zsh
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, pro-
grammable command completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a
history mechanism, and a host of other features.
AUTHOR
Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pf@zsh.org>. Zsh is now
maintained by the members of the zsh-workers mailing list <zsh-work-
ers@sunsite.dk>. The development is currently coordinated by Peter
Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. The coordinator can be contacted at <coor-
dinator@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 Source-
forge. See http://sourceforge.net/projects/zsh/ for details.
MAILING LISTS
Zsh has 3 mailing lists:
<zsh-announce@sunsite.dk>
Announcements about releases, major changes in the shell and
the monthly posting of the Zsh FAQ. (moderated)
<zsh-users@sunsite.dk>
User discussions.
<zsh-workers@sunsite.dk>
Hacking, development, bug reports and patches.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, send mail to the associated administra-
tive address for the mailing list.
<zsh-announce-subscribe@sunsite.dk>
<zsh-users-subscribe@sunsite.dk>
<zsh-workers-subscribe@sunsite.dk>
<zsh-announce-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk>
<zsh-users-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk>
<zsh-workers-unsubscribe@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@zsh.org>. The mailing lists are main-
tained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@kom.auc.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@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@zsh.org>. It is regularly posted to the news-
group 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@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@zsh.org>, of SunSITE Denmark.
The contact address for web-related matters is <webmaster@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, hierographic, or downright mystifying (for example,
the word ‘hierographic’ does not exist). It can be viewed in its cur-
rent 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 permission. 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 commands from a script or standard input. If any fur-
ther 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 posi-
tional parameters.
For further options, which are common to invocation and the set
builtin, see zshoptions(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 translated 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-shwordsplit’ is an error, rather than being treated
like ‘-x --shwordsplit’.
The special GNU-style option ‘--version’ is handled; it sends to stan-
dard output the shell’s version information, then exits successfully.
‘--help’ is also handled; it sends to standard output a list of
options that can be used when invoking the shell, then exits success-
fully.
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 pro-
cessing. 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 permitted 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 single-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 respec-
tively; 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
emulation 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 environ-
ment variable is set on invocation, $ENV is sourced after the profile
scripts. The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, com-
mand substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted
as a pathname. Note that the PRIVILEGED option also affects the exe-
cution 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_FUNC-
TION_ARGZERO, GLOB_SUBST, NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT, NO_HUP, INTERACTIVE_COM-
MENTS, 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, HISTFILE, 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 com-
mands
· 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 com-
mands 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 corresponding 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, commands are read from /etc/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zpro-
file. 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 instal-
lation.
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 com-
mand (see zshbuiltins(1)). If a compiled file exists (named for the
original file plus the .zwc extension) and it is newer than the origi-
nal 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), zsh-
compwid(1), zshcompsys(1), zshcompctl(1), zshexpn(1), zshmisc(1), zsh-
modules(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 4.2.0 March 19, 2004 ZSH(1)
