ZSH(1) ZSH(1)
NAME
zsh - the Z shell
OVERVIEW
Because zsh contains many features, the zsh manual has been split into a number of
sections:
zsh Zsh overview (this section)
zshmisc Anything not fitting into the other sections
zshexpn Zsh command and parameter expansion
zshparam Zsh parameters
zshoptions Zsh options
zshbuiltins Zsh built-in functions
zshzle Zsh command line editing
zshcompwid Zsh completion widgets
zshcompsys Zsh completion system
zshcompctl Zsh completion control
zshmodules Zsh loadable modules
zshzftpsys Zsh built-in FTP client
zshall Meta-man page containing all of the above
DESCRIPTION
Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter (shell) usable as an interactive login shell and
as a shell script command processor. Of the standard shells, zsh most closely
resembles ksh but includes many enhancements. Zsh has command line editing,
builtin spelling correction, programmable command completion, shell functions (with
autoloading), a history mechanism, and a host of other features.
AUTHOR
Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pf AT zsh.org>. Zsh is now maintained by
the members of the zsh-workers mailing list <zsh-workers AT sunsite.dk>. The develop-
ment is currently coordinated by Peter Stephenson <pws AT zsh.org>. The coordinator
can be contacted at <coordinator AT zsh.org>, but matters relating to the code should
generally go to the mailing list.
AVAILABILITY
Zsh is available from the following anonymous FTP sites. These mirror sites are
kept frequently up to date. The sites marked with (H) may be mirroring
ftp.cs.elte.hu instead of the primary site.
Primary site
ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
http://www.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
Australia
ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
http://www.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
Denmark
ftp://sunsite.dk/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
Finland
ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
Germany
ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/unix/shells/zsh/ (H)
ftp://ftp.gmd.de/packages/zsh/
ftp://ftp.uni-trier.de/pub/unix/shell/zsh/
Hungary
ftp://ftp.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
http://www.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/packages/zsh/
Israel
ftp://ftp.math.technion.ac.il/pub/zsh/
http://www.math.technion.ac.il/pub/zsh/
Japan
ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/shell/zsh/
ftp://ftp.ayamura.org/pub/zsh/
Korea
ftp://linux.sarang.net/mirror/system/shell/zsh/
Netherlands
ftp://ftp.demon.nl/pub/mirrors/zsh/
Norway
ftp://ftp.uit.no/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
Poland
ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/shells/zsh/
Romania
ftp://ftp.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
ftp://ftp.kappa.ro/pub/mirrors/ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
Slovenia
ftp://ftp.siol.net/mirrors/zsh/
Sweden
ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/unix/zsh/
UK
ftp://ftp.net.lut.ac.uk/zsh/
ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/zsh/
USA
ftp://uiarchive.uiuc.edu/mirrors/ftp/ftp.zsh.org/pub/
ftp://ftp.rge.com/pub/shells/zsh/
http://zsh.disillusion.org/
http://foad.org/zsh/
The up-to-date source code is available via anonymous CVS from Sourceforge. See
http://sourceforge.net/projects/zsh/ for details.
MAILING LISTS
Zsh has 3 mailing lists:
<zsh-announce AT sunsite.dk>
Announcements about releases, major changes in the shell and the monthly
posting of the Zsh FAQ. (moderated)
<zsh-users AT sunsite.dk>
User discussions.
<zsh-workers AT sunsite.dk>
Hacking, development, bug reports and patches.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to the associated administrative address for
the mailing list.
<zsh-announce-subscribe AT sunsite.dk>
<zsh-users-subscribe AT sunsite.dk>
<zsh-workers-subscribe AT sunsite.dk>
<zsh-announce-unsubscribe AT sunsite.dk>
<zsh-users-unsubscribe AT sunsite.dk>
<zsh-workers-unsubscribe AT sunsite.dk>
YOU ONLY NEED TO JOIN ONE OF THE MAILING LISTS AS THEY ARE NESTED. All submissions
to zsh-announce are automatically forwarded to zsh-users. All submissions to
zsh-users are automatically forwarded to zsh-workers.
If you have problems subscribing/unsubscribing to any of the mailing lists, send
mail to <listmaster AT zsh.org>. The mailing lists are maintained by Karsten Thygesen
<karthy AT kom.dk>.
The mailing lists are archived; the archives can be accessed via the administrative
addresses listed above. There is also a hypertext archive, maintained by Geoff
Wing <gcw AT zsh.org>, available at http://www.zsh.org/mla/.
THE ZSH FAQ
Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), maintained by Peter Stephenson
<pws AT zsh.org>. It is regularly posted to the newsgroup comp.unix.shell and the
zsh-announce mailing list. The latest version can be found at any of the Zsh FTP
sites, or at http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/. The contact address for FAQ-related matters
is <faqmaster AT zsh.org>.
THE ZSH WEB PAGE
Zsh has a web page which is located at http://www.zsh.org/. This is maintained by
Karsten Thygesen <karthy AT zsh.org>, of SunSITE Denmark. The contact address for
web-related matters is <webmaster AT zsh.org>.
THE ZSH USERGUIDE
A userguide is currently in preparation. It is intended to complement the manual,
with explanations and hints on issues where the manual can be cabbalistic, hiero-
graphic, or downright mystifying (for example, the word ‘hierographic’ does not
exist). It can be viewed in its current state at http://zsh.sunsite.dk/Guide/. At
the time of writing, chapters dealing with startup files and their contents and the
new completion system were essentially complete.
THE ZSH WIKI
A ‘wiki’ website for zsh has been created at http://www.zshwiki.org/. This is a
site which can be added to and modified directly by users without any special per-
mission. You can add your own zsh tips and configurations.
INVOCATION OPTIONS
The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked to determine where
the shell will read commands from:
-c Take the first argument as a command to execute, rather than reading com-
mands from a script or standard input. If any further arguments are given,
the first one is assigned to $0, rather than being used as a positional
parameter.
-i Force shell to be interactive.
-s Force shell to read commands from the standard input. If the -s flag is not
present and an argument is given, the first argument is taken to be the
pathname of a script to execute.
After the first one or two arguments have been appropriated as described above, the
remaining arguments are assigned to the positional parameters.
For further options, which are common to invocation and the set builtin, see zshop-
tions(1).
Options may be specified by name using the -o option. -o acts like a single-letter
option, but takes a following string as the option name. For example,
zsh -x -o shwordsplit scr
runs the script scr, setting the XTRACE option by the corresponding letter ‘-x’ and
the SH_WORD_SPLIT option by name. Options may be turned off by name by using +o
instead of -o. -o can be stacked up with preceding single-letter options, so for
example ‘-xo shwordsplit’ or ‘-xoshwordsplit’ is equivalent to ‘-x -o shwordsplit’.
Options may also be specified by name in GNU long option style, ‘--option-name’.
When this is done, ‘-’ characters in the option name are permitted: they are trans-
lated into ‘_’, and thus ignored. So, for example, ‘zsh --sh-word-split’ invokes
zsh with the SH_WORD_SPLIT option turned on. Like other option syntaxes, options
can be turned off by replacing the initial ‘-’ with a ‘+’; thus ‘+-sh-word-split’
is equivalent to ‘--no-sh-word-split’. Unlike other option syntaxes, GNU-style
long options cannot be stacked with any other options, so for example ‘-x-shword-
split’ is an error, rather than being treated like ‘-x --shwordsplit’.
The special GNU-style option ‘--version’ is handled; it sends to standard output
the shell’s version information, then exits successfully. ‘--help’ is also han-
dled; it sends to standard output a list of options that can be used when invoking
the shell, then exits successfully.
Option processing may be finished, allowing following arguments that start with ‘-’
or ‘+’ to be treated as normal arguments, in two ways. Firstly, a lone ‘-’ (or
‘+’) as an argument by itself ends option processing. Secondly, a special option
‘--’ (or ‘+-’), which may be specified on its own (which is the standard POSIX
usage) or may be stacked with preceding options (so ‘-x-’ is equivalent to ‘-x
--’). Options are not permitted to be stacked after ‘--’ (so ‘-x-f’ is an error),
but note the GNU-style option form discussed above, where ‘--shwordsplit’ is per-
mitted and does not end option processing.
Except when the sh/ksh emulation single-letter options are in effect, the option
‘-b’ (or ‘+b’) ends option processing. ‘-b’ is like ‘--’, except that further sin-
gle-letter options can be stacked after the ‘-b’ and will take effect as normal.
COMPATIBILITY
Zsh tries to emulate sh or ksh when it is invoked as sh or ksh respectively; more
precisely, it looks at the first letter of the name by which it was invoked,
excluding any initial ‘r’ (assumed to stand for ‘restricted’), and if that is ‘s’
or ‘k’ it will emulate sh or ksh. Furthermore, if invoked as su (which happens on
certain systems when the shell is executed by the su command), the shell will try
to find an alternative name from the SHELL environment variable and perform emula-
tion based on that.
In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters are not special and not
initialized by the shell: ARGC, argv, cdpath, fignore, fpath, HISTCHARS, mailpath,
MANPATH, manpath, path, prompt, PROMPT, PROMPT2, PROMPT3, PROMPT4, psvar, status,
watch.
The usual zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed. Login shells source
/etc/profile followed by $HOME/.profile. If the ENV environment variable is set on
invocation, $ENV is sourced after the profile scripts. The value of ENV is sub-
jected to parameter expansion, command substitution, and arithmetic expansion
before being interpreted as a pathname. Note that the PRIVILEGED option also
affects the execution of startup files.
The following options are set if the shell is invoked as sh or ksh: NO_BAD_PATTERN,
NO_BANG_HIST, NO_BG_NICE, NO_EQUALS, NO_FUNCTION_ARGZERO, GLOB_SUBST,
NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT, NO_HUP, INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS, KSH_ARRAYS, NO_MULTIOS, NO_NOMATCH,
NO_NOTIFY, POSIX_BUILTINS, NO_PROMPT_PERCENT, RM_STAR_SILENT, SH_FILE_EXPANSION,
SH_GLOB, SH_OPTION_LETTERS, SH_WORD_SPLIT. Additionally the BSD_ECHO and
IGNORE_BRACES options are set if zsh is invoked as sh. Also, the KSH_OPTION_PRINT,
LOCAL_OPTIONS, PROMPT_BANG, PROMPT_SUBST and SINGLE_LINE_ZLE options are set if zsh
is invoked as ksh.
RESTRICTED SHELL
When the basename of the command used to invoke zsh starts with the letter ‘r’ or
the ‘-r’ command line option is supplied at invocation, the shell becomes
restricted. Emulation mode is determined after stripping the letter ‘r’ from the
invocation name. The following are disabled in restricted mode:
· changing directories with the cd builtin
· changing or unsetting the PATH, path, MODULE_PATH, module_path, SHELL, HIST-
FILE, HISTSIZE, GID, EGID, UID, EUID, USERNAME, LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH, LD_PRELOAD and LD_AOUT_PRELOAD parameters
· specifying command names containing /
· specifying command pathnames using hash
· redirecting output to files
· using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another command
· using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process’ argument and environment space
· using the ARGV0 parameter to override argv[0] for external commands
· turning off restricted mode with set +r or unsetopt RESTRICTED
These restrictions are enforced after processing the startup files. The startup
files should set up PATH to point to a directory of commands which can be safely
invoked in the restricted environment. They may also add further restrictions by
disabling selected builtins.
Restricted mode can also be activated any time by setting the RESTRICTED option.
This immediately enables all the restrictions described above even if the shell
still has not processed all startup files.
STARTUP/SHUTDOWN FILES
Commands are first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be overridden. Subsequent
behaviour is modified by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options; the former affects all
startup files, while the second only affects those in the /etc directory. If one
of the options is unset at any point, any subsequent startup file(s) of the corre-
sponding type will not be read. It is also possible for a file in $ZDOTDIR to
re-enable GLOBAL_RCS. Both RCS and GLOBAL_RCS are set by default.
Commands are then read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. If the shell is a login shell, com-
mands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile. Then, if the shell
is interactive, commands are read from /etc/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc.
Finally, if the shell is a login shell, /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.
When a login shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout and then /etc/zlogout are
read. This happens with either an explicit exit via the exit or logout commands,
or an implicit exit by reading end-of-file from the terminal. However, if the
shell terminates due to exec’ing another process, the logout files are not read.
These are also affected by the RCS and GLOBAL_RCS options. Note also that the RCS
option affects the saving of history files, i.e. if RCS is unset when the shell
exits, no history file will be saved.
If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead. Those files listed above as being in
/etc may be in another directory, depending on the installation.
As /etc/zshenv is run for all instances of zsh, it is important that it be kept as
small as possible. In particular, it is a good idea to put code that does not need
to be run for every single shell behind a test of the form ‘if [[ -o rcs ]]; then
...’ so that it will not be executed when zsh is invoked with the ‘-f’ option.
Any of these files may be pre-compiled with the zcompile builtin command (see zsh-
builtins(1)). If a compiled file exists (named for the original file plus the .zwc
extension) and it is newer than the original file, the compiled file will be used
instead.
FILES
$ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
$ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
$ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
$ZDOTDIR/.zlogin
$ZDOTDIR/.zlogout
${TMPPREFIX}* (default is /tmp/zsh*)
/etc/zshenv
/etc/zprofile
/etc/zshrc
/etc/zlogin
/etc/zlogout (installation-specific - /etc is the default)
SEE ALSO
sh(1), csh(1), tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1), zshbuiltins(1), zshcompwid(1), zsh-
compsys(1), zshcompctl(1), zshexpn(1), zshmisc(1), zshmodules(1), zshoptions(1),
zshparam(1), zshzle(1)
IEEE Standard for information Technology - Portable Operating System Interface
(POSIX) - Part 2: Shell and Utilities, IEEE Inc, 1993, ISBN 1-55937-255-9.
zsh 4.2.1 August 13, 2004 ZSH(1)
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