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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 mech-
       anism, 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 <coordi-
       nator@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 administrative
       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-work-
       ers.

       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 ar-
       chive,  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  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@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 current
       state at http://zsh.sunsite.dk/Guide/.  At the time of  writing,  chap-
       ters  dealing with startup files and their contents and the new comple-
       tion 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 con-
       figurations.


INVOCATION OPTIONS

       The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked to deter-
       mine 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 positional
       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 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  pro-
       cessing.  Secondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'), which may be spec-
       ified 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 emula-
       tion based on that.

       In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters are not spe-
       cial  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 subjected 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_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  SIN-
       GLE_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:

       o      changing directories with the cd builtin

       o      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

       o      specifying command names containing /

       o      specifying command pathnames using hash

       o      redirecting output to files

       o      using the exec builtin command to replace the shell with another
              command

       o      using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process' argument and envi-
              ronment space

       o      using the ARGV0 parameter to override argv[0] for external  com-
              mands

       o      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 installa-
       tion.

       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), zshcom-
       pwid(1), zshcompsys(1), zshcompctl(1), zshexpn(1), zshmisc(1),  zshmod-
       ules(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 4.2.6                      November 28, 2005                        ZSH(1)

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