zsh or the z shell is an interactive shell that builds upon features of other shells such as bash, ksh, and tcsh. zsh is great for advanced script monkeys but also is an excellent simple bash replacement for the regular joe user.
Here is a quick intro to the auto complete features of zsh!
On Debian / Ubuntu, install zsh:
$ sudo apt-get install zsh
Then to get a zsh shell, run:
$ zsh
On OS X, zsh is installed by default. Just run zsh to get the shell.
Configuring zsh
zsh shell options can be set in:
~/.zshrc
Below is a basic config to get you started:
# Set up the prompt
autoload -Uz promptinit
promptinit
prompt adam1
setopt histignorealldups sharehistory
# Use emacs keybindings even if our EDITOR is set to vi
bindkey -e
# Keep 1000 lines of history within the shell and save it to ~/.zsh_history:
HISTSIZE=1000
SAVEHIST=1000
HISTFILE=~/.zsh_history
# Use modern completion system
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit
zstyle ':completion:*' auto-description 'specify: %d'
zstyle ':completion:*' completer _expand _complete _correct _approximate
zstyle ':completion:*' format 'Completing %d'
zstyle ':completion:*' group-name ''
zstyle ':completion:*' menu select=2 eval "$(dircolors -b)"
zstyle ':completion:*:default' list-colors ${(s.:.)LS_COLORS}
zstyle ':completion:*' list-colors ''
zstyle ':completion:*' list-prompt %SAt %p: Hit TAB for more, or the character to insert%s
zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list '' 'm:{a-z}={A-Z}' 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z}' 'r:|[._-]=* r:|=* l:|=*'
zstyle ':completion:*' menu select=long
zstyle ':completion:*' select-prompt %SScrolling active: current selection at %p%s
zstyle ':completion:*' use-compctl false
zstyle ':completion:*' verbose true
zstyle ':completion:*:*:kill:*:processes' list-colors '=(#b) #([0-9]#)*=0=01;31'
zstyle ':completion:*:kill:*' command 'ps -u $USER -o pid,%cpu,tty,cputime,cmd'
Autocomplete
To see some zsh autocomplete craziness, try this:
Type cd followed TAB with no space
cd[TAB]
You can then tab around to any different commands beginning with the letters ‘cd’ or also shell parameters that begin with ‘cd’.
And somewhat different, try cd space TAB:
cd [TAB]
This lets you then TAB around for available directories.
Even more wild, typing this:
/u/l/b[TAB]
…autocompletes to /usr/local/bin/
Autocomplete command line options
You can also use TAB autocompletion for command line options to many programs.
I use imagemagick quite a bit. It has a ton of options. With zsh, I can type:
mogrify --[TAB]
Then zsh autocompletes all available options to scroll through and select.
This is only a tease of the power of zsh!
Below are some additional links to check out:
Start here http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Intro/intro_toc.html
Mega guide http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/zshguide.html
RTFM http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/zsh_toc.html
wiki http://zshwiki.org
sourceforge page http://zsh.sourceforge.net
Cool!
