ZSHROADMAP(1) ZSHROADMAP(1)
NAME
zshroadmap - informal introduction to the zsh manual
The Zsh Manual, like the shell itself, is large and often complicated. This section of the manual
provides some pointers to areas of the shell that are likely to be of particular interest to new
users, and indicates where in the rest of the manual the documentation is to be found.
WHEN THE SHELL STARTS
When it starts, the shell reads commands from various files. These can be created or edited to cus-tomize customize
tomize the shell. See the section Startup/Shutdown Files in zsh(1).
If no personal intialization files exist for the current user, a function is run to help you change
some of the most common settings. It won't appear if your administrator has disabled the zsh/newuser
module. The function is designed to be self-explanatory. You can run it by hand with `autoload -Uz
zsh-newuser-install; zsh-newuser-install -f'.
INTERACTIVE USE
Interaction with the shell uses the builtin Zsh Line Editor, ZLE. This is described in detail in
zshzle(1).
The first decision a user must make is whether to use the Emacs or Vi editing mode as the keys for
editing are substantially different. Emacs editing mode is probably more natural for beginners and
can be selected explicitly with the command bindkey -e.
A history mechanism for retrieving previously typed lines (most simply with the Up or Down arrow
keys) is available; note that, unlike other shells, zsh will not save these lines when the shell
exits unless you set appropriate variables, and the number of history lines retained by default is
quite small (30 lines). See the description of the shell variables (referred to in the documentation
as parameters) HISTFILE, HISTSIZE and SAVEHIST in zshparam(1).
Completion
Completion is a feature present in many shells. It allows the user to type only a part (usually the
prefix) of a word and have the shell fill in the rest. The completion system in zsh is programmable.
For example, the shell can be set to complete email addresses in arguments to the mail command from
your ~/.abook/addressbook; usernames, hostnames, and even remote paths in arguments to scp, and so
on. Anything that can be written in or glued together with zsh can be the source of what the line
editor offers as possible completions.
Zsh has two completion systems, an old, so called compctl completion (named after the builtin command
that serves as its complete and only user interface), and a new one, referred to as compsys, orga-nized organized
nized as library of builtin and user-defined functions. The two systems differ in their interface
for specifying the completion behavior. The new system is more customizable and is supplied with
completions for many commonly used commands; it is therefore to be preferred.
The completion system must be enabled explicitly when the shell starts. For more information see
zshcompsys(1).
Extending the line editor
Apart from completion, the line editor is highly extensible by means of shell functions. Some useful
functions are provided with the shell; they provide facilities such as:
insert-composed-char
composing characters not found on the keyboard
match-words-by-style
configuring what the line editor considers a word when moving or deleting by word
history-beginning-search-backward-end, etc.
alternative ways of searching the shell history
replace-string, replace-pattern
functions for replacing strings or patterns globally in the command line
edit-command-line
edit the command line with an external editor.
See the section `ZLE Functions' in zshcontrib(1) for descriptions of these.
OPTIONS
The shell has a large number of options for changing its behaviour. These cover all aspects of the
shell; browsing the full documentation is the only good way to become acquainted with the many possi-bilities. possibilities.
bilities. See zshoptions(1).
PATTERN MATCHING
The shell has a rich set of patterns which are available for file matching (described in the documen-tation documentation
tation as `filename generation' and also known for historical reasons as `globbing') and for use when
programming. These are described in the section `Filename Generation' in zshexpn(1).
Of particular interest are the following patterns that are not commonly supported by other systems of
pattern matching:
** for matching over multiple directories
~, ^ the ability to exclude patterns from matching when the EXTENDED_GLOB option is set
(...) glob qualifiers, included in parentheses at the end of the pattern, which select files by type
(such as directories) or attribute (such as size).
GENERAL COMMENTS ON SYNTAX
Although the syntax of zsh is in ways similar to the Korn shell, and therefore more remotely to the
original UNIX shell, the Bourne shell, its default behaviour does not entirely correspond to those
shells. General shell syntax is introduced in the section `Shell Grammar' in zshmisc(1).
One commonly encountered difference is that variables substituted onto the command line are not split
into words. See the description of the shell option SH_WORD_SPLIT in the section `Parameter Expan-sion' Expansion'
sion' in zshexpn(1). In zsh, you can either explicitly request the splitting (e.g. ${=foo}) or use
an array when you want a variable to expand to more than one word. See the section `Array Parame-ters' Parameters'
ters' in zshparam(1).
PROGRAMMING
The most convenient way of adding enhancements to the shell is typically by writing a shell function
and arranging for it to be autoloaded. Functions are described in the section `Functions' in zsh-misc(1). zshmisc(1).
misc(1). Users changing from the C shell and its relatives should notice that aliases are less used
in zsh as they don't perform argument substitution, only simple text replacement.
A few general functions, other than those for the line editor described above, are provided with the
shell and are described in zshcontrib(1). Features include:
promptinit
a prompt theme system for changing prompts easily, see the section `Prompt Themes'
zsh-mime-setup
a MIME-handling system which dispatches commands according to the suffix of a file as done by
graphical file managers
zcalc a calculator
zargs a version of xargs that makes the find command redundant
zmv a command for renaming files by means of shell patterns.
zsh 4.3.4 April 19, 2006 ZSHROADMAP(1)
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