently configured, the function will exit immediately if
3054 the user has root privileges; this behaviour cannot be overrid‐
3055 den.
3056 Once activated, the function's behaviour is supposed to be
3058 self-explanatory. Menus are present allowing the user to alter
3059 the value of options and parameters. Suggestions for improve‐
3060 ments are always welcome.
3061 When the script exits, the user is given the opportunity to save
3063 the new file or not; changes are not irreversible until this
3064 point. However, the script is careful to restrict changes to
3065 the file only to a group marked by the lines `# Lines configured
3066 by zsh-newuser-install' and `# End of lines configured by
3067 zsh-newuser-install'. In addition, the old version of .zshrc is
3068 saved to a file with the suffix .zni appended.
3069 If the function edits an existing .zshrc, it is up to the user
3071 to ensure that the changes made will take effect. For example,
3072 if control usually returns early from the existing .zshrc the
3073 lines will not be executed; or a later initialization file may
3074 override options or parameters, and so on. The function itself
3075 does not attempt to detect any such conflicts.
3076
3078 There are a large number of helpful functions in the Functions/Misc
3079 directory of the zsh distribution. Most are very simple and do not
3080 require documentation here, but a few are worthy of special mention.
3081 Descriptions
3083 colors This function initializes several associative arrays to map
3084 color names to (and from) the ANSI standard eight-color terminal
3085 codes. These are used by the prompt theme system (see above).
3086 You seldom should need to run colors more than once.
3087 The eight base colors are: black, red, green, yellow, blue,
3089 magenta, cyan, and white. Each of these has codes for fore‐
3090 ground and background. In addition there are eight intensity
3091 attributes: bold, faint, standout, underline, blink, reverse,
3092 and conceal. Finally, there are six codes used to negate
3093 attributes: none (reset all attributes to the defaults), normal
3094 (neither bold nor faint), no-standout, no-underline, no-blink,
3095 and no-reverse.
3096 Some terminals do not support all combinations of colors and
3098 intensities.
3099 The associative arrays are:
3101 color
3103 colour Map all the color names to their integer codes, and inte‐
3104 ger codes to the color names. The eight base names map
3105 to the foreground color codes, as do names prefixed with
3106 `fg-', such as `fg-red'. Names prefixed with `bg-', such
3107 as `bg-blue', refer to the background codes. The reverse
3108 mapping from code to color yields base name for fore‐
3109 ground codes and the bg- form for backgrounds.
3110 Although it is a misnomer to call them `colors', these
3112 arrays also map the other fourteen attributes from names
3113 to codes and codes to names.
3114 fg
3116 fg_bold
3117 fg_no_bold
3118 Map the eight basic color names to ANSI terminal escape
3119 sequences that set the corresponding foreground text
3120 properties. The fg sequences change the color without
3121 changing the eight intensity attributes.
3122 bg
3124 bg_bold
3125 bg_no_bold
3126 Map the eight basic color names to ANSI terminal escape
3127 sequences that set the corresponding background proper‐
3128 ties. The bg sequences change the color without changing
3129 the eight intensity attributes.
3130 In addition, the scalar parameters reset_color and bold_color
3132 are set to the ANSI terminal escapes that turn off all
3133 attributes and turn on bold intensity, respectively.
3134 fned name
3136 Same as zed -f. This function does not appear in the zsh dis‐
3137 tribution, but can be created by linking zed to the name fned in
3138 some directory in your fpath.
3139 is-at-least needed [ present ]
3141 Perform a greater-than-or-equal-to comparison of two strings
3142 having the format of a zsh version number; that is, a string of
3143 numbers and text with segments separated by dots or dashes. If
3144 the present string is not provided, $ZSH_VERSION is used. Seg‐
3145 ments are paired left-to-right in the two strings with leading
3146 non-number parts ignored. If one string has fewer segments than
3147 the other, the missing segments are considered zero.
3148 This is useful in startup files to set options and other state
3150 that are not available in all versions of zsh.
3151 is-at-least 3.1.6-15 && setopt NO_GLOBAL_RCS
3153 is-at-least 3.1.0 && setopt HIST_REDUCE_BLANKS
3154 is-at-least 2.6-17 || print "You can't use is-at-least here."
3155 nslookup [ arg ... ]
3157 This wrapper function for the nslookup command requires the
3158 zsh/zpty module (see zshmodules(1)). It behaves exactly like
3159 the standard nslookup except that it provides customizable
3160 prompts (including a right-side prompt) and completion of
3161 nslookup commands, host names, etc. (if you use the func‐
3162 tion-based completion system). Completion styles may be set
3163 with the context prefix `:completion:nslookup'.
3164 See also the pager, prompt and rprompt styles below.
3166 regexp-replace var regexp replace
3168 Use regular expressions to perform a global search and replace
3169 operation on a variable. If the option RE_MATCH_PCRE is not
3170 set, POSIX extended regular expressions are used, else Perl-com‐
3171 patible regular expressions (this requires the shell to be
3172 linked against the pcre library).
3173 var is the name of the variable containing the string to be
3175 matched. The variable will be modified directly by the func‐
3176 tion. The variables MATCH, MBEGIN, MEND, match, mbegin, mend
3177 should be avoided as these are used by the regular expression
3178 code.
3179 regexp is the regular expression to match against the string.
3181 replace is the replacement text. This can contain parameter,
3183 command and arithmetic expressions which will be replaced: in
3184 particular, a reference to $MATCH will be replaced by the text
3185 matched by the pattern.
3186 The return status is 0 if at least one match was performed, else
3188 1.
3189 run-help cmd
3191 This function is designed to be invoked by the run-help ZLE wid‐
3192 get, in place of the default alias. See `Accessing On-Line
3193 Help' above for setup instructions.
3194 In the discussion which follows, if cmd is a file system path,
3196 it is first reduced to its rightmost component (the file name).
3197 Help is first sought by looking for a file named cmd in the
3199 directory named by the HELPDIR parameter. If no file is found,
3200 an assistant function, alias, or command named run-help-cmd is
3201 sought. If found, the assistant is executed with the rest of
3202 the current command line (everything after the command name cmd)
3203 as its arguments. When neither file nor assistant is found, the
3204 external command `man cmd' is run.
3205 An example assistant for the "ssh" command:
3207 run-help-ssh() {
3209 emulate -LR zsh
3210 local -a args
3211 # Delete the "-l username" option
3212 zparseopts -D -E -a args l:
3213 # Delete other options, leaving: host command
3214 args=(${@:#-*})
3215 if [[ ${#args} -lt 2 ]]; then
3216 man ssh
3217 else
3218 run-help $args[2]
3219 fi
3220 }
3221 Several of these assistants are provided in the Functions/Misc
3223 directory. These must be autoloaded, or placed as executable
3224 scripts in your search path, in order to be found and used by
3225 run-help.
3226 run-help-git
3228 run-help-svk
3229 run-help-svn
3230 Assistant functions for the git, svk, and svn commands.
3231 tetris Zsh was once accused of not being as complete as Emacs, because
3233 it lacked a Tetris game. This function was written to refute
3234 this vicious slander.
3235 This function must be used as a ZLE widget:
3237 autoload -U tetris
3239 zle -N tetris
3240 bindkey keys tetris
3241 To start a game, execute the widget by typing the keys. What‐
3243 ever command line you were editing disappears temporarily, and
3244 your keymap is also temporarily replaced by the Tetris control
3245 keys. The previous editor state is restored when you quit the
3246 game (by pressing `q') or when you lose.
3247 If you quit in the middle of a game, the next invocation of the
3249 tetris widget will continue where you left off. If you lost, it
3250 will start a new game.
3251 zargs [ option ... -- ] [ input ... ] [ -- command [ arg ... ] ]
3253 This function has a similar purpose to GNU xargs. Instead of
3254 reading lines of arguments from the standard input, it takes
3255 them from the command line. This is useful because zsh, espe‐
3256 cially with recursive glob operators, often can construct a com‐
3257 mand line for a shell function that is longer than can be
3258 accepted by an external command.
3259 The option list represents options of the zargs command itself,
3261 which are the same as those of xargs. The input list is the
3262 collection of strings (often file names) that become the argu‐
3263 ments of the command, analogous to the standard input of xargs.
3264 Finally, the arg list consists of those arguments (usually
3265 options) that are passed to the command each time it runs. The
3266 arg list precedes the elements from the input list in each run.
3267 If no command is provided, then no arg list may be provided, and
3268 in that event the default command is `print' with arguments `-r
3269 --'.
3270 For example, to get a long ls listing of all plain files in the
3272 current directory or its subdirectories:
3273 autoload -U zargs
3275 zargs -- **/*(.) -- ls -l
3276 Note that `--' is used both to mark the end of the option list
3278 and to mark the end of the input list, so it must appear twice
3279 whenever the input list may be empty. If there is guaranteed to
3280 be at least one input and the first input does not begin with a
3281 `-', then the first `--' may be omitted.
3282 In the event that the string `--' is or may be an input, the -e
3284 option may be used to change the end-of-inputs marker. Note
3285 that this does not change the end-of-options marker. For exam‐
3286 ple, to use `..' as the marker:
3287 zargs -e.. -- **/*(.) .. ls -l
3289 This is a good choice in that example because no plain file can
3291 be named `..', but the best end-marker depends on the circum‐
3292 stances.
3293 The options -i, -I, -l, -L, and -n differ slightly from their
3295 usage in xargs. There are no input lines for zargs to count, so
3296 -l and -L count through the input list, and -n counts the number
3297 of arguments passed to each execution of command, including any
3298 arg list. Also, any time -i or -I is used, each input is pro‐
3299 cessed separately as if by `-L 1'.
3300 For details of the other zargs options, see xargs(1) (but note
3302 the difference in function between zargs and xargs) or run zargs
3303 with the --help option.
3304 zed [ -f ] name
3306 zed -b This function uses the ZLE editor to edit a file or function.
3307 Only one name argument is allowed. If the -f option is given,
3309 the name is taken to be that of a function; if the function is
3310 marked for autoloading, zed searches for it in the fpath and
3311 loads it. Note that functions edited this way are installed
3312 into the current shell, but not written back to the autoload
3313 file.
3314 Without -f, name is the path name of the file to edit, which
3316 need not exist; it is created on write, if necessary.
3317 While editing, the function sets the main keymap to zed and the
3319 vi command keymap to zed-vicmd. These will be copied from the
3320 existing main and vicmd keymaps if they do not exist the first
3321 time zed is run. They can be used to provide special key bind‐
3322 ings used only in zed.
3323 If it creates the keymap, zed rebinds the return key to insert a
3325 line break and `^X^W' to accept the edit in the zed keymap, and
3326 binds `ZZ' to accept the edit in the zed-vicmd keymap.
3327 The bindings alone can be installed by running `zed -b'. This
3329 is suitable for putting into a startup file. Note that, if
3330 rerun, this will overwrite the existing zed and zed-vicmd
3331 keymaps.
3332 Completion is available, and styles may be set with the context
3334 prefix `:completion:zed'.
3335 A zle widget zed-set-file-name is available. This can be called
3337 by name from within zed using `\ex zed-set-file-name' (note,
3338 however, that because of zed's rebindings you will have to type
3339 ^j at the end instead of the return key), or can be bound to a
3340 key in either of the zed or zed-vicmd keymaps after `zed -b' has
3341 been run. When the widget is called, it prompts for a new name
3342 for the file being edited. When zed exits the file will be
3343 written under that name and the original file will be left
3344 alone. The widget has no effect with `zed -f'.
3345 While zed-set-file-name is running, zed uses the keymap zed-nor‐
3347 mal-keymap, which is linked from the main keymap in effect at
3348 the time zed initialised its bindings. (This is to make the
3349 return key operate normally.) The result is that if the main
3350 keymap has been changed, the widget won't notice. This is not a
3351 concern for most users.
3352 zcp [ -finqQvwW ] srcpat dest
3354 zln [ -finqQsvwW ] srcpat dest
3355 Same as zmv -C and zmv -L, respectively. These functions do not
3356 appear in the zsh distribution, but can be created by linking
3357 zmv to the names zcp and zln in some directory in your fpath.
3358 zkbd See `Keyboard Definition' above.
3360 zmv [ -finqQsvwW ] [ -C | -L | -M | -p program ] [ -o optstring ] src‐
3362 pat dest
3363 Move (usually, rename) files matching the pattern srcpat to cor‐
3364 responding files having names of the form given by dest, where
3365 srcpat contains parentheses surrounding patterns which will be
3366 replaced in turn by $1, $2, ... in dest. For example,
3367 zmv '(*).lis' '$1.txt'
3369 renames `foo.lis' to `foo.txt', `my.old.stuff.lis' to
3371 `my.old.stuff.txt', and so on.
3372 The pattern is always treated as an EXTENDED_GLOB pattern. Any
3374 file whose name is not changed by the substitution is simply
3375 ignored. Any error (a substitution resulted in an empty string,
3376 two substitutions gave the same result, the destination was an
3377 existing regular file and -f was not given) causes the entire
3378 function to abort without doing anything.
3379 Options:
3381 -f Force overwriting of destination files. Not currently
3383 passed down to the mv/cp/ln command due to vagaries of
3384 implementations (but you can use -o-f to do that).
3385 -i Interactive: show each line to be executed and ask the
3386 user whether to execute it. `Y' or `y' will execute it,
3387 anything else will skip it. Note that you just need to
3388 type one character.
3389 -n No execution: print what would happen, but don't do it.
3390 -q Turn bare glob qualifiers off: now assumed by default, so
3391 this has no effect.
3392 -Q Force bare glob qualifiers on. Don't turn this on unless
3393 you are actually using glob qualifiers in a pattern.
3394 -s Symbolic, passed down to ln; only works with -L.
3395 -v Verbose: print each command as it's being executed.
3396 -w Pick out wildcard parts of the pattern, as described
3397 above, and implicitly add parentheses for referring to
3398 them.
3399 -W Just like -w, with the addition of turning wildcards in
3400 the replacement pattern into sequential ${1} .. ${N} ref‐
3401 erences.
3402 -C
3403 -L
3404 -M Force cp, ln or mv, respectively, regardless of the name
3405 of the function.
3406 -p program
3407 Call program instead of cp, ln or mv. Whatever it does,
3408 it should at least understand the form `program -- old‐
3409 name newname' where oldname and newname are filenames
3410 generated by zmv.
3411 -o optstring
3412 The optstring is split into words and passed down verba‐
3413 tim to the cp, ln or mv command called to perform the
3414 work. It should probably begin with a `-'.
3415 Further examples:
3417 zmv -v '(* *)' '${1// /_}'
3419 For any file in the current directory with at least one space in
3421 the name, replace every space by an underscore and display the
3422 commands executed.
3423 For more complete examples and other implementation details, see
3425 the zmv source file, usually located in one of the directories
3426 named in your fpath, or in Functions/Misc/zmv in the zsh distri‐
3427 bution.
3428 zrecompile
3430 See `Recompiling Functions' above.
3431 zstyle+ context style value [ + subcontext style value ... ]
3433 This makes defining styles a bit simpler by using a single `+'
3434 as a special token that allows you to append a context name to
3435 the previously used context name. Like this:
3436 zstyle+ ':foo:bar' style1 value1 \
3438 + ':baz' style2 value2 \
3439 + ':frob' style3 value3
3440 This defines `style1' with `value1' for the context :foo:bar as
3442 usual, but it also defines `style2' with `value2' for the con‐
3443 text :foo:bar:baz and `style3' with `value3' for :foo:bar:frob.
3444 Any subcontext may be the empty string to re-use the first con‐
3445 text unchanged.
3446 Styles
3448 insert-tab
3449 The zed function sets this style in context `:completion:zed:*'
3450 to turn off completion when TAB is typed at the beginning of a
3451 line. You may override this by setting your own value for this
3452 context and style.
3453 pager The nslookup function looks up this style in the context
3455 `:nslookup' to determine the program used to display output that
3456 does not fit on a single screen.
3457 prompt
3459 rprompt
3460 The nslookup function looks up this style in the context
3461 `:nslookup' to set the prompt and the right-side prompt, respec‐
3462 tively. The usual expansions for the PS1 and RPS1 parameters
3463 may be used (see EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES in zshmisc(1)).
3464zsh 5.0.2 December 21, 2012 ZSHCONTRIB(1)