ZSHCONTRIB(1) General Commands Manual ZSHCONTRIB(1)
NAME
zshcontrib - user contributions to zsh
DESCRIPTION
The Zsh source distribution includes a number of items contributed by
the user community. These are not inherently a part of the shell, and
some may not be available in every zsh installation. The most signifi-
cant of these are documented here. For documentation on other con-
tributed items such as shell functions, look for comments in the func-
tion source files.
UTILITIES
Accessing On-Line Help
The key sequence ESC h is normally bound by ZLE to execute the run-help
widget (see zshzle(1)). This invokes the run-help command with the com-
mand word from the current input line as its argument. By default,
run-help is an alias for the man command, so this often fails when the
command word is a shell builtin or a user-defined function. By redefin-
ing the run-help alias, one can improve the on-line help provided by the
shell.
The helpfiles utility, found in the Util directory of the distribution,
is a Perl program that can be used to process the zsh manual to produce
a separate help file for each shell builtin and for many other shell
features as well. The autoloadable run-help function, found in Func-
tions/Misc, searches for these helpfiles and performs several other
tests to produce the most complete help possible for the command.
Help files are installed by default to a subdirectory of /usr/share/zsh
or /usr/local/share/zsh.
To create your own help files with helpfiles, choose or create a direc-
tory where the individual command help files will reside. For example,
you might choose ~/zsh_help. If you unpacked the zsh distribution in
your home directory, you would use the commands:
mkdir ~/zsh_help
perl ~/zsh-5.9/Util/helpfiles ~/zsh_help
The HELPDIR parameter tells run-help where to look for the help files.
When unset, it uses the default installation path. To use your own set
of help files, set this to the appropriate path in one of your startup
files:
HELPDIR=~/zsh_help
To use the run-help function, you need to add lines something like the
following to your .zshrc or equivalent startup file:
unalias run-help
autoload run-help
Note that in order for `autoload run-help' to work, the run-help file
must be in one of the directories named in your fpath array (see zsh-
param(1)). This should already be the case if you have a standard zsh
installation; if it is not, copy Functions/Misc/run-help to an appropri-
ate directory.
Recompiling Functions
If you frequently edit your zsh functions, or periodically update your
zsh installation to track the latest developments, you may find that
function digests compiled with the zcompile builtin are frequently out
of date with respect to the function source files. This is not usually
a problem, because zsh always looks for the newest file when loading a
function, but it may cause slower shell startup and function loading.
Also, if a digest file is explicitly used as an element of fpath, zsh
won't check whether any of its source files has changed.
The zrecompile autoloadable function, found in Functions/Misc, can be
used to keep function digests up to date.
zrecompile [ -qt ] [ name ... ]
zrecompile [ -qt ] -p arg ... [ -- arg ... ]
This tries to find *.zwc files and automatically re-compile them
if at least one of the original files is newer than the compiled
file. This works only if the names stored in the compiled files
are full paths or are relative to the directory that contains the
.zwc file.
In the first form, each name is the name of a compiled file or a
directory containing *.zwc files that should be checked. If no
arguments are given, the directories and *.zwc files in fpath are
used.
When -t is given, no compilation is performed, but a return sta-
tus of zero (true) is set if there are files that need to be
re-compiled and non-zero (false) otherwise. The -q option quiets
the chatty output that describes what zrecompile is doing.
Without the -t option, the return status is zero if all files
that needed re-compilation could be compiled and non-zero if com-
pilation for at least one of the files failed.
If the -p option is given, the args are interpreted as one or
more sets of arguments for zcompile, separated by `--'. For ex-
ample:
zrecompile -p \
-R ~/.zshrc -- \
-M ~/.zcompdump -- \
~/zsh/comp.zwc ~/zsh/Completion/*/_*
This compiles ~/.zshrc into ~/.zshrc.zwc if that doesn't exist or
if it is older than ~/.zshrc. The compiled file will be marked
for reading instead of mapping. The same is done for ~/.zcompdump
and ~/.zcompdump.zwc, but this compiled file is marked for map-
ping. The last line re-creates the file ~/zsh/comp.zwc if any of
the files matching the given pattern is newer than it.
Without the -p option, zrecompile does not create function di-
gests that do not already exist, nor does it add new functions to
the digest.
The following shell loop is an example of a method for creating function
digests for all functions in your fpath, assuming that you have write
permission to the directories:
for ((i=1; i <= $#fpath; ++i)); do
dir=$fpath[i]
zwc=${dir:t}.zwc
if [[ $dir == (.|..) || $dir == (.|..)/* ]]; then
continue
fi
files=($dir/*(N-.))
if [[ -w $dir:h && -n $files ]]; then
files=(${${(M)files%/*/*}#/})
if ( cd $dir:h &&
zrecompile -p -U -z $zwc $files ); then
fpath[i]=$fpath[i].zwc
fi
fi
done
The -U and -z options are appropriate for functions in the default zsh
installation fpath; you may need to use different options for your per-
sonal function directories.
Once the digests have been created and your fpath modified to refer to
them, you can keep them up to date by running zrecompile with no argu-
ments.
Keyboard Definition
The large number of possible combinations of keyboards, workstations,
terminals, emulators, and window systems makes it impossible for zsh to
have built-in key bindings for every situation. The zkbd utility, found
in Functions/Misc, can help you quickly create key bindings for your
configuration.
Run zkbd either as an autoloaded function, or as a shell script:
zsh -f ~/zsh-5.9/Functions/Misc/zkbd
When you run zkbd, it first asks you to enter your terminal type; if the
default it offers is correct, just press return. It then asks you to
press a number of different keys to determine characteristics of your
keyboard and terminal; zkbd warns you if it finds anything out of the
ordinary, such as a Delete key that sends neither ^H nor ^?.
The keystrokes read by zkbd are recorded as a definition for an associa-
tive array named key, written to a file in the subdirectory .zkbd within
either your HOME or ZDOTDIR directory. The name of the file is composed
from the TERM, VENDOR and OSTYPE parameters, joined by hyphens.
You may read this file into your .zshrc or another startup file with the
`source' or `.' commands, then reference the key parameter in bindkey
commands, like this:
source ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zkbd/$TERM-$VENDOR-$OSTYPE
[[ -n ${key[Left]} ]] && bindkey "${key[Left]}" backward-char
[[ -n ${key[Right]} ]] && bindkey "${key[Right]}" forward-char
# etc.
Note that in order for `autoload zkbd' to work, the zkdb file must be in
one of the directories named in your fpath array (see zshparam(1)).
This should already be the case if you have a standard zsh installation;
if it is not, copy Functions/Misc/zkbd to an appropriate directory.
Dumping Shell State
Occasionally you may encounter what appears to be a bug in the shell,
particularly if you are using a beta version of zsh or a development re-
lease. Usually it is sufficient to send a description of the problem to
one of the zsh mailing lists (see zsh(1)), but sometimes one of the zsh
developers will need to recreate your environment in order to track the
problem down.
The script named reporter, found in the Util directory of the distribu-
tion, is provided for this purpose. (It is also possible to autoload
reporter, but reporter is not installed in fpath by default.) This
script outputs a detailed dump of the shell state, in the form of an-
other script that can be read with `zsh -f' to recreate that state.
To use reporter, read the script into your shell with the `.' command
and redirect the output into a file:
. ~/zsh-5.9/Util/reporter > zsh.report
You should check the zsh.report file for any sensitive information such
as passwords and delete them by hand before sending the script to the
developers. Also, as the output can be voluminous, it's best to wait
for the developers to ask for this information before sending it.
You can also use reporter to dump only a subset of the shell state.
This is sometimes useful for creating startup files for the first time.
Most of the output from reporter is far more detailed than usually is
necessary for a startup file, but the aliases, options, and zstyles
states may be useful because they include only changes from the de-
faults. The bindings state may be useful if you have created any of
your own keymaps, because reporter arranges to dump the keymap creation
commands as well as the bindings for every keymap.
As is usual with automated tools, if you create a startup file with re-
porter, you should edit the results to remove unnecessary commands.
Note that if you're using the new completion system, you should not dump
the functions state to your startup files with reporter; use the comp-
dump function instead (see zshcompsys(1)).
reporter [ state ... ]
Print to standard output the indicated subset of the current
shell state. The state arguments may be one or more of:
all Output everything listed below.
aliases
Output alias definitions.
bindings
Output ZLE key maps and bindings.
completion
Output old-style compctl commands. New completion is cov-
ered by functions and zstyles.
functions
Output autoloads and function definitions.
limits Output limit commands.
options
Output setopt commands.
styles Same as zstyles.
variables
Output shell parameter assignments, plus export commands
for any environment variables.
zstyles
Output zstyle commands.
If the state is omitted, all is assumed.
With the exception of `all', every state can be abbreviated by any pre-
fix, even a single letter; thus a is the same as aliases, z is the same
as zstyles, etc.
Manipulating Hook Functions
add-zsh-hook [ -L | -dD ] [ -Uzk ] hook function
Several functions are special to the shell, as described in the
section SPECIAL FUNCTIONS, see zshmisc(1), in that they are auto-
matically called at specific points during shell execution. Each
has an associated array consisting of names of functions to be
called at the same point; these are so-called `hook functions'.
The shell function add-zsh-hook provides a simple way of adding
or removing functions from the array.
hook is one of chpwd, periodic, precmd, preexec, zshaddhistory,
zshexit, or zsh_directory_name, the special functions in ques-
tion. Note that zsh_directory_name is called in a different way
from the other functions, but may still be manipulated as a hook.
function is name of an ordinary shell function. If no options
are given this will be added to the array of functions to be exe-
cuted in the given context. Functions are invoked in the order
they were added.
If the option -L is given, the current values for the hook arrays
are listed with typeset.
If the option -d is given, the function is removed from the array
of functions to be executed.
If the option -D is given, the function is treated as a pattern
and any matching names of functions are removed from the array of
functions to be executed.
The options -U, -z and -k are passed as arguments to autoload for
function. For functions contributed with zsh, the options -Uz
are appropriate.
add-zle-hook-widget [ -L | -dD ] [ -Uzk ] hook widgetname
Several widget names are special to the line editor, as described
in the section Special Widgets, see zshzle(1), in that they are
automatically called at specific points during editing. Unlike
function hooks, these do not use a predefined array of other
names to call at the same point; the shell function
add-zle-hook-widget maintains a similar array and arranges for
the special widget to invoke those additional widgets.
hook is one of isearch-exit, isearch-update, line-pre-redraw,
line-init, line-finish, history-line-set, or keymap-select, cor-
responding to each of the special widgets zle-isearch-exit, etc.
The special widget names are also accepted as the hook argument.
widgetname is the name of a ZLE widget. If no options are given
this is added to the array of widgets to be invoked in the given
hook context. Widgets are invoked in the order they were added,
with
zle widgetname -Nw -f "nolast" -- "$@"
Note that this means that the `WIDGET' special parameter tracks
the widgetname when the widget function is called, rather than
tracking the name of the corresponding special hook widget.
If the option -d is given, the widgetname is removed from the ar-
ray of widgets to be executed.
If the option -D is given, the widgetname is treated as a pattern
and any matching names of widgets are removed from the array.
If widgetname does not name an existing widget when added to the
array, it is assumed that a shell function also named widgetname
is meant to provide the implementation of the widget. This name
is therefore marked for autoloading, and the options -U, -z and
-k are passed as arguments to autoload as with add-zsh-hook. The
widget is also created with `zle -N widgetname' to cause the cor-
responding function to be loaded the first time the hook is
called.
The arrays of widgetname are currently maintained in zstyle con-
texts, one for each hook context, with a style of `widgets'. If
the -L option is given, this set of styles is listed with `zstyle
-L'. This implementation may change, and the special widgets
that refer to the styles are created only if add-zle-hook-widget
is called to add at least one widget, so if this function is used
for any hooks, then all hooks should be managed only via this
function.
REMEMBERING RECENT DIRECTORIES
The function cdr allows you to change the working directory to a previ-
ous working directory from a list maintained automatically. It is simi-
lar in concept to the directory stack controlled by the pushd, popd and
dirs builtins, but is more configurable, and as it stores all entries in
files it is maintained across sessions and (by default) between terminal
emulators in the current session. Duplicates are automatically removed,
so that the list reflects the single most recent use of each directory.
Note that the pushd directory stack is not actually modified or used by
cdr unless you configure it to do so as described in the configuration
section below.
Installation
The system works by means of a hook function that is called every time
the directory changes. To install the system, autoload the required
functions and use the add-zsh-hook function described above:
autoload -Uz chpwd_recent_dirs cdr add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook chpwd chpwd_recent_dirs
Now every time you change directly interactively, no matter which com-
mand you use, the directory to which you change will be remembered in
most-recent-first order.
Use
All direct user interaction is via the cdr function.
The argument to cdr is a number N corresponding to the Nth most recently
changed-to directory. 1 is the immediately preceding directory; the
current directory is remembered but is not offered as a destination.
Note that if you have multiple windows open 1 may refer to a directory
changed to in another window; you can avoid this by having per-terminal
files for storing directory as described for the recent-dirs-file style
below.
If you set the recent-dirs-default style described below cdr will behave
the same as cd if given a non-numeric argument, or more than one argu-
ment. The recent directory list is updated just the same however you
change directory.
If the argument is omitted, 1 is assumed. This is similar to pushd's
behaviour of swapping the two most recent directories on the stack.
Completion for the argument to cdr is available if compinit has been
run; menu selection is recommended, using:
zstyle ':completion:*:*:cdr:*:*' menu selection
to allow you to cycle through recent directories; the order is pre-
served, so the first choice is the most recent directory before the cur-
rent one. The verbose style is also recommended to ensure the directory
is shown; this style is on by default so no action is required unless
you have changed it.
Options
The behaviour of cdr may be modified by the following options.
-l lists the numbers and the corresponding directories in abbrevi-
ated form (i.e. with ~ substitution reapplied), one per line.
The directories here are not quoted (this would only be an issue
if a directory name contained a newline). This is used by the
completion system.
-r sets the variable reply to the current set of directories. Noth-
ing is printed and the directory is not changed.
-e allows you to edit the list of directories, one per line. The
list can be edited to any extent you like; no sanity checking is
performed. Completion is available. No quoting is necessary
(except for newlines, where I have in any case no sympathy); di-
rectories are in unabbreviated form and contain an absolute path,
i.e. they start with /. Usually the first entry should be left
as the current directory.
-p 'pattern'
Prunes any items in the directory list that match the given ex-
tended glob pattern; the pattern needs to be quoted from immedi-
ate expansion on the command line. The pattern is matched
against each completely expanded file name in the list; the full
string must match, so wildcards at the end (e.g. '*removeme*')
are needed to remove entries with a given substring.
If output is to a terminal, then the function will print the new
list after pruning and prompt for confirmation by the user. This
output and confirmation step can be skipped by using -P instead
of -p.
Configuration
Configuration is by means of the styles mechanism that should be famil-
iar from completion; if not, see the description of the zstyle command
in see zshmodules(1). The context for setting styles should be ':ch-
pwd:*' in case the meaning of the context is extended in future, for ex-
ample:
zstyle ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-max 0
sets the value of the recent-dirs-max style to 0. In practice the style
name is specific enough that a context of '*' should be fine.
An exception is recent-dirs-insert, which is used exclusively by the
completion system and so has the usual completion system context (':com-
pletion:*' if nothing more specific is needed), though again '*' should
be fine in practice.
recent-dirs-default
If true, and the command is expecting a recent directory index,
and either there is more than one argument or the argument is not
an integer, then fall through to "cd". This allows the lazy to
use only one command for directory changing. Completion recog-
nises this, too; see recent-dirs-insert for how to control com-
pletion when this option is in use.
recent-dirs-file
The file where the list of directories is saved. The default is
${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.chpwd-recent-dirs, i.e. this is in your home
directory unless you have set the variable ZDOTDIR to point some-
where else. Directory names are saved in $'...' quoted form, so
each line in the file can be supplied directly to the shell as an
argument.
The value of this style may be an array. In this case, the first
file in the list will always be used for saving directories while
any other files are left untouched. When reading the recent di-
rectory list, if there are fewer than the maximum number of en-
tries in the first file, the contents of later files in the array
will be appended with duplicates removed from the list shown.
The contents of the two files are not sorted together, i.e. all
the entries in the first file are shown first. The special value
+ can appear in the list to indicate the default file should be
read at that point. This allows effects like the following:
zstyle ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-file \
~/.chpwd-recent-dirs-${TTY##*/} +
Recent directories are read from a file numbered according to the
terminal. If there are insufficient entries the list is supple-
mented from the default file.
It is possible to use zstyle -e to make the directory config-
urable at run time:
zstyle -e ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-file pick-recent-dirs-file
pick-recent-dirs-file() {
if [[ $PWD = ~/text/writing(|/*) ]]; then
reply=(~/.chpwd-recent-dirs-writing)
else
reply=(+)
fi
}
In this example, if the current directory is ~/text/writing or a
directory under it, then use a special file for saving recent di-
rectories, else use the default.
recent-dirs-insert
Used by completion. If recent-dirs-default is true, then setting
this to true causes the actual directory, rather than its index,
to be inserted on the command line; this has the same effect as
using the corresponding index, but makes the history clearer and
the line easier to edit. With this setting, if part of an argu-
ment was already typed, normal directory completion rather than
recent directory completion is done; this is because recent di-
rectory completion is expected to be done by cycling through en-
tries menu fashion.
If the value of the style is always, then only recent directories
will be completed; in that case, use the cd command when you want
to complete other directories.
If the value is fallback, recent directories will be tried first,
then normal directory completion is performed if recent directory
completion failed to find a match.
Finally, if the value is both then both sets of completions are
presented; the usual tag mechanism can be used to distinguish re-
sults, with recent directories tagged as recent-dirs. Note that
the recent directories inserted are abbreviated with directory
names where appropriate.
recent-dirs-max
The maximum number of directories to save to the file. If this
is zero or negative there is no maximum. The default is 20.
Note this includes the current directory, which isn't offered, so
the highest number of directories you will be offered is one less
than the maximum.
recent-dirs-prune
This style is an array determining what directories should (or
should not) be added to the recent list. Elements of the array
can include:
parent Prune parents (more accurately, ancestors) from the recent
list. If present, changing directly down by any number of
directories causes the current directory to be overwrit-
ten. For example, changing from ~pws to
~pws/some/other/dir causes ~pws not to be left on the re-
cent directory stack. This only applies to direct changes
to descendant directories; earlier directories on the list
are not pruned. For example, changing from ~pws/yet/an-
other to ~pws/some/other/dir does not cause ~pws to be
pruned.
pattern:pattern
Gives a zsh pattern for directories that should not be
added to the recent list (if not already there). This el-
ement can be repeated to add different patterns. For ex-
ample, 'pattern:/tmp(|/*)' stops /tmp or its descendants
from being added. The EXTENDED_GLOB option is always
turned on for these patterns.
recent-dirs-pushd
If set to true, cdr will use pushd instead of cd to change the
directory, so the directory is saved on the directory stack. As
the directory stack is completely separate from the list of files
saved by the mechanism used in this file there is no obvious rea-
son to do this.
Use with dynamic directory naming
It is possible to refer to recent directories using the dynamic direc-
tory name syntax by using the supplied function zsh_directory_name_cdr a
hook:
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook -Uz zsh_directory_name zsh_directory_name_cdr
When this is done, ~[1] will refer to the most recent directory other
than $PWD, and so on. Completion after ~[... also works.
Details of directory handling
This section is for the curious or confused; most users will not need to
know this information.
Recent directories are saved to a file immediately and hence are pre-
served across sessions. Note currently no file locking is applied: the
list is updated immediately on interactive commands and nowhere else
(unlike history), and it is assumed you are only going to change direc-
tory in one window at once. This is not safe on shared accounts, but in
any case the system has limited utility when someone else is changing to
a different set of directories behind your back.
To make this a little safer, only directory changes instituted from the
command line, either directly or indirectly through shell function calls
(but not through subshells, evals, traps, completion functions and the
like) are saved. Shell functions should use cd -q or pushd -q to avoid
side effects if the change to the directory is to be invisible at the
command line. See the contents of the function chpwd_recent_dirs for
more details.
ABBREVIATED DYNAMIC REFERENCES TO DIRECTORIES
The dynamic directory naming system is described in the subsection Dy-
namic named directories of the section Filename Expansion in zshexpn(1).
In this, a reference to ~[...] is expanded by a function found by the
hooks mechanism.
The contributed function zsh_directory_name_generic provides a system
allowing the user to refer to directories with only a limited amount of
new code. It supports all three of the standard interfaces for direc-
tory naming: converting from a name to a directory, converting in the
reverse direction to find a short name, and completion of names.
The main feature of this function is a path-like syntax, combining ab-
breviations at multiple levels separated by ":". As an example,
~[g:p:s] might specify:
g The top level directory for your git area. This first component
has to match, or the function will return indicating another di-
rectory name hook function should be tried.
p The name of a project within your git area.
s The source area within that project. This allows you to collapse
references to long hierarchies to a very compact form, particu-
larly if the hierarchies are similar across different areas of
the disk.
Name components may be completed: if a description is shown at the top
of the list of completions, it includes the path to which previous com-
ponents expand, while the description for an individual completion shows
the path segment it would add. No additional configuration is needed
for this as the completion system is aware of the dynamic directory name
mechanism.
Usage
To use the function, first define a wrapper function for your specific
case. We'll assume it's to be autoloaded. This can have any name but
we'll refer to it as zdn_mywrapper. This wrapper function will define
various variables and then call this function with the same arguments
that the wrapper function gets. This configuration is described below.
Then arrange for the wrapper to be run as a zsh_directory_name hook:
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook zsh_directory_name_generic zdn_mywrapper
add-zsh-hook -U zsh_directory_name zdn_mywrapper
Configuration
The wrapper function should define a local associative array zdn_top.
Alternatively, this can be set with a style called mapping. The context
for the style is :zdn:wrapper-name where wrapper-name is the function
calling zsh_directory_name_generic; for example:
zstyle :zdn:zdn_mywrapper: mapping zdn_mywrapper_top
The keys in this associative array correspond to the first component of
the name. The values are matching directories. They may have an op-
tional suffix with a slash followed by a colon and the name of a vari-
able in the same format to give the next component. (The slash before
the colon is to disambiguate the case where a colon is needed in the
path for a drive. There is otherwise no syntax for escaping this, so
path components whose names start with a colon are not supported.) A
special component :default: specifies a variable in the form /:var (the
path section is ignored and so is usually empty) that will be used for
the next component if no variable is given for the path. Variables re-
ferred to within zdn_top have the same format as zdn_top itself, but
contain relative paths.
For example,
local -A zdn_top=(
g ~/git
ga ~/alternate/git
gs /scratch/$USER/git/:second2
:default: /:second1
)
This specifies the behaviour of a directory referred to as ~[g:...] or
~[ga:...] or ~[gs:...]. Later path components are optional; in that
case ~[g] expands to ~/git, and so on. gs expands to /scratch/$USER/git
and uses the associative array second2 to match the second component; g
and ga use the associative array second1 to match the second component.
When expanding a name to a directory, if the first component is not g or
ga or gs, it is not an error; the function simply returns 1 so that a
later hook function can be tried. However, matching the first component
commits the function, so if a later component does not match, an error
is printed (though this still does not stop later hooks from being exe-
cuted).
For components after the first, a relative path is expected, but note
that multiple levels may still appear. Here is an example of second1:
local -A second1=(
p myproject
s somproject
os otherproject/subproject/:third
)
The path as found from zdn_top is extended with the matching directory,
so ~[g:p] becomes ~/git/myproject. The slash between is added automati-
cally (it's not possible to have a later component modify the name of a
directory already matched). Only os specifies a variable for a third
component, and there's no :default:, so it's an error to use a name like
~[g:p:x] or ~[ga:s:y] because there's nowhere to look up the x or y.
The associative arrays need to be visible within this function; the
generic function therefore uses internal variable names beginning _zdn_
in order to avoid clashes. Note that the variable reply needs to be
passed back to the shell, so should not be local in the calling func-
tion.
The function does not test whether directories assembled by component
actually exist; this allows the system to work across automounted file
systems. The error from the command trying to use a non-existent direc-
tory should be sufficient to indicate the problem.
Complete example
Here is a full fictitious but usable autoloadable definition of the ex-
ample function defined by the code above. So ~[gs:p:s] expands to
/scratch/$USER/git/myscratchproject/top/srcdir (with $USER also ex-
panded).
local -A zdn_top=(
g ~/git
ga ~/alternate/git
gs /scratch/$USER/git/:second2
:default: /:second1
)
local -A second1=(
p myproject
s somproject
os otherproject/subproject/:third
)
local -A second2=(
p myscratchproject
s somescratchproject
)
local -A third=(
s top/srcdir
d top/documentation
)
# autoload not needed if you did this at initialisation...
autoload -Uz zsh_directory_name_generic
zsh_directory_name_generic "$@
It is also possible to use global associative arrays, suitably named,
and set the style for the context of your wrapper function to refer to
this. Then your set up code would contain the following:
typeset -A zdn_mywrapper_top=(...)
# ... and so on for other associative arrays ...
zstyle ':zdn:zdn_mywrapper:' mapping zdn_mywrapper_top
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook zsh_directory_name_generic zdn_mywrapper
add-zsh-hook -U zsh_directory_name zdn_mywrapper
and the function zdn_mywrapper would contain only the following:
zsh_directory_name_generic "$@"
GATHERING INFORMATION FROM VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS
In a lot of cases, it is nice to automatically retrieve information from
version control systems (VCSs), such as subversion, CVS or git, to be
able to provide it to the user; possibly in the user's prompt. So that
you can instantly tell which branch you are currently on, for example.
In order to do that, you may use the vcs_info function.
The following VCSs are supported, showing the abbreviated name by which
they are referred to within the system:
Bazaar (bzr)
https://bazaar.canonical.com/
Codeville (cdv)
http://freecode.com/projects/codeville/
Concurrent Versioning System (cvs)
https://www.nongnu.org/cvs/
Darcs (darcs)
http://darcs.net/
Fossil (fossil)
https://fossil-scm.org/
Git (git)
https://git-scm.com/
GNU arch (tla)
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/
Mercurial (hg)
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/
Monotone (mtn)
https://monotone.ca/
Perforce (p4)
https://www.perforce.com/
Subversion (svn)
https://subversion.apache.org/
SVK (svk)
https://svk.bestpractical.com/
There is also support for the patch management system quilt (https://sa-
vannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt). See Quilt Support below for details.
To load vcs_info:
autoload -Uz vcs_info
It can be used in any existing prompt, because it does not require any
specific $psvar entries to be available.
Quickstart
To get this feature working quickly (including colors), you can do the
following (assuming, you loaded vcs_info properly - see above):
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' actionformats \
'%F{5}(%f%s%F{5})%F{3}-%F{5}[%F{2}%b%F{3}|%F{1}%a%F{5}]%f '
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' formats \
'%F{5}(%f%s%F{5})%F{3}-%F{5}[%F{2}%b%F{5}]%f '
zstyle ':vcs_info:(sv[nk]|bzr):*' branchformat '%b%F{1}:%F{3}%r'
precmd () { vcs_info }
PS1='%F{5}[%F{2}%n%F{5}] %F{3}%3~ ${vcs_info_msg_0_}%f%# '
Obviously, the last two lines are there for demonstration. You need to
call vcs_info from your precmd function. Once that is done you need a
single quoted '${vcs_info_msg_0_}' in your prompt.
To be able to use '${vcs_info_msg_0_}' directly in your prompt like
this, you will need to have the PROMPT_SUBST option enabled.
Now call the vcs_info_printsys utility from the command line:
% vcs_info_printsys
## list of supported version control backends:
## disabled systems are prefixed by a hash sign (#)
bzr
cdv
cvs
darcs
fossil
git
hg
mtn
p4
svk
svn
tla
## flavours (cannot be used in the enable or disable styles; they
## are enabled and disabled with their master [git-svn -> git])
## they *can* be used in contexts: ':vcs_info:git-svn:*'.
git-p4
git-svn
hg-git
hg-hgsubversion
hg-hgsvn
You may not want all of these because there is no point in running the
code to detect systems you do not use. So there is a way to disable
some backends altogether:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr cdv darcs mtn svk tla
You may also pick a few from that list and enable only those:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable git cvs svn
If you rerun vcs_info_printsys after one of these commands, you will see
the backends listed in the disable style (or backends not in the enable
style - if you used that) marked as disabled by a hash sign. That means
the detection of these systems is skipped completely. No wasted time
there.
Configuration
The vcs_info feature can be configured via zstyle.
First, the context in which we are working:
:vcs_info:vcs-string:user-context:repo-root-name
vcs-string
is one of: git, git-svn, git-p4, hg, hg-git, hg-hgsubversion,
hg-hgsvn, darcs, bzr, cdv, mtn, svn, cvs, svk, tla, p4 or fossil.
This is followed by `.quilt-quilt-mode' in Quilt mode (see Quilt
Support for details) and by `+hook-name' while hooks are active
(see Hooks in vcs_info for details).
Currently, hooks in quilt mode don't add the `.quilt-quilt-mode'
information. This may change in the future.
user-context
is a freely configurable string, assignable by the user as the
first argument to vcs_info (see its description below).
repo-root-name
is the name of a repository in which you want a style to match.
So, if you want a setting specific to /usr/src/zsh, with that be-
ing a CVS checkout, you can set repo-root-name to zsh to make it
so.
There are three special values for vcs-string: The first is named
-init-, that is in effect as long as there was no decision what VCS
backend to use. The second is -preinit-; it is used before vcs_info is
run, when initializing the data exporting variables. The third special
value is formats and is used by the vcs_info_lastmsg for looking up its
styles.
The initial value of repo-root-name is -all- and it is replaced with the
actual name, as soon as it is known. Only use this part of the context
for defining the formats, actionformats or branchformat styles, as it is
guaranteed that repo-root-name is set up correctly for these only. For
all other styles, just use '*' instead.
There are two pre-defined values for user-context:
default
the one used if none is specified
command
used by vcs_info_lastmsg to lookup its styles
You can of course use ':vcs_info:*' to match all VCSs in all user-con-
texts at once.
This is a description of all styles that are looked up.
formats
A list of formats, used when actionformats is not used (which is
most of the time).
actionformats
A list of formats, used if there is a special action going on in
your current repository; like an interactive rebase or a merge
conflict.
branchformat
Some backends replace %b in the formats and actionformats styles
above, not only by a branch name but also by a revision number.
This style lets you modify how that string should look.
nvcsformats
These "formats" are set when we didn't detect a version control
system for the current directory or vcs_info was disabled. This
is useful if you want vcs_info to completely take over the gener-
ation of your prompt. You would do something like
PS1='${vcs_info_msg_0_}' to accomplish that.
hgrevformat
hg uses both a hash and a revision number to reference a specific
changeset in a repository. With this style you can format the re-
vision string (see branchformat) to include either or both. It's
only useful when get-revision is true. Note, the full 40-charac-
ter revision id is not available (except when using the use-sim-
ple option) because executing hg more than once per prompt is too
slow; you may customize this behavior using hooks.
max-exports
Defines the maximum number of vcs_info_msg_*_ variables vcs_info
will set.
enable A list of backends you want to use. Checked in the -init- con-
text. If this list contains an item called NONE no backend is
used at all and vcs_info will do nothing. If this list contains
ALL, vcs_info will use all known backends. Only with ALL in en-
able will the disable style have any effect. ALL and NONE are
case insensitive.
disable
A list of VCSs you don't want vcs_info to test for repositories
(checked in the -init- context, too). Only used if enable con-
tains ALL.
disable-patterns
A list of patterns that are checked against $PWD. If a pattern
matches, vcs_info will be disabled. This style is checked in the
:vcs_info:-init-:*:-all- context.
Say, ~/.zsh is a directory under version control, in which you do
not want vcs_info to be active, do:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable-patterns "${(b)HOME}/.zsh(|/*)"
use-quilt
If enabled, the quilt support code is active in `addon' mode.
See Quilt Support for details.
quilt-standalone
If enabled, `standalone' mode detection is attempted if no VCS is
active in a given directory. See Quilt Support for details.
quilt-patch-dir
Overwrite the value of the $QUILT_PATCHES environment variable.
See Quilt Support for details.
quiltcommand
When quilt itself is called in quilt support, the value of this
style is used as the command name.
check-for-changes
If enabled, this style causes the %c and %u format escapes to
show when the working directory has uncommitted changes. The
strings displayed by these escapes can be controlled via the
stagedstr and unstagedstr styles. The only backends that cur-
rently support this option are git, hg, and bzr (the latter two
only support unstaged).
For this style to be evaluated with the hg backend, the get-revi-
sion style needs to be set and the use-simple style needs to be
unset. The latter is the default; the former is not.
With the bzr backend, lightweight checkouts only honor this style
if the use-server style is set.
Note, the actions taken if this style is enabled are potentially
expensive (read: they may be slow, depending on how big the cur-
rent repository is). Therefore, it is disabled by default.
check-for-staged-changes
This style is like check-for-changes, but it never checks the
worktree files, only the metadata in the .${vcs} dir. Therefore,
this style initializes only the %c escape (with stagedstr) but
not the %u escape. This style is faster than check-for-changes.
In the git backend, this style checks for changes in the index.
Other backends do not currently implement this style.
This style is disabled by default.
stagedstr
This string will be used in the %c escape if there are staged
changes in the repository.
unstagedstr
This string will be used in the %u escape if there are unstaged
changes in the repository.
command
This style causes vcs_info to use the supplied string as the com-
mand to use as the VCS's binary. Note, that setting this in
':vcs_info:*' is not a good idea.
If the value of this style is empty (which is the default), the
used binary name is the name of the backend in use (e.g. svn is
used in an svn repository).
The repo-root-name part in the context is always the default
-all- when this style is looked up.
For example, this style can be used to use binaries from non-de-
fault installation directories. Assume, git is installed in
/usr/bin but your sysadmin installed a newer version in /usr/lo-
cal/bin. Instead of changing the order of your $PATH parameter,
you can do this:
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*:-all-' command /usr/local/bin/git
use-server
This is used by the Perforce backend (p4) to decide if it should
contact the Perforce server to find out if a directory is managed
by Perforce. This is the only reliable way of doing this, but
runs the risk of a delay if the server name cannot be found. If
the server (more specifically, the host:port pair describing the
server) cannot be contacted, its name is put into the associative
array vcs_info_p4_dead_servers and is not contacted again during
the session until it is removed by hand. If you do not set this
style, the p4 backend is only usable if you have set the environ-
ment variable P4CONFIG to a file name and have corresponding
files in the root directories of each Perforce client. See com-
ments in the function VCS_INFO_detect_p4 for more detail.
The Bazaar backend (bzr) uses this to permit contacting the
server about lightweight checkouts, see the check-for-changes
style.
use-simple
If there are two different ways of gathering information, you can
select the simpler one by setting this style to true; the default
is to use the not-that-simple code, which is potentially a lot
slower but might be more accurate in all possible cases. This
style is used by the bzr, hg, and git backends. In the case of hg
it will invoke the external hexdump program to parse the binary
dirstate cache file; this method will not return the local revi-
sion number.
get-revision
If set to true, vcs_info goes the extra mile to figure out the
revision of a repository's work tree (currently for the git and
hg backends, where this kind of information is not always vital).
For git, the hash value of the currently checked out commit is
available via the %i expansion. With hg, the local revision num-
ber and the corresponding global hash are available via %i.
get-mq If set to true, the hg backend will look for a Mercurial Queue
(mq) patch directory. Information will be available via the `%m'
replacement.
get-bookmarks
If set to true, the hg backend will try to get a list of current
bookmarks. They will be available via the `%m' replacement.
The default is to generate a comma-separated list of all bookmark
names that refer to the currently checked out revision. If a
bookmark is active, its name is suffixed an asterisk and placed
first in the list.
use-prompt-escapes
Determines if we assume that the assembled string from vcs_info
includes prompt escapes. (Used by vcs_info_lastmsg.)
debug Enable debugging output to track possible problems. Currently
this style is only used by vcs_info's hooks system.
hooks A list style that defines hook-function names. See Hooks in
vcs_info below for details.
patch-format
nopatch-format
This pair of styles format the patch information used by the %m
expando in formats and actionformats for the git and hg backends.
The value is subject to certain %-expansions described below.
The expanded value is made available in the global backend_misc
array as ${backend_misc[patches]} (also if a set-patch-format
hook is used).
get-unapplied
This boolean style controls whether a backend should attempt to
gather a list of unapplied patches (for example with Mercurial
Queue patches).
Used by the quilt, hg, and git backends.
The default values for these styles in all contexts are:
formats
" (%s)-[%b]%u%c-"
actionformats
" (%s)-[%b|%a]%u%c-"
branchformat
"%b:%r" (for bzr, svn, svk and hg)
nvcsformats
""
hgrevformat
"%r:%h"
max-exports
2
enable ALL
disable
(empty list)
disable-patterns
(empty list)
check-for-changes
false
check-for-staged-changes
false
stagedstr
(string: "S")
unstagedstr
(string: "U")
command
(empty string)
use-server
false
use-simple
false
get-revision
false
get-mq true
get-bookmarks
false
use-prompt-escapes
true
debug false
hooks (empty list)
use-quilt
false
quilt-standalone
false
quilt-patch-dir
empty - use $QUILT_PATCHES
quiltcommand
quilt
patch-format
backend dependent
nopatch-format
backend dependent
get-unapplied
false
In normal formats and actionformats the following replacements are done:
%s The VCS in use (git, hg, svn, etc.).
%b Information about the current branch.
%a An identifier that describes the action. Only makes sense in ac-
tionformats.
%i The current revision number or identifier. For hg the hgrevformat
style may be used to customize the output.
%c The string from the stagedstr style if there are staged changes
in the repository.
%u The string from the unstagedstr style if there are unstaged
changes in the repository.
%R The base directory of the repository.
%r The repository name. If %R is /foo/bar/repoXY, %r is repoXY.
%S A subdirectory within a repository. If $PWD is /foo/bar/re-
poXY/beer/tasty, %S is beer/tasty.
%m A "misc" replacement. It is at the discretion of the backend to
decide what this replacement expands to.
The hg and git backends use this expando to display patch infor-
mation. hg sources patch information from the mq extensions; git
from in-progress rebase and cherry-pick operations and from the
stgit extension. The patch-format and nopatch-format styles con-
trol the generated string. The former is used when at least one
patch from the patch queue has been applied, and the latter oth-
erwise.
The hg backend displays bookmark information in this expando (in
addition to mq information). See the get-mq and get-bookmarks
styles. Both of these styles may be enabled at the same time.
If both are enabled, both resulting strings will be shown sepa-
rated by a semicolon (that cannot currently be customized).
The quilt `standalone' backend sets this expando to the same
value as the %Q expando.
%Q Quilt series information. When quilt is used (either in `addon'
mode or as a `standalone' backend), this expando is set to the
quilt series' patch-format string. The set-patch-format hook and
nopatch-format style are honoured.
See Quilt Support below for details.
In branchformat these replacements are done:
%b The branch name. For hg, the branch name can include a topic
name.
%r The current revision number or the hgrevformat style for hg.
In hgrevformat these replacements are done:
%r The current local revision number.
%h The current global revision identifier.
In patch-format and nopatch-format these replacements are done:
%p The name of the top-most applied patch; may be overridden by the
applied-string hook.
%u The number of unapplied patches; may be overridden by the unap-
plied-string hook.
%n The number of applied patches.
%c The number of unapplied patches.
%a The number of all patches (%a = %n + %c).
%g The names of active mq guards (hg backend).
%G The number of active mq guards (hg backend).
Not all VCS backends have to support all replacements. For nvcsformats
no replacements are performed at all, it is just a string.
Oddities
If you want to use the %b (bold off) prompt expansion in formats, which
expands %b itself, use %%b. That will cause the vcs_info expansion to
replace %%b with %b, so that zsh's prompt expansion mechanism can handle
it. Similarly, to hand down %b from branchformat, use %%%%b. Sorry for
this inconvenience, but it cannot be easily avoided. Luckily we do not
clash with a lot of prompt expansions and this only needs to be done for
those.
When one of the gen-applied-string, gen-unapplied-string, and
set-patch-format hooks is defined, applying %-escaping
(`foo=${foo//'%'/%%}') to the interpolated values for use in the prompt
is the responsibility of those hooks (jointly); when neither of those
hooks is defined, vcs_info handles escaping by itself. We regret this
coupling, but it was required for backwards compatibility.
Quilt Support
Quilt is not a version control system, therefore this is not implemented
as a backend. It can help keeping track of a series of patches. People
use it to keep a set of changes they want to use on top of software
packages (which is tightly integrated into the package build process -
the Debian project does this for a large number of packages). Quilt can
also help individual developers keep track of their own patches on top
of real version control systems.
The vcs_info integration tries to support both ways of using quilt by
having two slightly different modes of operation: `addon' mode and
`standalone' mode).
Quilt integration is off by default; to enable it, set the use-quilt
style, and add %Q to your formats or actionformats style:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' use-quilt true
Styles looked up from the Quilt support code include `.quilt-quilt-mode'
in the vcs-string part of the context, where quilt-mode is either addon
or standalone. Example: :vcs_info:git.quilt-addon:de-
fault:repo-root-name.
For `addon' mode to become active vcs_info must have already detected a
real version control system controlling the directory. If that is the
case, a directory that holds quilt's patches needs to be found. That di-
rectory is configurable via the `QUILT_PATCHES' environment variable. If
that variable exists its value is used, otherwise the value `patches' is
assumed. The value from $QUILT_PATCHES can be overwritten using the
`quilt-patch-dir' style. (Note: you can use vcs_info to keep the value
of $QUILT_PATCHES correct all the time via the post-quilt hook).
When the directory in question is found, quilt is assumed to be active.
To gather more information, vcs_info looks for a directory called `.pc';
Quilt uses that directory to track its current state. If this directory
does not exist we know that quilt has not done anything to the working
directory (read: no patches have been applied yet).
If patches are applied, vcs_info will try to find out which. If you want
to know which patches of a series are not yet applied, you need to acti-
vate the get-unapplied style in the appropriate context.
vcs_info allows for very detailed control over how the gathered informa-
tion is presented (see the Configuration and Hooks in vcs_info sec-
tions), all of which are documented below. Note there are a number of
other patch tracking systems that work on top of a certain version con-
trol system (like stgit for git, or mq for hg); the configuration for
systems like that are generally configured the same way as the quilt
support.
If the quilt support is working in `addon' mode, the produced string is
available as a simple format replacement (%Q to be precise), which can
be used in formats and actionformats; see below for details).
If, on the other hand, the support code is working in `standalone' mode,
vcs_info will pretend as if quilt were an actual version control system.
That means that the version control system identifier (which otherwise
would be something like `svn' or `cvs') will be set to `-quilt-'. This
has implications on the used style context where this identifier is the
second element. vcs_info will have filled in a proper value for the
"repository's" root directory and the string containing the information
about quilt's state will be available as the `misc' replacement (and %Q
for compatibility with `addon' mode).
What is left to discuss is how `standalone' mode is detected. The detec-
tion itself is a series of searches for directories. You can have this
detection enabled all the time in every directory that is not otherwise
under version control. If you know there is only a limited set of trees
where you would like vcs_info to try and look for Quilt in `standalone'
mode to minimise the amount of searching on every call to vcs_info,
there are a number of ways to do that:
Essentially, `standalone' mode detection is controlled by a style called
`quilt-standalone'. It is a string style and its value can have differ-
ent effects. The simplest values are: `always' to run detection every
time vcs_info is run, and `never' to turn the detection off entirely.
If the value of quilt-standalone is something else, it is interpreted
differently. If the value is the name of a scalar variable the value of
that variable is checked and that value is used in the same `al-
ways'/`never' way as described above.
If the value of quilt-standalone is an array, the elements of that array
are used as directory names under which you want the detection to be ac-
tive.
If quilt-standalone is an associative array, the keys are taken as di-
rectory names under which you want the detection to be active, but only
if the corresponding value is the string `true'.
Last, but not least, if the value of quilt-standalone is the name of a
function, the function is called without arguments and the return value
decides whether detection should be active. A `0' return value is true;
a non-zero return value is interpreted as false.
Note, if there is both a function and a variable by the name of
quilt-standalone, the function will take precedence.
Function Descriptions (Public API)
vcs_info [user-context]
The main function, that runs all backends and assembles all data
into ${vcs_info_msg_*_}. This is the function you want to call
from precmd if you want to include up-to-date information in your
prompt (see Variable Description below). If an argument is
given, that string will be used instead of default in the
user-context field of the style context.
vcs_info_hookadd
Statically registers a number of functions to a given hook. The
hook needs to be given as the first argument; what follows is a
list of hook-function names to register to the hook. The `+vi-'
prefix needs to be left out here. See Hooks in vcs_info below for
details.
vcs_info_hookdel
Remove hook-functions from a given hook. The hook needs to be
given as the first non-option argument; what follows is a list of
hook-function names to un-register from the hook. If `-a' is used
as the first argument, all occurrences of the functions are un-
registered. Otherwise only the last occurrence is removed (if a
function was registered to a hook more than once). The `+vi-'
prefix needs to be left out here. See Hooks in vcs_info below
for details.
vcs_info_lastmsg
Outputs the current values of ${vcs_info_msg_*_}. Takes into ac-
count the value of the use-prompt-escapes style in
':vcs_info:formats:command:-all-'. It also only prints max-ex-
ports values.
vcs_info_printsys [user-context]
Prints a list of all supported version control systems. Useful to
find out possible contexts (and which of them are enabled) or
values for the disable style.
vcs_info_setsys
Initializes vcs_info's internal list of available backends. With
this function, you can add support for new VCSs without restart-
ing the shell.
All functions named VCS_INFO_* are for internal use only.
Variable Description
${vcs_info_msg_N_} (Note the trailing underscore)
Where N is an integer, e.g., vcs_info_msg_0_. These variables are
the storage for the informational message the last vcs_info call
has assembled. These are strongly connected to the formats, ac-
tionformats and nvcsformats styles described above. Those styles
are lists. The first member of that list gets expanded into
${vcs_info_msg_0_}, the second into ${vcs_info_msg_1_} and the
Nth into ${vcs_info_msg_N-1_}. (See the max-exports style above.)
All variables named VCS_INFO_* are for internal use only.
Hooks in vcs_info
Hooks are places in vcs_info where you can run your own code. That code
can communicate with the code that called it and through that, change
the system's behaviour.
For configuration, hooks change the style context:
:vcs_info:vcs-string+hook-name:user-context:repo-root-name
To register functions to a hook, you need to list them in the hooks
style in the appropriate context.
Example:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+foo:*' hooks bar baz
This registers functions to the hook `foo' for all backends. In order to
avoid namespace problems, all registered function names are prepended by
a `+vi-', so the actual functions called for the `foo' hook are
`+vi-bar' and `+vi-baz'.
If you would like to register a function to a hook regardless of the
current context, you may use the vcs_info_hookadd function. To remove a
function that was added like that, the vcs_info_hookdel function can be
used.
If something seems weird, you can enable the `debug' boolean style in
the proper context and the hook-calling code will print what it tried to
execute and whether the function in question existed.
When you register more than one function to a hook, all functions are
executed one after another until one function returns non-zero or until
all functions have been called. Context-sensitive hook functions are ex-
ecuted before statically registered ones (the ones added by
vcs_info_hookadd).
You may pass data between functions via an associative array, user_data.
For example:
+vi-git-myfirsthook(){
user_data[myval]=$myval
}
+vi-git-mysecondhook(){
# do something with ${user_data[myval]}
}
There are a number of variables that are special in hook contexts:
ret The return value that the hooks system will return to the caller.
The default is an integer `zero'. If and how a changed ret value
changes the execution of the caller depends on the specific hook.
See the hook documentation below for details.
hook_com
An associated array which is used for bidirectional communication
from the caller to hook functions. The used keys depend on the
specific hook.
context
The active context of the hook. Functions that wish to change
this variable should make it local scope first.
vcs The current VCS after it was detected. The same values as in the
enable/disable style are used. Available in all hooks except
start-up.
Finally, the full list of currently available hooks:
start-up
Called after starting vcs_info but before the VCS in this direc-
tory is determined. It can be used to deactivate vcs_info tem-
porarily if necessary. When ret is set to 1, vcs_info aborts and
does nothing; when set to 2, vcs_info sets up everything as if no
version control were active and exits.
pre-get-data
Same as start-up but after the VCS was detected.
gen-hg-bookmark-string
Called in the Mercurial backend when a bookmark string is gener-
ated; the get-revision and get-bookmarks styles must be true.
This hook gets the names of the Mercurial bookmarks that vcs_info
collected from `hg'.
If a bookmark is active, the key ${hook_com[hg-active-bookmark]}
is set to its name. The key is otherwise unset.
When setting ret to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[hg-book-
mark-string]} will be used in the %m escape in formats and ac-
tionformats and will be available in the global backend_misc ar-
ray as ${backend_misc[bookmarks]}.
gen-applied-string
Called in the git (with stgit or during rebase or merge), and hg
(with mq) backends and in quilt support when the applied-string
is generated; the use-quilt zstyle must be true for quilt (the mq
and stgit backends are active by default).
The arguments to this hook describe applied patches in the oppo-
site order, which means that the first argument is the top-most
patch and so forth.
When the patches' log messages can be extracted, those are embed-
ded within each argument after a space, so each argument is of
the form `patch-name first line of the log message', where
patch-name contains no whitespace. The mq backend passes argu-
ments of the form `patch name', with possible embedded spaces,
but without extracting the patch's log message.
When setting ret to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[ap-
plied-string]} will be available as %p in the patch-format and
nopatch-format styles. This hook is, in concert with
set-patch-format, responsible for %-escaping that value for use
in the prompt. (See the Oddities section.)
The quilt backend passes to this hook the inputs
${hook_com[quilt-patches-dir]} and, if it has been determined,
${hook_com[quilt-pc-dir]}.
gen-unapplied-string
Called in the git (with stgit or during rebase), and hg (with mq)
backend and in quilt support when the unapplied-string is gener-
ated; the get-unapplied style must be true.
This hook gets the names of all unapplied patches which vcs_info
in order, which means that the first argument is the patch
next-in-line to be applied and so forth.
The format of each argument is as for gen-applied-string, above.
When setting ret to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[unap-
plied-string]} will be available as %u in the patch-format and
nopatch-format styles. This hook is, in concert with
set-patch-format, responsible for %-escaping that value for use
in the prompt. (See the Oddities section.)
The quilt backend passes to this hook the inputs
${hook_com[quilt-patches-dir]} and, if it has been determined,
${hook_com[quilt-pc-dir]}.
gen-mqguards-string
Called in the hg backend when guards-string is generated; the
get-mq style must be true (default).
This hook gets the names of any active mq guards.
When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[guards-string]} will be used in the %g escape in the
patch-format and nopatch-format styles.
no-vcs This hooks is called when no version control system was detected.
The `hook_com' parameter is not used.
post-backend
Called as soon as the backend has finished collecting informa-
tion.
The `hook_com' keys available are as for the set-message hook.
post-quilt
Called after the quilt support is done. The following information
is passed as arguments to the hook: 1. the quilt-support mode
(`addon' or `standalone'); 2. the directory that contains the
patch series; 3. the directory that holds quilt's status informa-
tion (the `.pc' directory) or the string "-nopc-" if that direc-
tory wasn't found.
The `hook_com' parameter is not used.
set-branch-format
Called before `branchformat' is set. The only argument to the
hook is the format that is configured at this point.
The `hook_com' keys considered are `branch' and `revision'. They
are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and any
change will be used directly when the actual replacement is done.
If ret is set to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[branch-re-
place]} will be used unchanged as the `%b' replacement in the
variables set by vcs_info.
set-hgrev-format
Called before a `hgrevformat' is set. The only argument to the
hook is the format that is configured at this point.
The `hook_com' keys considered are `hash' and `localrev'. They
are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and any
change will be used directly when the actual replacement is done.
If ret is set to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[rev-replace]}
will be used unchanged as the `%i' replacement in the variables
set by vcs_info.
pre-addon-quilt
This hook is used when vcs_info's quilt functionality is active
in "addon" mode (quilt used on top of a real version control sys-
tem). It is activated right before any quilt specific action is
taken.
Setting the `ret' variable in this hook to a non-zero value
avoids any quilt specific actions from being run at all.
set-patch-format
This hook is used to control some of the possible expansions in
patch-format and nopatch-format styles with patch queue systems
such as quilt, mqueue and the like.
This hook is used in the git, hg and quilt backends.
The hook allows the control of the %p (${hook_com[applied]}) and
%u (${hook_com[unapplied]}) expansion in all backends that use
the hook. With the mercurial backend, the %g
(${hook_com[guards]}) expansion is controllable in addition to
that.
If ret is set to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[patch-re-
place]} will be used unchanged instead of an expanded format from
patch-format or nopatch-format.
This hook is, in concert with the gen-applied-string or gen-unap-
plied-string hooks if they are defined, responsible for %-escap-
ing the final patch-format value for use in the prompt. (See the
Oddities section.)
The quilt backend passes to this hook the inputs
${hook_com[quilt-patches-dir]} and, if it has been determined,
${hook_com[quilt-pc-dir]}.
set-message
Called each time before a `vcs_info_msg_N_' message is set. It
takes two arguments; the first being the `N' in the message vari-
able name, the second is the currently configured formats or ac-
tionformats.
There are a number of `hook_com' keys, that are used here: `ac-
tion', `branch', `base', `base-name', `subdir', `staged', `un-
staged', `revision', `misc', `vcs' and one `miscN' entry for each
backend-specific data field (N starting at zero). They are set to
the values figured out so far by vcs_info and any change will be
used directly when the actual replacement is done.
Since this hook is triggered multiple times (once for each con-
figured formats or actionformats), each of the `hook_com' keys
mentioned above (except for the miscN entries) has an `_orig'
counterpart, so even if you changed a value to your liking you
can still get the original value in the next run. Changing the
`_orig' values is probably not a good idea.
If ret is set to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[message]}
will be used unchanged as the message by vcs_info.
If all of this sounds rather confusing, take a look at the Examples sec-
tion below and also in the Misc/vcs_info-examples file in the Zsh
source. They contain some explanatory code.
Examples
Don't use vcs_info at all (even though it's in your prompt):
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable NONE
Disable the backends for bzr and svk:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr svk
Disable everything but bzr and svk:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable bzr svk
Provide a special formats for git:
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' formats ' GIT, BABY! [%b]'
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' actionformats ' GIT ACTION! [%b|%a]'
All %x expansion in all sorts of formats (formats, actionformats,
branchformat, you name it) are done using the `zformat' builtin from the
`zsh/zutil' module. That means you can do everything with these %x items
what zformat supports. In particular, if you want something that is re-
ally long to have a fixed width, like a hash in a mercurial branchfor-
mat, you can do this: %12.12i. That'll shrink the 40 character hash to
its 12 leading characters. The form is actually `%min.maxx'. More is
possible. See the section `The zsh/zutil Module' in zshmodules(1) for
details.
Use the quicker bzr backend
zstyle ':vcs_info:bzr:*' use-simple true
If you do use use-simple, please report if it does
`the-right-thing[tm]'.
Display the revision number in yellow for bzr and svn:
zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%%F{yellow}:%r'
The doubled percent sign is explained in the Oddities section.
Alternatively, one can use the raw colour codes directly:
zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%{'${fg[yellow]}'%}:%r'
Normally when a variable is interpolated into a format string, the vari-
able needs to be %-escaped. In this example we skipped that because we
assume the value of ${fg[yellow]} doesn't contain any % signs.
Make sure you enclose the color codes in %{...%} if you want to use the
string provided by vcs_info in prompts.
Here is how to print the VCS information as a command (not in a prompt):
vcsi() { vcs_info interactive; vcs_info_lastmsg }
This way, you can even define different formats for output via
vcs_info_lastmsg in the ':vcs_info:*:interactive:*' namespace.
Now as promised, some code that uses hooks: say, you'd like to replace
the string `svn' by `subversion' in vcs_info's %s formats replacement.
First, we will tell vcs_info to call a function when populating the mes-
sage variables with the gathered information:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
Nothing happens. Which is reasonable, since we didn't define the actual
function yet. To see what the hooks subsystem is trying to do, enable
the `debug' style:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug true
That should give you an idea what is going on. Specifically, the func-
tion that we are looking for is `+vi-svn2subversion'. Note, the `+vi-'
prefix. So, everything is in order, just as documented. When you are
done checking out the debugging output, disable it again:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug false
Now, let's define the function:
function +vi-svn2subversion() {
[[ ${hook_com[vcs_orig]} == svn ]] && hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}
Simple enough. And it could have even been simpler, if only we had reg-
istered our function in a less generic context. If we do it only in the
`svn' backend's context, we don't need to test which the active backend
is:
zstyle ':vcs_info:svn+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
function +vi-svn2subversion() {
hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}
And finally a little more elaborate example, that uses a hook to create
a customised bookmark string for the hg backend.
Again, we start off by registering a function:
zstyle ':vcs_info:hg+gen-hg-bookmark-string:*' hooks hgbookmarks
And then we define the `+vi-hgbookmarks' function:
function +vi-hgbookmarks() {
# The default is to connect all bookmark names by
# commas. This mixes things up a little.
# Imagine, there's one type of bookmarks that is
# special to you. Say, because it's *your* work.
# Those bookmarks look always like this: "sh/*"
# (because your initials are sh, for example).
# This makes the bookmarks string use only those
# bookmarks. If there's more than one, it
# concatenates them using commas.
# The bookmarks returned by `hg' are available in
# the function's positional parameters.
local s="${(Mj:,:)@:#sh/*}"
# Now, the communication with the code that calls
# the hook functions is done via the hook_com[]
# hash. The key at which the `gen-hg-bookmark-string'
# hook looks is `hg-bookmark-string'. So:
hook_com[hg-bookmark-string]=$s
# And to signal that we want to use the string we
# just generated, set the special variable `ret' to
# something other than the default zero:
ret=1
return 0
}
Some longer examples and code snippets which might be useful are avail-
able in the examples file located at Misc/vcs_info-examples in the Zsh
source directory.
This concludes our guided tour through zsh's vcs_info.
PROMPT THEMES
Installation
You should make sure all the functions from the Functions/Prompts direc-
tory of the source distribution are available; they all begin with the
string `prompt_' except for the special function `promptinit'. You also
need the `colors' and `add-zsh-hook' functions from Functions/Misc. All
these functions may already be installed on your system; if not, you
will need to find them and copy them. The directory should appear as
one of the elements of the fpath array (this should already be the case
if they were installed), and at least the function promptinit should be
autoloaded; it will autoload the rest. Finally, to initialize the use
of the system you need to call the promptinit function. The following
code in your .zshrc will arrange for this; assume the functions are
stored in the directory ~/myfns:
fpath=(~/myfns $fpath)
autoload -U promptinit
promptinit
Theme Selection
Use the prompt command to select your preferred theme. This command may
be added to your .zshrc following the call to promptinit in order to
start zsh with a theme already selected.
prompt [ -c | -l ]
prompt [ -p | -h ] [ theme ... ]
prompt [ -s ] theme [ arg ... ]
Set or examine the prompt theme. With no options and a theme ar-
gument, the theme with that name is set as the current theme.
The available themes are determined at run time; use the -l op-
tion to see a list. The special theme `random' selects at random
one of the available themes and sets your prompt to that.
In some cases the theme may be modified by one or more arguments,
which should be given after the theme name. See the help for
each theme for descriptions of these arguments.
Options are:
-c Show the currently selected theme and its parameters, if
any.
-l List all available prompt themes.
-p Preview the theme named by theme, or all themes if no
theme is given.
-h Show help for the theme named by theme, or for the prompt
function if no theme is given.
-s Set theme as the current theme and save state.
prompt_theme_setup
Each available theme has a setup function which is called by the
prompt function to install that theme. This function may define
other functions as necessary to maintain the prompt, including
functions used to preview the prompt or provide help for its use.
You should not normally call a theme's setup function directly.
Utility Themes
prompt off
The theme `off' sets all the prompt variables to minimal values
with no special effects.
prompt default
The theme `default' sets all prompt variables to the same state
as if an interactive zsh was started with no initialization
files.
prompt restore
The special theme `restore' erases all theme settings and sets
prompt variables to their state before the first time the
`prompt' function was run, provided each theme has properly de-
fined its cleanup (see below).
Note that you can undo `prompt off' and `prompt default' with
`prompt restore', but a second restore does not undo the first.
Writing Themes
The first step for adding your own theme is to choose a name for it, and
create a file `prompt_name_setup' in a directory in your fpath, such as
~/myfns in the example above. The file should at minimum contain as-
signments for the prompt variables that your theme wishes to modify. By
convention, themes use PS1, PS2, RPS1, etc., rather than the longer
PROMPT and RPROMPT.
The file is autoloaded as a function in the current shell context, so it
may contain any necessary commands to customize your theme, including
defining additional functions. To make some complex tasks easier, your
setup function may also do any of the following:
Assign prompt_opts
The array prompt_opts may be assigned any of "bang", "cr", "per-
cent", "sp", and/or "subst" as values. The corresponding setopts
(promptbang, etc.) are turned on, all other prompt-related op-
tions are turned off. The prompt_opts array preserves setopts
even beyond the scope of localoptions, should your function need
that.
Modify hooks
Use of add-zsh-hook and add-zle-hook-widget is recommended (see
the Manipulating Hook Functions section above). All hooks that
follow the naming pattern prompt_theme_hook are automatically re-
moved when the prompt theme changes or is disabled.
Declare cleanup
If your function makes any other changes that should be undone
when the theme is disabled, your setup function may call
prompt_cleanup command
where command should be suitably quoted. If your theme is ever
disabled or replaced by another, command is executed with eval.
You may declare more than one such cleanup hook.
Define preview
Define or autoload a function prompt_name_preview to display a
simulated version of your prompt. A simple default previewer is
defined by promptinit for themes that do not define their own.
This preview function is called by `prompt -p'.
Provide help
Define or autoload a function prompt_name_help to display docu-
mentation or help text for your theme. This help function is
called by `prompt -h'.
ZLE FUNCTIONS
Widgets
These functions all implement user-defined ZLE widgets (see zshzle(1))
which can be bound to keystrokes in interactive shells. To use them,
your .zshrc should contain lines of the form
autoload function
zle -N function
followed by an appropriate bindkey command to associate the function
with a key sequence. Suggested bindings are described below.
bash-style word functions
If you are looking for functions to implement moving over and
editing words in the manner of bash, where only alphanumeric
characters are considered word characters, you can use the func-
tions described in the next section. The following is suffi-
cient:
autoload -U select-word-style
select-word-style bash
forward-word-match, backward-word-match
kill-word-match, backward-kill-word-match
transpose-words-match, capitalize-word-match
up-case-word-match, down-case-word-match
delete-whole-word-match, select-word-match
select-word-style, match-word-context, match-words-by-style
The first eight `-match' functions are drop-in replacements for
the builtin widgets without the suffix. By default they behave
in a similar way. However, by the use of styles and the function
select-word-style, the way words are matched can be altered. se-
lect-word-match is intended to be used as a text object in vi
mode but with custom word styles. For comparison, the widgets de-
scribed in zshzle(1) under Text Objects use fixed definitions of
words, compatible with the vim editor.
The simplest way of configuring the functions is to use se-
lect-word-style, which can either be called as a normal function
with the appropriate argument, or invoked as a user-defined wid-
get that will prompt for the first character of the word style to
be used. The first time it is invoked, the first eight -match
functions will automatically replace the builtin versions, so
they do not need to be loaded explicitly.
The word styles available are as follows. Only the first charac-
ter is examined.
bash Word characters are alphanumeric characters only.
normal As in normal shell operation: word characters are al-
phanumeric characters plus any characters present in the
string given by the parameter $WORDCHARS.
shell Words are complete shell command arguments, possibly in-
cluding complete quoted strings, or any tokens special to
the shell.
whitespace
Words are any set of characters delimited by whitespace.
default
Restore the default settings; this is usually the same as
`normal'.
All but `default' can be input as an upper case character, which
has the same effect but with subword matching turned on. In this
case, words with upper case characters are treated specially:
each separate run of upper case characters, or an upper case
character followed by any number of other characters, is consid-
ered a word. The style subword-range can supply an alternative
character range to the default `[:upper:]'; the value of the
style is treated as the contents of a `[...]' pattern (note that
the outer brackets should not be supplied, only those surrounding
named ranges).
More control can be obtained using the zstyle command, as de-
scribed in zshmodules(1). Each style is looked up in the context
:zle:widget where widget is the name of the user-defined widget,
not the name of the function implementing it, so in the case of
the definitions supplied by select-word-style the appropriate
contexts are :zle:forward-word, and so on. The function se-
lect-word-style itself always defines styles for the context
`:zle:*' which can be overridden by more specific (longer) pat-
terns as well as explicit contexts.
The style word-style specifies the rules to use. This may have
the following values.
normal Use the standard shell rules, i.e. alphanumerics and
$WORDCHARS, unless overridden by the styles word-chars or
word-class.
specified
Similar to normal, but only the specified characters, and
not also alphanumerics, are considered word characters.
unspecified
The negation of specified. The given characters are those
which will not be considered part of a word.
shell Words are obtained by using the syntactic rules for gener-
ating shell command arguments. In addition, special to-
kens which are never command arguments such as `()' are
also treated as words.
whitespace
Words are whitespace-delimited strings of characters.
The first three of those rules usually use $WORDCHARS, but the
value in the parameter can be overridden by the style word-chars,
which works in exactly the same way as $WORDCHARS. In addition,
the style word-class uses character class syntax to group charac-
ters and takes precedence over word-chars if both are set. The
word-class style does not include the surrounding brackets of the
character class; for example, `-:[:alnum:]' is a valid word-class
to include all alphanumerics plus the characters `-' and `:'. Be
careful including `]', `^' and `-' as these are special inside
character classes.
word-style may also have `-subword' appended to its value to turn
on subword matching, as described above.
The style skip-chars is mostly useful for transpose-words and
similar functions. If set, it gives a count of characters start-
ing at the cursor position which will not be considered part of
the word and are treated as space, regardless of what they actu-
ally are. For example, if
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words' skip-chars 1
has been set, and transpose-words-match is called with the cursor
on the X of fooXbar, where X can be any character, then the re-
sulting expression is barXfoo.
Finer grained control can be obtained by setting the style
word-context to an array of pairs of entries. Each pair of en-
tries consists of a pattern and a subcontext. The shell argument
the cursor is on is matched against each pattern in turn until
one matches; if it does, the context is extended by a colon and
the corresponding subcontext. Note that the test is made against
the original word on the line, with no stripping of quotes. Spe-
cial handling is done between words: the current context is exam-
ined and if it contains the string between the word is set to a
single space; else if it is contains the string back, the word
before the cursor is considered, else the word after cursor is
considered. Some examples are given below.
The style skip-whitespace-first is only used with the for-
ward-word widget. If it is set to true, then forward-word skips
any non-word-characters, followed by any non-word-characters:
this is similar to the behaviour of other word-orientated wid-
gets, and also that used by other editors, however it differs
from the standard zsh behaviour. When using select-word-style
the widget is set in the context :zle:* to true if the word style
is bash and false otherwise. It may be overridden by setting it
in the more specific context :zle:forward-word*.
It is possible to create widgets with specific behaviour by
defining a new widget implemented by the appropriate generic
function, then setting a style for the context of the specific
widget. For example, the following defines a widget back-
ward-kill-space-word using backward-kill-word-match, the generic
widget implementing backward-kill-word behaviour, and ensures
that the new widget always implements space-delimited behaviour.
zle -N backward-kill-space-word backward-kill-word-match
zstyle :zle:backward-kill-space-word word-style space
The widget backward-kill-space-word can now be bound to a key.
Here are some further examples of use of the styles, actually
taken from the simplified interface in select-word-style:
zstyle ':zle:*' word-style standard
zstyle ':zle:*' word-chars ''
Implements bash-style word handling for all widgets, i.e. only
alphanumerics are word characters; equivalent to setting the pa-
rameter WORDCHARS empty for the given context.
style ':zle:*kill*' word-style space
Uses space-delimited words for widgets with the word `kill' in
the name. Neither of the styles word-chars nor word-class is
used in this case.
Here are some examples of use of the word-context style to extend
the context.
zstyle ':zle:*' word-context \
"*/*" filename "[[:space:]]" whitespace
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:whitespace' word-style shell
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:filename' word-style normal
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:filename' word-chars ''
This provides two different ways of using transpose-words depend-
ing on whether the cursor is on whitespace between words or on a
filename, here any word containing a /. On whitespace, complete
arguments as defined by standard shell rules will be transposed.
In a filename, only alphanumerics will be transposed. Elsewhere,
words will be transposed using the default style for :zle:trans-
pose-words.
The word matching and all the handling of zstyle settings is ac-
tually implemented by the function match-words-by-style. This
can be used to create new user-defined widgets. The calling
function should set the local parameter curcontext to :zle:wid-
get, create the local parameter matched_words and call
match-words-by-style with no arguments. On return, matched_words
will be set to an array with the elements: (1) the start of the
line (2) the word before the cursor (3) any non-word characters
between that word and the cursor (4) any non-word character at
the cursor position plus any remaining non-word characters before
the next word, including all characters specified by the
skip-chars style, (5) the word at or following the cursor (6) any
non-word characters following that word (7) the remainder of the
line. Any of the elements may be an empty string; the calling
function should test for this to decide whether it can perform
its function.
If the variable matched_words is defined by the caller to
match-words-by-style as an associative array (local -A
matched_words), then the seven values given above should be re-
trieved from it as elements named start, word-before-cursor,
ws-before-cursor, ws-after-cursor, word-after-cursor, ws-af-
ter-word, and end. In addition the element is-word-start is 1 if
the cursor is on the start of a word or subword, or on white
space before it (the cases can be distinguished by testing the
ws-after-cursor element) and 0 otherwise. This form is recom-
mended for future compatibility.
It is possible to pass options with arguments to
match-words-by-style to override the use of styles. The options
are:
-w word-style
-s skip-chars
-c word-class
-C word-chars
-r subword-range
For example, match-words-by-style -w shell -c 0 may be used to
extract the command argument around the cursor.
The word-context style is implemented by the function
match-word-context. This should not usually need to be called
directly.
bracketed-paste-magic
The bracketed-paste widget (see the subsection `Miscellaneous' in
zshzle(1)) inserts pasted text literally into the editor buffer
rather than interpret it as keystrokes. This disables some com-
mon usages where the self-insert widget is replaced in order to
accomplish some extra processing. An example is the contributed
url-quote-magic widget described below.
The bracketed-paste-magic widget is meant to replace brack-
eted-paste with a wrapper that re-enables these self-insert ac-
tions, and other actions as selected by zstyles. Therefore this
widget is installed with
autoload -Uz bracketed-paste-magic
zle -N bracketed-paste bracketed-paste-magic
Other than enabling some widget processing, bracketed-paste-magic
attempts to replicate bracketed-paste as faithfully as possible.
The following zstyles may be set to control processing of pasted
text. All are looked up in the context `:bracketed-paste-magic'.
active-widgets
A list of patterns matching widget names that should be
activated during the paste. All other key sequences are
processed as self-insert-unmeta. The default is `self-*'
so any user-defined widgets named with that prefix are ac-
tive along with the builtin self-insert.
If this style is not set (explicitly deleted) or set to an
empty value, no widgets are active and the pasted text is
inserted literally. If the value includes `unde-
fined-key', any unknown sequences are discarded from the
pasted text.
inactive-keys
The inverse of active-widgets, a list of key sequences
that always use self-insert-unmeta even when bound to an
active widget. Note that this is a list of literal key
sequences, not patterns.
paste-init
A list of function names, called in widget context (but
not as widgets). The functions are called in order until
one of them returns a non-zero status. The parameter
`PASTED' contains the initial state of the pasted text.
All other ZLE parameters such as `BUFFER' have their nor-
mal values and side-effects, and full history is avail-
able, so for example paste-init functions may move words
from BUFFER into PASTED to make those words visible to the
active-widgets.
A non-zero return from a paste-init function does not pre-
vent the paste itself from proceeding.
Loading bracketed-paste-magic defines backward-ex-
tend-paste, a helper function for use in paste-init.
zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic paste-init \
backward-extend-paste
When a paste would insert into the middle of a word or ap-
pend text to a word already on the line, backward-ex-
tend-paste moves the prefix from LBUFFER into PASTED so
that the active-widgets see the full word so far. This
may be useful with url-quote-magic.
paste-finish
Another list of function names called in order until one
returns non-zero. These functions are called after the
pasted text has been processed by the active-widgets, but
before it is inserted into `BUFFER'. ZLE parameters have
their normal values and side-effects.
A non-zero return from a paste-finish function does not
prevent the paste itself from proceeding.
Loading bracketed-paste-magic also defines quote-paste, a
helper function for use in paste-finish.
zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic paste-finish \
quote-paste
zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic:finish quote-style \
qqq
When the pasted text is inserted into BUFFER, it is quoted
per the quote-style value. To forcibly turn off the
built-in numeric prefix quoting of bracketed-paste, use:
zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic:finish quote-style \
none
Important: During active-widgets processing of the paste (after
paste-init and before paste-finish), BUFFER starts empty and his-
tory is restricted, so cursor motions, etc., may not pass outside
of the pasted content. Text assigned to BUFFER by the active
widgets is copied back into PASTED before paste-finish.
copy-earlier-word
This widget works like a combination of insert-last-word and
copy-prev-shell-word. Repeated invocations of the widget re-
trieve earlier words on the relevant history line. With a nu-
meric argument N, insert the Nth word from the history line; N
may be negative to count from the end of the line.
If insert-last-word has been used to retrieve the last word on a
previous history line, repeated invocations will replace that
word with earlier words from the same line.
Otherwise, the widget applies to words on the line currently be-
ing edited. The widget style can be set to the name of another
widget that should be called to retrieve words. This widget must
accept the same three arguments as insert-last-word.
cycle-completion-positions
After inserting an unambiguous string into the command line, the
new function based completion system may know about multiple
places in this string where characters are missing or differ from
at least one of the possible matches. It will then place the
cursor on the position it considers to be the most interesting
one, i.e. the one where one can disambiguate between as many
matches as possible with as little typing as possible.
This widget allows the cursor to be easily moved to the other in-
teresting spots. It can be invoked repeatedly to cycle between
all positions reported by the completion system.
delete-whole-word-match
This is another function which works like the -match functions
described immediately above, i.e. using styles to decide the word
boundaries. However, it is not a replacement for any existing
function.
The basic behaviour is to delete the word around the cursor.
There is no numeric argument handling; only the single word
around the cursor is considered. If the widget contains the
string kill, the removed text will be placed in the cutbuffer for
future yanking. This can be obtained by defining
kill-whole-word-match as follows:
zle -N kill-whole-word-match delete-whole-word-match
and then binding the widget kill-whole-word-match.
up-line-or-beginning-search, down-line-or-beginning-search
These widgets are similar to the builtin functions
up-line-or-search and down-line-or-search: if in a multiline
buffer they move up or down within the buffer, otherwise they
search for a history line matching the start of the current line.
In this case, however, they search for a line which matches the
current line up to the current cursor position, in the manner of
history-beginning-search-backward and -forward, rather than the
first word on the line.
edit-command-line
Edit the command line using your visual editor, as in ksh.
bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line
The editor to be used can also be specified using the editor
style in the context of the widget. It is specified as an array
of command and arguments:
zstyle :zle:edit-command-line editor gvim -f
expand-absolute-path
Expand the file name under the cursor to an absolute path, re-
solving symbolic links. Where possible, the initial path segment
is turned into a named directory or reference to a user's home
directory.
history-search-end
This function implements the widgets history-begin-
ning-search-backward-end and history-beginning-search-for-
ward-end. These commands work by first calling the corresponding
builtin widget (see `History Control' in zshzle(1)) and then mov-
ing the cursor to the end of the line. The original cursor posi-
tion is remembered and restored before calling the builtin widget
a second time, so that the same search is repeated to look far-
ther through the history.
Although you autoload only one function, the commands to use it
are slightly different because it implements two widgets.
zle -N history-beginning-search-backward-end \
history-search-end
zle -N history-beginning-search-forward-end \
history-search-end
bindkey '\e^P' history-beginning-search-backward-end
bindkey '\e^N' history-beginning-search-forward-end
history-beginning-search-menu
This function implements yet another form of history searching.
The text before the cursor is used to select lines from the his-
tory, as for history-beginning-search-backward except that all
matches are shown in a numbered menu. Typing the appropriate
digits inserts the full history line. Note that leading zeroes
must be typed (they are only shown when necessary for removing
ambiguity). The entire history is searched; there is no distinc-
tion between forwards and backwards.
With a numeric argument, the search is not anchored to the start
of the line; the string typed by the use may appear anywhere in
the line in the history.
If the widget name contains `-end' the cursor is moved to the end
of the line inserted. If the widget name contains `-space' any
space in the text typed is treated as a wildcard and can match
anything (hence a leading space is equivalent to giving a numeric
argument). Both forms can be combined, for example:
zle -N history-beginning-search-menu-space-end \
history-beginning-search-menu
history-pattern-search
The function history-pattern-search implements widgets which
prompt for a pattern with which to search the history backwards
or forwards. The pattern is in the usual zsh format, however the
first character may be ^ to anchor the search to the start of the
line, and the last character may be $ to anchor the search to the
end of the line. If the search was not anchored to the end of
the line the cursor is positioned just after the pattern found.
The commands to create bindable widgets are similar to those in
the example immediately above:
autoload -U history-pattern-search
zle -N history-pattern-search-backward history-pattern-search
zle -N history-pattern-search-forward history-pattern-search
incarg Typing the keystrokes for this widget with the cursor placed on
or to the left of an integer causes that integer to be incre-
mented by one. With a numeric argument, the number is incre-
mented by the amount of the argument (decremented if the numeric
argument is negative). The shell parameter incarg may be set to
change the default increment to something other than one.
bindkey '^X+' incarg
incremental-complete-word
This allows incremental completion of a word. After starting
this command, a list of completion choices can be shown after
every character you type, which you can delete with ^H or DEL.
Pressing return accepts the completion so far and returns you to
normal editing (that is, the command line is not immediately exe-
cuted). You can hit TAB to do normal completion, ^G to abort
back to the state when you started, and ^D to list the matches.
This works only with the new function based completion system.
bindkey '^Xi' incremental-complete-word
insert-composed-char
This function allows you to compose characters that don't appear
on the keyboard to be inserted into the command line. The com-
mand is followed by two keys corresponding to ASCII characters
(there is no prompt). For accented characters, the two keys are
a base character followed by a code for the accent, while for
other special characters the two characters together form a
mnemonic for the character to be inserted. The two-character
codes are a subset of those given by RFC 1345 (see for example
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1345.html).
The function may optionally be followed by up to two characters
which replace one or both of the characters read from the key-
board; if both characters are supplied, no input is read. For
example, insert-composed-char a: can be used within a widget to
insert an a with umlaut into the command line. This has the ad-
vantages over use of a literal character that it is more
portable.
For best results zsh should have been built with support for
multibyte characters (configured with --enable-multibyte); how-
ever, the function works for the limited range of characters
available in single-byte character sets such as ISO-8859-1.
The character is converted into the local representation and in-
serted into the command line at the cursor position. (The con-
version is done within the shell, using whatever facilities the C
library provides.) With a numeric argument, the character and
its code are previewed in the status line
The function may be run outside zle in which case it prints the
character (together with a newline) to standard output. Input is
still read from keystrokes.
See insert-unicode-char for an alternative way of inserting Uni-
code characters using their hexadecimal character number.
The set of accented characters is reasonably complete up to Uni-
code character U+0180, the set of special characters less so.
However, it is very sporadic from that point. Adding new charac-
ters is easy, however; see the function define-composed-chars.
Please send any additions to zsh-workers@zsh.org.
The codes for the second character when used to accent the first
are as follows. Note that not every character can take every ac-
cent.
! Grave.
' Acute.
> Circumflex.
? Tilde. (This is not ~ as RFC 1345 does not assume that
character is present on the keyboard.)
- Macron. (A horizontal bar over the base character.)
( Breve. (A shallow dish shape over the base character.)
. Dot above the base character, or in the case of i no dot,
or in the case of L and l a centered dot.
: Diaeresis (Umlaut).
c Cedilla.
_ Underline, however there are currently no underlined char-
acters.
/ Stroke through the base character.
" Double acute (only supported on a few letters).
; Ogonek. (A little forward facing hook at the bottom right
of the character.)
< Caron. (A little v over the letter.)
0 Circle over the base character.
2 Hook over the base character.
9 Horn over the base character.
The most common characters from the Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek and
Hebrew alphabets are available; consult RFC 1345 for the appro-
priate sequences. In addition, a set of two letter codes not in
RFC 1345 are available for the double-width characters corre-
sponding to ASCII characters from ! to ~ (0x21 to 0x7e) by pre-
ceding the character with ^, for example ^A for a double-width A.
The following other two-character sequences are understood.
ASCII characters
These are already present on most keyboards:
<( Left square bracket
// Backslash (solidus)
)> Right square bracket
(! Left brace (curly bracket)
!! Vertical bar (pipe symbol)
!) Right brace (curly bracket)
'? Tilde
Special letters
Characters found in various variants of the Latin alpha-
bet:
ss Eszett (scharfes S)
D-, d- Eth
TH, th Thorn
kk Kra
'n 'n
NG, ng Ng
OI, oi Oi
yr yr
ED ezh
Currency symbols
Ct Cent
Pd Pound sterling (also lira and others)
Cu Currency
Ye Yen
Eu Euro (N.B. not in RFC 1345)
Punctuation characters
References to "right" quotes indicate the shape (like a 9
rather than 6) rather than their grammatical use. (For
example, a "right" low double quote is used to open quota-
tions in German.)
!I Inverted exclamation mark
BB Broken vertical bar
SE Section
Co Copyright
-a Spanish feminine ordinal indicator
<< Left guillemet
-- Soft hyphen
Rg Registered trade mark
PI Pilcrow (paragraph)
-o Spanish masculine ordinal indicator
>> Right guillemet
?I Inverted question mark
-1 Hyphen
-N En dash
-M Em dash
-3 Horizontal bar
:3 Vertical ellipsis
.3 Horizontal midline ellipsis
!2 Double vertical line
=2 Double low line
'6 Left single quote
'9 Right single quote
.9 "Right" low quote
9' Reversed "right" quote
"6 Left double quote
"9 Right double quote
:9 "Right" low double quote
9" Reversed "right" double quote
/- Dagger
/= Double dagger
Mathematical symbols
DG Degree
-2, +-, -+
- sign, +/- sign, -/+ sign
2S Superscript 2
3S Superscript 3
1S Superscript 1
My Micro
.M Middle dot
14 Quarter
12 Half
34 Three quarters
*X Multiplication
-: Division
%0 Per mille
FA, TE, /0
For all, there exists, empty set
dP, DE, NB
Partial derivative, delta (increment), del (nabla)
(-, -) Element of, contains
*P, +Z Product, sum
*-, Ob, Sb
Asterisk, ring, bullet
RT, 0(, 00
Root sign, proportional to, infinity
Other symbols
cS, cH, cD, cC
Card suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs
Md, M8, M2, Mb, Mx, MX
Musical notation: crotchet (quarter note), quaver (eighth
note), semiquavers (sixteenth notes), flag sign, natural
sign, sharp sign
Fm, Ml Female, male
Accents on their own
'> Circumflex (same as caret, ^)
'! Grave (same as backtick, `)
', Cedilla
': Diaeresis (Umlaut)
'm Macron
'' Acute
insert-files
This function allows you type a file pattern, and see the results
of the expansion at each step. When you hit return, all expan-
sions are inserted into the command line.
bindkey '^Xf' insert-files
insert-unicode-char
When first executed, the user inputs a set of hexadecimal digits.
This is terminated with another call to insert-unicode-char. The
digits are then turned into the corresponding Unicode character.
For example, if the widget is bound to ^XU, the character se-
quence `^XU 4 c ^XU' inserts L (Unicode U+004c).
See insert-composed-char for a way of inserting characters using
a two-character mnemonic.
narrow-to-region [ -p pre ] [ -P post ]
[ -S statepm | -R statepm | [ -l lbufvar ] [ -r rbufvar
] ]
[ -n ] [ start end ]
narrow-to-region-invisible
Narrow the editable portion of the buffer to the region between
the cursor and the mark, which may be in either order. The re-
gion may not be empty.
narrow-to-region may be used as a widget or called as a function
from a user-defined widget; by default, the text outside the ed-
itable area remains visible. A recursive-edit is performed and
the original widening status is then restored. Various options
and arguments are available when it is called as a function.
The options -p pretext and -P posttext may be used to replace the
text before and after the display for the duration of the func-
tion; either or both may be an empty string.
If the option -n is also given, pretext or posttext will only be
inserted if there is text before or after the region respectively
which will be made invisible.
Two numeric arguments may be given which will be used instead of
the cursor and mark positions.
The option -S statepm is used to narrow according to the other
options while saving the original state in the parameter with
name statepm, while the option -R statepm is used to restore the
state from the parameter; note in both cases the name of the pa-
rameter is required. In the second case, other options and argu-
ments are irrelevant. When this method is used, no recur-
sive-edit is performed; the calling widget should call this func-
tion with the option -S, perform its own editing on the command
line or pass control to the user via `zle recursive-edit', then
call this function with the option -R. The argument statepm must
be a suitable name for an ordinary parameter, except that parame-
ters beginning with the prefix _ntr_ are reserved for use within
narrow-to-region. Typically the parameter will be local to the
calling function.
The options -l lbufvar and -r rbufvar may be used to specify pa-
rameters where the widget will store the resulting text from the
operation. The parameter lbufvar will contain LBUFFER and rbuf-
var will contain RBUFFER. Neither of these two options may be
used with -S or -R.
narrow-to-region-invisible is a simple widget which calls nar-
row-to-region with arguments which replace any text outside the
region with `...'. It does not take any arguments.
The display is restored (and the widget returns) upon any zle
command which would usually cause the line to be accepted or
aborted. Hence an additional such command is required to accept
or abort the current line.
The return status of both widgets is zero if the line was ac-
cepted, else non-zero.
Here is a trivial example of a widget using this feature.
local state
narrow-to-region -p $'Editing restricted region\n' \
-P '' -S state
zle recursive-edit
narrow-to-region -R state
predict-on
This set of functions implements predictive typing using history
search. After predict-on, typing characters causes the editor to
look backward in the history for the first line beginning with
what you have typed so far. After predict-off, editing returns
to normal for the line found. In fact, you often don't even need
to use predict-off, because if the line doesn't match something
in the history, adding a key performs standard completion, and
then inserts itself if no completions were found. However, edit-
ing in the middle of a line is liable to confuse prediction; see
the toggle style below.
With the function based completion system (which is needed for
this), you should be able to type TAB at almost any point to ad-
vance the cursor to the next ``interesting'' character position
(usually the end of the current word, but sometimes somewhere in
the middle of the word). And of course as soon as the entire
line is what you want, you can accept with return, without need-
ing to move the cursor to the end first.
The first time predict-on is used, it creates several additional
widget functions:
delete-backward-and-predict
Replaces the backward-delete-char widget. You do not need
to bind this yourself.
insert-and-predict
Implements predictive typing by replacing the self-insert
widget. You do not need to bind this yourself.
predict-off
Turns off predictive typing.
Although you autoload only the predict-on function, it is neces-
sary to create a keybinding for predict-off as well.
zle -N predict-on
zle -N predict-off
bindkey '^X^Z' predict-on
bindkey '^Z' predict-off
read-from-minibuffer
This is most useful when called as a function from inside a wid-
get, but will work correctly as a widget in its own right. It
prompts for a value below the current command line; a value may
be input using all of the standard zle operations (and not merely
the restricted set available when executing, for example, exe-
cute-named-cmd). The value is then returned to the calling func-
tion in the parameter $REPLY and the editing buffer restored to
its previous state. If the read was aborted by a keyboard break
(typically ^G), the function returns status 1 and $REPLY is not
set.
If one argument is supplied to the function it is taken as a
prompt, otherwise `? ' is used. If two arguments are supplied,
they are the prompt and the initial value of $LBUFFER, and if a
third argument is given it is the initial value of $RBUFFER.
This provides a default value and starting cursor placement.
Upon return the entire buffer is the value of $REPLY.
One option is available: `-k num' specifies that num characters
are to be read instead of a whole line. The line editor is not
invoked recursively in this case, so depending on the terminal
settings the input may not be visible, and only the input keys
are placed in $REPLY, not the entire buffer. Note that unlike
the read builtin num must be given; there is no default.
The name is a slight misnomer, as in fact the shell's own
minibuffer is not used. Hence it is still possible to call exe-
cuted-named-cmd and similar functions while reading a value.
replace-argument, replace-argument-edit
The function replace-argument can be used to replace a command
line argument in the current command line or, if the current com-
mand line is empty, in the last command line executed (the new
command line is not executed). Arguments are as delimited by
standard shell syntax,
If a numeric argument is given, that specifies the argument to be
replaced. 0 means the command name, as in history expansion. A
negative numeric argument counts backward from the last word.
If no numeric argument is given, the current argument is re-
placed; this is the last argument if the previous history line is
being used.
The function prompts for a replacement argument.
If the widget contains the string edit, for example is defined as
zle -N replace-argument-edit replace-argument
then the function presents the current value of the argument for
editing, otherwise the editing buffer for the replacement is ini-
tially empty.
replace-string, replace-pattern
replace-string-again, replace-pattern-again
The function replace-string implements three widgets. If defined
under the same name as the function, it prompts for two strings;
the first (source) string will be replaced by the second every-
where it occurs in the line editing buffer.
If the widget name contains the word `pattern', for example by
defining the widget using the command `zle -N replace-pattern re-
place-string', then the matching is performed using zsh patterns.
All zsh extended globbing patterns can be used in the source
string; note that unlike filename generation the pattern does not
need to match an entire word, nor do glob qualifiers have any ef-
fect. In addition, the replacement string can contain parameter
or command substitutions. Furthermore, a `&' in the replacement
string will be replaced with the matched source string, and a
backquoted digit `\N' will be replaced by the Nth parenthesised
expression matched. The form `\{N}' may be used to protect the
digit from following digits.
If the widget instead contains the word `regex' (or `regexp'),
then the matching is performed using regular expressions, re-
specting the setting of the option RE_MATCH_PCRE (see the de-
scription of the function regexp-replace below). The special re-
placement facilities described above for pattern matching are
available.
By default the previous source or replacement string will not be
offered for editing. However, this feature can be activated by
setting the style edit-previous in the context :zle:widget (for
example, :zle:replace-string) to true. In addition, a positive
numeric argument forces the previous values to be offered, a neg-
ative or zero argument forces them not to be.
The function replace-string-again can be used to repeat the pre-
vious replacement; no prompting is done. As with replace-string,
if the name of the widget contains the word `pattern' or `regex',
pattern or regular expression matching is performed, else a lit-
eral string replacement. Note that the previous source and re-
placement text are the same whether pattern, regular expression
or string matching is used.
In addition, replace-string shows the previous replacement above
the prompt, so long as there was one during the current session;
if the source string is empty, that replacement will be repeated
without the widget prompting for a replacement string.
For example, starting from the line:
print This line contains fan and fond
and invoking replace-pattern with the source string `f(?)n' and
the replacement string `c\1r' produces the not very useful line:
print This line contains car and cord
The range of the replacement string can be limited by using the
narrow-to-region-invisible widget. One limitation of the current
version is that undo will cycle through changes to the replace-
ment and source strings before undoing the replacement itself.
send-invisible
This is similar to read-from-minibuffer in that it may be called
as a function from a widget or as a widget of its own, and inter-
actively reads input from the keyboard. However, the input being
typed is concealed and a string of asterisks (`*') is shown in-
stead. The value is saved in the parameter $INVISIBLE to which a
reference is inserted into the editing buffer at the restored
cursor position. If the read was aborted by a keyboard break
(typically ^G) or another escape from editing such as push-line,
$INVISIBLE is set to empty and the original buffer is restored
unchanged.
If one argument is supplied to the function it is taken as a
prompt, otherwise `Non-echoed text: ' is used (as in emacs). If
a second and third argument are supplied they are used to begin
and end the reference to $INVISIBLE that is inserted into the
buffer. The default is to open with ${, then INVISIBLE, and
close with }, but many other effects are possible.
smart-insert-last-word
This function may replace the insert-last-word widget, like so:
zle -N insert-last-word smart-insert-last-word
With a numeric argument, or when passed command line arguments in
a call from another widget, it behaves like insert-last-word, ex-
cept that words in comments are ignored when INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS
is set.
Otherwise, the rightmost ``interesting'' word from the previous
command is found and inserted. The default definition of ``in-
teresting'' is that the word contains at least one alphabetic
character, slash, or backslash. This definition may be overrid-
den by use of the match style. The context used to look up the
style is the widget name, so usually the context is :in-
sert-last-word. However, you can bind this function to different
widgets to use different patterns:
zle -N insert-last-assignment smart-insert-last-word
zstyle :insert-last-assignment match '[[:alpha:]][][[:alnum:]]#=*'
bindkey '\e=' insert-last-assignment
If no interesting word is found and the auto-previous style is
set to a true value, the search continues upward through the his-
tory. When auto-previous is unset or false (the default), the
widget must be invoked repeatedly in order to search earlier his-
tory lines.
transpose-lines
Only useful with a multi-line editing buffer; the lines here are
lines within the current on-screen buffer, not history lines.
The effect is similar to the function of the same name in Emacs.
Transpose the current line with the previous line and move the
cursor to the start of the next line. Repeating this (which can
be done by providing a positive numeric argument) has the effect
of moving the line above the cursor down by a number of lines.
With a negative numeric argument, requires two lines above the
cursor. These two lines are transposed and the cursor moved to
the start of the previous line. Using a numeric argument less
than -1 has the effect of moving the line above the cursor up by
minus that number of lines.
url-quote-magic
This widget replaces the built-in self-insert to make it easier
to type URLs as command line arguments. As you type, the input
character is analyzed and, if it may need quoting, the current
word is checked for a URI scheme. If one is found and the cur-
rent word is not already in quotes, a backslash is inserted be-
fore the input character.
Styles to control quoting behavior:
url-metas
This style is looked up in the context
`:url-quote-magic:scheme' (where scheme is that of the
current URL, e.g. "ftp"). The value is a string listing
the characters to be treated as globbing metacharacters
when appearing in a URL using that scheme. The default is
to quote all zsh extended globbing characters, excluding
'<' and '>' but including braces (as in brace expansion).
See also url-seps.
url-seps
Like url-metas, but lists characters that should be con-
sidered command separators, redirections, history refer-
ences, etc. The default is to quote the standard set of
shell separators, excluding those that overlap with the
extended globbing characters, but including '<' and '>'
and the first character of $histchars.
url-globbers
This style is looked up in the context `:url-quote-magic'.
The values form a list of command names that are expected
to do their own globbing on the URL string. This implies
that they are aliased to use the `noglob' modifier. When
the first word on the line matches one of the values and
the URL refers to a local file (see url-local-schema),
only the url-seps characters are quoted; the url-metas are
left alone, allowing them to affect command-line parsing,
completion, etc. The default values are a literal
`noglob' plus (when the zsh/parameter module is available)
any commands aliased to the helper function `urlglobber'
or its alias `globurl'.
url-local-schema
This style is always looked up in the context `:urlglob-
ber', even though it is used by both url-quote-magic and
urlglobber. The values form a list of URI schema that
should be treated as referring to local files by their
real local path names, as opposed to files which are spec-
ified relative to a web-server-defined document root. The
defaults are "ftp" and "file".
url-other-schema
Like url-local-schema, but lists all other URI schema upon
which urlglobber and url-quote-magic should act. If the
URI on the command line does not have a scheme appearing
either in this list or in url-local-schema, it is not mag-
ically quoted. The default values are "http", "https",
and "ftp". When a scheme appears both here and in url-lo-
cal-schema, it is quoted differently depending on whether
the command name appears in url-globbers.
Loading url-quote-magic also defines a helper function `urlglob-
ber' and aliases `globurl' to `noglob urlglobber'. This function
takes a local URL apart, attempts to pattern-match the local file
portion of the URL path, and then puts the results back into URL
format again.
vi-pipe
This function reads a movement command from the keyboard and then
prompts for an external command. The part of the buffer covered
by the movement is piped to the external command and then re-
placed by the command's output. If the movement command is bound
to vi-pipe, the current line is used.
The function serves as an example for reading a vi movement com-
mand from within a user-defined widget.
which-command
This function is a drop-in replacement for the builtin widget
which-command. It has enhanced behaviour, in that it correctly
detects whether or not the command word needs to be expanded as
an alias; if so, it continues tracing the command word from the
expanded alias until it reaches the command that will be exe-
cuted.
The style whence is available in the context :zle:$WIDGET; this
may be set to an array to give the command and options that will
be used to investigate the command word found. The default is
whence -c.
zcalc-auto-insert
This function is useful together with the zcalc function de-
scribed in the section `Mathematical Functions'. It should be
bound to a key representing a binary operator such as `+', `-',
`*' or `/'. When running in zcalc, if the key occurs at the
start of the line or immediately following an open parenthesis,
the text "ans " is inserted before the representation of the key
itself. This allows easy use of the answer from the previous
calculation in the current line. The text to be inserted before
the symbol typed can be modified by setting the variable
ZCALC_AUTO_INSERT_PREFIX.
Hence, for example, typing `+12' followed by return adds 12 to
the previous result.
If zcalc is in RPN mode (-r option) the effect of this binding is
automatically suppressed as operators alone on a line are mean-
ingful.
When not in zcalc, the key simply inserts the symbol itself.
Utility Functions
These functions are useful in constructing widgets. They should be
loaded with `autoload -U function' and called as indicated from user-de-
fined widgets.
split-shell-arguments
This function splits the line currently being edited into shell
arguments and whitespace. The result is stored in the array re-
ply. The array contains all the parts of the line in order,
starting with any whitespace before the first argument, and fin-
ishing with any whitespace after the last argument. Hence (so
long as the option KSH_ARRAYS is not set) whitespace is given by
odd indices in the array and arguments by even indices. Note
that no stripping of quotes is done; joining together all the el-
ements of reply in order is guaranteed to produce the original
line.
The parameter REPLY is set to the index of the word in reply
which contains the character after the cursor, where the first
element has index 1. The parameter REPLY2 is set to the index of
the character under the cursor in that word, where the first
character has index 1.
Hence reply, REPLY and REPLY2 should all be made local to the en-
closing function.
See the function modify-current-argument, described below, for an
example of how to call this function.
modify-current-argument [ expr-using-$ARG | func ]
This function provides a simple method of allowing user-defined
widgets to modify the command line argument under the cursor (or
immediately to the left of the cursor if the cursor is between
arguments).
The argument can be an expression which when evaluated operates
on the shell parameter ARG, which will have been set to the com-
mand line argument under the cursor. The expression should be
suitably quoted to prevent it being evaluated too early.
Alternatively, if the argument does not contain the string ARG,
it is assumed to be a shell function, to which the current com-
mand line argument is passed as the only argument. The function
should set the variable REPLY to the new value for the command
line argument. If the function returns non-zero status, so does
the calling function.
For example, a user-defined widget containing the following code
converts the characters in the argument under the cursor into all
upper case:
modify-current-argument '${(U)ARG}'
The following strips any quoting from the current word (whether
backslashes or one of the styles of quotes), and replaces it with
single quoting throughout:
modify-current-argument '${(qq)${(Q)ARG}}'
The following performs directory expansion on the command line
argument and replaces it by the absolute path:
expand-dir() {
REPLY=${~1}
REPLY=${REPLY:a}
}
modify-current-argument expand-dir
In practice the function expand-dir would probably not be defined
within the widget where modify-current-argument is called.
Styles
The behavior of several of the above widgets can be controlled by the
use of the zstyle mechanism. In particular, widgets that interact with
the completion system pass along their context to any completions that
they invoke.
break-keys
This style is used by the incremental-complete-word widget. Its
value should be a pattern, and all keys matching this pattern
will cause the widget to stop incremental completion without the
key having any further effect. Like all styles used directly by
incremental-complete-word, this style is looked up using the con-
text `:incremental'.
completer
The incremental-complete-word and insert-and-predict widgets set
up their top-level context name before calling completion. This
allows one to define different sets of completer functions for
normal completion and for these widgets. For example, to use
completion, approximation and correction for normal completion,
completion and correction for incremental completion and only
completion for prediction one could use:
zstyle ':completion:*' completer \
_complete _correct _approximate
zstyle ':completion:incremental:*' completer \
_complete _correct
zstyle ':completion:predict:*' completer \
_complete
It is a good idea to restrict the completers used in prediction,
because they may be automatically invoked as you type. The _list
and _menu completers should never be used with prediction. The
_approximate, _correct, _expand, and _match completers may be
used, but be aware that they may change characters anywhere in
the word behind the cursor, so you need to watch carefully that
the result is what you intended.
cursor The insert-and-predict widget uses this style, in the context
`:predict', to decide where to place the cursor after completion
has been tried. Values are:
complete
The cursor is left where it was when completion finished,
but only if it is after a character equal to the one just
inserted by the user. If it is after another character,
this value is the same as `key'.
key The cursor is left after the nth occurrence of the charac-
ter just inserted, where n is the number of times that
character appeared in the word before completion was at-
tempted. In short, this has the effect of leaving the
cursor after the character just typed even if the comple-
tion code found out that no other characters need to be
inserted at that position.
Any other value for this style unconditionally leaves the cursor
at the position where the completion code left it.
list When using the incremental-complete-word widget, this style says
if the matches should be listed on every key press (if they fit
on the screen). Use the context prefix `:completion:incremen-
tal'.
The insert-and-predict widget uses this style to decide if the
completion should be shown even if there is only one possible
completion. This is done if the value of this style is the
string always. In this case the context is `:predict' (not
`:completion:predict').
match This style is used by smart-insert-last-word to provide a pattern
(using full EXTENDED_GLOB syntax) that matches an interesting
word. The context is the name of the widget to which smart-in-
sert-last-word is bound (see above). The default behavior of
smart-insert-last-word is equivalent to:
zstyle :insert-last-word match '*[[:alpha:]/\\]*'
However, you might want to include words that contain spaces:
zstyle :insert-last-word match '*[[:alpha:][:space:]/\\]*'
Or include numbers as long as the word is at least two characters
long:
zstyle :insert-last-word match '*([[:digit:]]?|[[:alpha:]/\\])*'
The above example causes redirections like "2>" to be included.
prompt The incremental-complete-word widget shows the value of this
style in the status line during incremental completion. The
string value may contain any of the following substrings in the
manner of the PS1 and other prompt parameters:
%c Replaced by the name of the completer function that gener-
ated the matches (without the leading underscore).
%l When the list style is set, replaced by `...' if the list
of matches is too long to fit on the screen and with an
empty string otherwise. If the list style is `false' or
not set, `%l' is always removed.
%n Replaced by the number of matches generated.
%s Replaced by `-no match-', `-no prefix-', or an empty
string if there is no completion matching the word on the
line, if the matches have no common prefix different from
the word on the line, or if there is such a common prefix,
respectively.
%u Replaced by the unambiguous part of all matches, if there
is any, and if it is different from the word on the line.
Like `break-keys', this uses the `:incremental' context.
stop-keys
This style is used by the incremental-complete-word widget. Its
value is treated similarly to the one for the break-keys style
(and uses the same context: `:incremental'). However, in this
case all keys matching the pattern given as its value will stop
incremental completion and will then execute their usual func-
tion.
toggle This boolean style is used by predict-on and its related widgets
in the context `:predict'. If set to one of the standard `true'
values, predictive typing is automatically toggled off in situa-
tions where it is unlikely to be useful, such as when editing a
multi-line buffer or after moving into the middle of a line and
then deleting a character. The default is to leave prediction
turned on until an explicit call to predict-off.
verbose
This boolean style is used by predict-on and its related widgets
in the context `:predict'. If set to one of the standard `true'
values, these widgets display a message below the prompt when the
predictive state is toggled. This is most useful in combination
with the toggle style. The default does not display these mes-
sages.
widget This style is similar to the command style: For widget functions
that use zle to call other widgets, this style can sometimes be
used to override the widget which is called. The context for
this style is the name of the calling widget (not the name of the
calling function, because one function may be bound to multiple
widget names).
zstyle :copy-earlier-word widget smart-insert-last-word
Check the documentation for the calling widget or function to de-
termine whether the widget style is used.
EXCEPTION HANDLING
Two functions are provided to enable zsh to provide exception handling
in a form that should be familiar from other languages.
throw exception
The function throw throws the named exception. The name is an
arbitrary string and is only used by the throw and catch func-
tions. An exception is for the most part treated the same as a
shell error, i.e. an unhandled exception will cause the shell to
abort all processing in a function or script and to return to the
top level in an interactive shell.
catch exception-pattern
The function catch returns status zero if an exception was thrown
and the pattern exception-pattern matches its name. Otherwise it
returns status 1. exception-pattern is a standard shell pattern,
respecting the current setting of the EXTENDED_GLOB option. An
alias catch is also defined to prevent the argument to the func-
tion from matching filenames, so patterns may be used unquoted.
Note that as exceptions are not fundamentally different from
other shell errors it is possible to catch shell errors by using
an empty string as the exception name. The shell variable CAUGHT
is set by catch to the name of the exception caught. It is pos-
sible to rethrow an exception by calling the throw function again
once an exception has been caught.
The functions are designed to be used together with the always construct
described in zshmisc(1). This is important as only this construct pro-
vides the required support for exceptions. A typical example is as fol-
lows.
{
# "try" block
# ... nested code here calls "throw MyExcept"
} always {
# "always" block
if catch MyExcept; then
print "Caught exception MyExcept"
elif catch ''; then
print "Caught a shell error. Propagating..."
throw ''
fi
# Other exceptions are not handled but may be caught further
# up the call stack.
}
If all exceptions should be caught, the following idiom might be prefer-
able.
{
# ... nested code here throws an exception
} always {
if catch *; then
case $CAUGHT in
(MyExcept)
print "Caught my own exception"
;;
(*)
print "Caught some other exception"
;;
esac
fi
}
In common with exception handling in other languages, the exception may
be thrown by code deeply nested inside the `try' block. However, note
that it must be thrown inside the current shell, not in a subshell
forked for a pipeline, parenthesised current-shell construct, or some
form of command or process substitution.
The system internally uses the shell variable EXCEPTION to record the
name of the exception between throwing and catching. One drawback of
this scheme is that if the exception is not handled the variable EXCEP-
TION remains set and may be incorrectly recognised as the name of an ex-
ception if a shell error subsequently occurs. Adding unset EXCEPTION at
the start of the outermost layer of any code that uses exception han-
dling will eliminate this problem.
MIME FUNCTIONS
Three functions are available to provide handling of files recognised by
extension, for example to dispatch a file text.ps when executed as a
command to an appropriate viewer.
zsh-mime-setup [ -fv ] [ -l [ suffix ... ] ]
zsh-mime-handler [ -l ] command argument ...
These two functions use the files ~/.mime.types and
/etc/mime.types, which associate types and extensions, as well as
~/.mailcap and /etc/mailcap files, which associate types and the
programs that handle them. These are provided on many systems
with the Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions.
To enable the system, the function zsh-mime-setup should be au-
toloaded and run. This allows files with extensions to be
treated as executable; such files be completed by the function
completion system. The function zsh-mime-handler should not need
to be called by the user.
The system works by setting up suffix aliases with `alias -s'.
Suffix aliases already installed by the user will not be over-
written.
For suffixes defined in lower case, upper case variants will also
automatically be handled (e.g. PDF is automatically handled if
handling for the suffix pdf is defined), but not vice versa.
Repeated calls to zsh-mime-setup do not override the existing
mapping between suffixes and executable files unless the option
-f is given. Note, however, that this does not override existing
suffix aliases assigned to handlers other than zsh-mime-handler.
Calling zsh-mime-setup with the option -l lists the existing map-
pings without altering them. Suffixes to list (which may contain
pattern characters that should be quoted from immediate interpre-
tation on the command line) may be given as additional arguments,
otherwise all suffixes are listed.
Calling zsh-mime-setup with the option -v causes verbose output
to be shown during the setup operation.
The system respects the mailcap flags needsterminal and copi-
ousoutput; see mailcap(4) or mailcap(5) (the man page's name
varies across platforms).
The functions use the following styles, which are defined with
the zstyle builtin command (see zshmodules(1)). They should be
defined before zsh-mime-setup is run. The contexts used all
start with :mime:, with additional components in some cases. It
is recommended that a trailing * (suitably quoted) be appended to
style patterns in case the system is extended in future. Some
examples are given below.
For files that have multiple suffixes, e.g. .pdf.gz, where the
context includes the suffix it will be looked up starting with
the longest possible suffix until a match for the style is found.
For example, if .pdf.gz produces a match for the handler, that
will be used; otherwise the handler for .gz will be used. Note
that, owing to the way suffix aliases work, it is always required
that there be a handler for the shortest possible suffix, so in
this example .pdf.gz can only be handled if .gz is also handled
(though not necessarily in the same way). Alternatively, if no
handling for .gz on its own is needed, simply adding the command
alias -s gz=zsh-mime-handler
to the initialisation code is sufficient; .gz will not be handled
on its own, but may be in combination with other suffixes.
current-shell
If this boolean style is true, the mailcap handler for the
context in question is run using the eval builtin instead
of by starting a new sh process. This is more efficient,
but may not work in the occasional cases where the mailcap
handler uses strict POSIX syntax.
disown If this boolean style is true, mailcap handlers started in
the background will be disowned, i.e. not subject to job
control within the parent shell. Such handlers nearly al-
ways produce their own windows, so the only likely harmful
side effect of setting the style is that it becomes harder
to kill jobs from within the shell.
execute-as-is
This style gives a list of patterns to be matched against
files passed for execution with a handler program. If the
file matches the pattern, the entire command line is exe-
cuted in its current form, with no handler. This is use-
ful for files which might have suffixes but nonetheless be
executable in their own right. If the style is not set,
the pattern *(*) *(/) is used; hence executable files are
executed directly and not passed to a handler, and the op-
tion AUTO_CD may be used to change to directories that
happen to have MIME suffixes.
execute-never
This style is useful in combination with execute-as-is.
It is set to an array of patterns corresponding to full
paths to files that should never be treated as executable,
even if the file passed to the MIME handler matches exe-
cute-as-is. This is useful for file systems that don't
handle execute permission or that contain executables from
another operating system. For example, if /mnt/windows is
a Windows mount, then
zstyle ':mime:*' execute-never '/mnt/windows/*'
will ensure that any files found in that area will be exe-
cuted as MIME types even if they are executable. As this
example shows, the complete file name is matched against
the pattern, regardless of how the file was passed to the
handler. The file is resolved to a full path using the :P
modifier described in the subsection `Modifiers' in zsh-
expn(1); this means that symbolic links are resolved where
possible, so that links into other file systems behave in
the correct fashion.
file-path
Used if the style find-file-in-path is true for the same
context. Set to an array of directories that are used for
searching for the file to be handled; the default is the
command path given by the special parameter path. The
shell option PATH_DIRS is respected; if that is set, the
appropriate path will be searched even if the name of the
file to be handled as it appears on the command line con-
tains a `/'. The full context is :mime:.suffix:, as de-
scribed for the style handler.
find-file-in-path
If set, allows files whose names do not contain absolute
paths to be searched for in the command path or the path
specified by the file-path style. If the file is not
found in the path, it is looked for locally (whether or
not the current directory is in the path); if it is not
found locally, the handler will abort unless the han-
dle-nonexistent style is set. Files found in the path are
tested as described for the style execute-as-is. The full
context is :mime:.suffix:, as described for the style han-
dler.
flags Defines flags to go with a handler; the context is as for
the handler style, and the format is as for the flags in
mailcap.
handle-nonexistent
By default, arguments that don't correspond to files are
not passed to the MIME handler in order to prevent it from
intercepting commands found in the path that happen to
have suffixes. This style may be set to an array of ex-
tended glob patterns for arguments that will be passed to
the handler even if they don't exist. If it is not ex-
plicitly set it defaults to [[:alpha:]]#:/* which allows
URLs to be passed to the MIME handler even though they
don't exist in that format in the file system. The full
context is :mime:.suffix:, as described for the style han-
dler.
handler
Specifies a handler for a suffix; the suffix is given by
the context as :mime:.suffix:, and the format of the han-
dler is exactly that in mailcap. Note in particular the
`.' and trailing colon to distinguish this use of the con-
text. This overrides any handler specified by the mailcap
files. If the handler requires a terminal, the flags
style should be set to include the word needsterminal, or
if the output is to be displayed through a pager (but not
if the handler is itself a pager), it should include copi-
ousoutput.
mailcap
A list of files in the format of ~/.mailcap and /etc/mail-
cap to be read during setup, replacing the default list
which consists of those two files. The context is :mime:.
A + in the list will be replaced by the default files.
mailcap-priorities
This style is used to resolve multiple mailcap entries for
the same MIME type. It consists of an array of the fol-
lowing elements, in descending order of priority; later
entries will be used if earlier entries are unable to re-
solve the entries being compared. If none of the tests
resolve the entries, the first entry encountered is re-
tained.
files The order of files (entries in the mailcap style)
read. Earlier files are preferred. (Note this
does not resolve entries in the same file.)
priority
The priority flag from the mailcap entry. The pri-
ority is an integer from 0 to 9 with the default
value being 5.
flags The test given by the mailcap-prio-flags option is
used to resolve entries.
place Later entries are preferred; as the entries are
strictly ordered, this test always succeeds.
Note that as this style is handled during initialisation,
the context is always :mime:, with no discrimination by
suffix.
mailcap-prio-flags
This style is used when the keyword flags is encountered
in the list of tests specified by the mailcap-priorities
style. It should be set to a list of patterns, each of
which is tested against the flags specified in the mailcap
entry (in other words, the sets of assignments found with
some entries in the mailcap file). Earlier patterns in
the list are preferred to later ones, and matched patterns
are preferred to unmatched ones.
mime-types
A list of files in the format of ~/.mime.types and
/etc/mime.types to be read during setup, replacing the de-
fault list which consists of those two files. The context
is :mime:. A + in the list will be replaced by the de-
fault files.
never-background
If this boolean style is set, the handler for the given
context is always run in the foreground, even if the flags
provided in the mailcap entry suggest it need not be (for
example, it doesn't require a terminal).
pager If set, will be used instead of $PAGER or more to handle
suffixes where the copiousoutput flag is set. The context
is as for handler, i.e. :mime:.suffix: for handling a file
with the given suffix.
Examples:
zstyle ':mime:*' mailcap ~/.mailcap /usr/local/etc/mailcap
zstyle ':mime:.txt:' handler less %s
zstyle ':mime:.txt:' flags needsterminal
When zsh-mime-setup is subsequently run, it will look for mailcap
entries in the two files given. Files of suffix .txt will be
handled by running `less file.txt'. The flag needsterminal is
set to show that this program must run attached to a terminal.
As there are several steps to dispatching a command, the follow-
ing should be checked if attempting to execute a file by exten-
sion .ext does not have the expected effect.
The command `alias -s ext' should show `ps=zsh-mime-handler'. If
it shows something else, another suffix alias was already in-
stalled and was not overwritten. If it shows nothing, no handler
was installed: this is most likely because no handler was found
in the .mime.types and mailcap combination for .ext files. In
that case, appropriate handling should be added to ~/.mime.types
and mailcap.
If the extension is handled by zsh-mime-handler but the file is
not opened correctly, either the handler defined for the type is
incorrect, or the flags associated with it are in appropriate.
Running zsh-mime-setup -l will show the handler and, if there are
any, the flags. A %s in the handler is replaced by the file
(suitably quoted if necessary). Check that the handler program
listed lists and can be run in the way shown. Also check that
the flags needsterminal or copiousoutput are set if the handler
needs to be run under a terminal; the second flag is used if the
output should be sent to a pager. An example of a suitable mail-
cap entry for such a program is:
text/html; /usr/bin/lynx '%s'; needsterminal
Running `zsh-mime-handler -l command line' prints the command
line that would be executed, simplified to remove the effect of
any flags, and quoted so that the output can be run as a complete
zsh command line. This is used by the completion system to de-
cide how to complete after a file handled by zsh-mime-setup.
pick-web-browser
This function is separate from the two MIME functions described
above and can be assigned directly to a suffix:
autoload -U pick-web-browser
alias -s html=pick-web-browser
It is provided as an intelligent front end to dispatch a web
browser. It may be run as either a function or a shell script.
The status 255 is returned if no browser could be started.
Various styles are available to customize the choice of browsers:
browser-style
The value of the style is an array giving preferences in
decreasing order for the type of browser to use. The val-
ues of elements may be
running
Use a GUI browser that is already running when an X
Window display is available. The browsers listed
in the x-browsers style are tried in order until
one is found; if it is, the file will be displayed
in that browser, so the user may need to check
whether it has appeared. If no running browser is
found, one is not started. Browsers other than
Firefox, Opera and Konqueror are assumed to under-
stand the Mozilla syntax for opening a URL re-
motely.
x Start a new GUI browser when an X Window display is
available. Search for the availability of one of
the browsers listed in the x-browsers style and
start the first one that is found. No check is
made for an already running browser.
tty Start a terminal-based browser. Search for the
availability of one of the browsers listed in the
tty-browsers style and start the first one that is
found.
If the style is not set the default running x tty is used.
x-browsers
An array in decreasing order of preference of browsers to
use when running under the X Window System. The array
consists of the command name under which to start the
browser. They are looked up in the context :mime: (which
may be extended in future, so appending `*' is recom-
mended). For example,
zstyle ':mime:*' x-browsers opera konqueror firefox
specifies that pick-web-browser should first look for a
running instance of Opera, Konqueror or Firefox, in that
order, and if it fails to find any should attempt to start
Opera. The default is firefox mozilla netscape opera kon-
queror.
tty-browsers
An array similar to x-browsers, except that it gives
browsers to use when no X Window display is available.
The default is elinks links lynx.
command
If it is set this style is used to pick the command used
to open a page for a browser. The context is
:mime:browser:new:$browser: to start a new browser or
:mime:browser:running:$browser: to open a URL in a browser
already running on the current X display, where $browser
is the value matched in the x-browsers or tty-browsers
style. The escape sequence %b in the style's value will
be replaced by the browser, while %u will be replaced by
the URL. If the style is not set, the default for all new
instances is equivalent to %b %u and the defaults for us-
ing running browsers are equivalent to the values kfm-
client openURL %u for Konqueror, firefox -new-tab %u for
Firefox, opera -newpage %u for Opera, and %b -remote
"openUrl(%u)" for all others.
MATHEMATICAL FUNCTIONS
zcalc [ -erf ] [ expression ... ]
A reasonably powerful calculator based on zsh's arithmetic evalu-
ation facility. The syntax is similar to that of formulae in
most programming languages; see the section `Arithmetic Evalua-
tion' in zshmisc(1) for details.
Non-programmers should note that, as in many other programming
languages, expressions involving only integers (whether constants
without a `.', variables containing such constants as strings, or
variables declared to be integers) are by default evaluated using
integer arithmetic, which is not how an ordinary desk calculator
operates. To force floating point operation, pass the option -f;
see further notes below.
If the file ~/.zcalcrc exists it will be sourced inside the func-
tion once it is set up and about to process the command line.
This can be used, for example, to set shell options; emulate -L
zsh and setopt extendedglob are in effect at this point. Any
failure to source the file if it exists is treated as fatal. As
with other initialisation files, the directory $ZDOTDIR is used
instead of $HOME if it is set.
The mathematical library zsh/mathfunc will be loaded if it is
available; see the section `The zsh/mathfunc Module' in zshmod-
ules(1). The mathematical functions correspond to the raw system
libraries, so trigonometric functions are evaluated using radi-
ans, and so on.
Each line typed is evaluated as an expression. The prompt shows
a number, which corresponds to a positional parameter where the
result of that calculation is stored. For example, the result of
the calculation on the line preceded by `4> ' is available as $4.
The last value calculated is available as ans. Full command line
editing, including the history of previous calculations, is
available; the history is saved in the file ~/.zcalc_history. To
exit, enter a blank line or type `:q' on its own (`q' is allowed
for historical compatibility).
A line ending with a single backslash is treated in the same
fashion as it is in command line editing: the backslash is re-
moved, the function prompts for more input (the prompt is pre-
ceded by `...' to indicate this), and the lines are combined into
one to get the final result. In addition, if the input so far
contains more open than close parentheses zcalc will prompt for
more input.
If arguments are given to zcalc on start up, they are used to
prime the first few positional parameters. A visual indication
of this is given when the calculator starts.
The constants PI (3.14159...) and E (2.71828...) are provided.
Parameter assignment is possible, but note that all parameters
will be put into the global namespace unless the :local special
command is used. The function creates local variables whose
names start with _, so users should avoid doing so. The vari-
ables ans (the last answer) and stack (the stack in RPN mode) may
be referred to directly; stack is an array but elements of it are
numeric. Various other special variables are used locally with
their standard meaning, for example compcontext, match, mbegin,
mend, psvar.
The output base can be initialised by passing the option
`-#base', for example `zcalc -#16' (the `#' may have to be
quoted, depending on the globbing options set).
If the option `-e' is set, the function runs non-interactively:
the arguments are treated as expressions to be evaluated as if
entered interactively line by line.
If the option `-f' is set, all numbers are treated as floating
point, hence for example the expression `3/4' evaluates to 0.75
rather than 0. Options must appear in separate words.
If the option `-r' is set, RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) mode is
entered. This has various additional properties:
Stack Evaluated values are maintained in a stack; this is con-
tained in an array named stack with the most recent value
in ${stack[1]}.
Operators and functions
If the line entered matches an operator (+, -, *, /, **,
^, | or &) or a function supplied by the zsh/mathfunc li-
brary, the bottom element or elements of the stack are
popped to use as the argument or arguments. The higher
elements of stack (least recent) are used as earlier argu-
ments. The result is then pushed into ${stack[1]}.
Expressions
Other expressions are evaluated normally, printed, and
added to the stack as numeric values. The syntax within
expressions on a single line is normal shell arithmetic
(not RPN).
Stack listing
If an integer follows the option -r with no space, then on
every evaluation that many elements of the stack, where
available, are printed instead of just the most recent re-
sult. Hence, for example, zcalc -r4 shows $stack[4] to
$stack[1] each time results are printed.
Duplication: =
The pseudo-operator = causes the most recent element of
the stack to be duplicated onto the stack.
pop The pseudo-function pop causes the most recent element of
the stack to be popped. A `>' on its own has the same ef-
fect.
>ident The expression > followed (with no space) by a shell iden-
tifier causes the most recent element of the stack to be
popped and assigned to the variable with that name. The
variable is local to the zcalc function.
<ident The expression < followed (with no space) by a shell iden-
tifier causes the value of the variable with that name to
be pushed onto the stack. ident may be an integer, in
which case the previous result with that number (as shown
before the > in the standard zcalc prompt) is put on the
stack.
Exchange: xy
The pseudo-function xy causes the most recent two elements
of the stack to be exchanged. `<>' has the same effect.
The prompt is configurable via the parameter ZCALCPROMPT, which
undergoes standard prompt expansion. The index of the current
entry is stored locally in the first element of the array psvar,
which can be referred to in ZCALCPROMPT as `%1v'. The default
prompt is `%1v> '.
The variable ZCALC_ACTIVE is set within the function and can be
tested by nested functions; it has the value rpn if RPN mode is
active, else 1.
A few special commands are available; these are introduced by a
colon. For backward compatibility, the colon may be omitted for
certain commands. Completion is available if compinit has been
run.
The output precision may be specified within zcalc by special
commands familiar from many calculators.
:norm The default output format. It corresponds to the printf
%g specification. Typically this shows six decimal dig-
its.
:sci digits
Scientific notation, corresponding to the printf %g output
format with the precision given by digits. This produces
either fixed point or exponential notation depending on
the value output.
:fix digits
Fixed point notation, corresponding to the printf %f out-
put format with the precision given by digits.
:eng digits
Exponential notation, corresponding to the printf %E out-
put format with the precision given by digits.
:raw Raw output: this is the default form of the output from a
math evaluation. This may show more precision than the
number actually possesses.
Other special commands:
:!line...
Execute line... as a normal shell command line. Note that
it is executed in the context of the function, i.e. with
local variables. Space is optional after :!.
:local arg ...
Declare variables local to the function. Other variables
may be used, too, but they will be taken from or put into
the global scope.
:function name [ body ]
Define a mathematical function or (with no body) delete
it. :function may be abbreviated to :func or simply :f.
The name may contain the same characters as a shell func-
tion name. The function is defined using zmathfuncdef,
see below.
Note that zcalc takes care of all quoting. Hence for ex-
ample:
:f cube $1 * $1 * $1
defines a function to cube the sole argument. Functions
so defined, or indeed any functions defined directly or
indirectly using functions -M, are available to execute by
typing only the name on the line in RPN mode; this pops
the appropriate number of arguments off the stack to pass
to the function, i.e. 1 in the case of the example cube
function. If there are optional arguments only the manda-
tory arguments are supplied by this means.
[#base]
This is not a special command, rather part of normal
arithmetic syntax; however, when this form appears on a
line by itself the default output radix is set to base.
Use, for example, `[#16]' to display hexadecimal output
preceded by an indication of the base, or `[##16]' just to
display the raw number in the given base. Bases them-
selves are always specified in decimal. `[#]' restores the
normal output format. Note that setting an output base
suppresses floating point output; use `[#]' to return to
normal operation.
$var Print out the value of var literally; does not affect the
calculation. To use the value of var, omit the leading
`$'.
See the comments in the function for a few extra tips.
min(arg, ...)
max(arg, ...)
sum(arg, ...)
zmathfunc
The function zmathfunc defines the three mathematical functions
min, max, and sum. The functions min and max take one or more
arguments. The function sum takes zero or more arguments. Argu-
ments can be of different types (ints and floats).
Not to be confused with the zsh/mathfunc module, described in the
section `The zsh/mathfunc Module' in zshmodules(1).
zmathfuncdef [ mathfunc [ body ] ]
A convenient front end to functions -M.
With two arguments, define a mathematical function named mathfunc
which can be used in any form of arithmetic evaluation. body is
a mathematical expression to implement the function. It may con-
tain references to position parameters $1, $2, ... to refer to
mandatory parameters and ${1:-defvalue} ... to refer to optional
parameters. Note that the forms must be strictly adhered to for
the function to calculate the correct number of arguments. The
implementation is held in a shell function named
zsh_math_func_mathfunc; usually the user will not need to refer
to the shell function directly. Any existing function of the
same name is silently replaced.
With one argument, remove the mathematical function mathfunc as
well as the shell function implementation.
With no arguments, list all mathfunc functions in a form suitable
for restoring the definition. The functions have not necessarily
been defined by zmathfuncdef.
USER CONFIGURATION FUNCTIONS
The zsh/newuser module comes with a function to aid in configuring shell
options for new users. If the module is installed, this function can
also be run by hand. It is available even if the module's default be-
haviour, namely running the function for a new user logging in without
startup files, is inhibited.
zsh-newuser-install [ -f ]
The function presents the user with various options for customiz-
ing their initialization scripts. Currently only ~/.zshrc is
handled. $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc is used instead if the parameter ZDOT-
DIR is set; this provides a way for the user to configure a file
without altering an existing .zshrc.
By default the function exits immediately if it finds any of the
files .zshenv, .zprofile, .zshrc, or .zlogin in the appropriate
directory. The option -f is required in order to force the func-
tion to continue. Note this may happen even if .zshrc itself
does not exist.
As currently configured, the function will exit immediately if
the user has root privileges; this behaviour cannot be overrid-
den.
Once activated, the function's behaviour is supposed to be
self-explanatory. Menus are present allowing the user to alter
the value of options and parameters. Suggestions for improve-
ments are always welcome.
When the script exits, the user is given the opportunity to save
the new file or not; changes are not irreversible until this
point. However, the script is careful to restrict changes to the
file only to a group marked by the lines `# Lines configured by
zsh-newuser-install' and `# End of lines configured by
zsh-newuser-install'. In addition, the old version of .zshrc is
saved to a file with the suffix .zni appended.
If the function edits an existing .zshrc, it is up to the user to
ensure that the changes made will take effect. For example, if
control usually returns early from the existing .zshrc the lines
will not be executed; or a later initialization file may override
options or parameters, and so on. The function itself does not
attempt to detect any such conflicts.
OTHER FUNCTIONS
There are a large number of helpful functions in the Functions/Misc di-
rectory of the zsh distribution. Most are very simple and do not re-
quire documentation here, but a few are worthy of special mention.
Descriptions
colors This function initializes several associative arrays to map color
names to (and from) the ANSI standard eight-color terminal codes.
These are used by the prompt theme system (see above). You sel-
dom should need to run colors more than once.
The eight base colors are: black, red, green, yellow, blue, ma-
genta, cyan, and white. Each of these has codes for foreground
and background. In addition there are seven intensity attrib-
utes: bold, faint, standout, underline, blink, reverse, and con-
ceal. Finally, there are seven codes used to negate attributes:
none (reset all attributes to the defaults), normal (neither bold
nor faint), no-standout, no-underline, no-blink, no-reverse, and
no-conceal.
Some terminals do not support all combinations of colors and in-
tensities.
The associative arrays are:
color
colour Map all the color names to their integer codes, and inte-
ger codes to the color names. The eight base names map to
the foreground color codes, as do names prefixed with
`fg-', such as `fg-red'. Names prefixed with `bg-', such
as `bg-blue', refer to the background codes. The reverse
mapping from code to color yields base name for foreground
codes and the bg- form for backgrounds.
Although it is a misnomer to call them `colors', these ar-
rays also map the other fourteen attributes from names to
codes and codes to names.
fg
fg_bold
fg_no_bold
Map the eight basic color names to ANSI terminal escape
sequences that set the corresponding foreground text prop-
erties. The fg sequences change the color without chang-
ing the eight intensity attributes.
bg
bg_bold
bg_no_bold
Map the eight basic color names to ANSI terminal escape
sequences that set the corresponding background proper-
ties. The bg sequences change the color without changing
the eight intensity attributes.
In addition, the scalar parameters reset_color and bold_color are
set to the ANSI terminal escapes that turn off all attributes and
turn on bold intensity, respectively.
fned [ -x num ] name
Same as zed -f. This function does not appear in the zsh distri-
bution, but can be created by linking zed to the name fned in
some directory in your fpath.
histed [ [ name ] size ]
Same as zed -h. This function does not appear in the zsh distri-
bution, but can be created by linking zed to the name histed in
some directory in your fpath.
is-at-least needed [ present ]
Perform a greater-than-or-equal-to comparison of two strings hav-
ing the format of a zsh version number; that is, a string of num-
bers and text with segments separated by dots or dashes. If the
present string is not provided, $ZSH_VERSION is used. Segments
are paired left-to-right in the two strings with leading non-num-
ber parts ignored. If one string has fewer segments than the
other, the missing segments are considered zero.
This is useful in startup files to set options and other state
that are not available in all versions of zsh.
is-at-least 3.1.6-15 && setopt NO_GLOBAL_RCS
is-at-least 3.1.0 && setopt HIST_REDUCE_BLANKS
is-at-least 2.6-17 || print "You can't use is-at-least here."
nslookup [ arg ... ]
This wrapper function for the nslookup command requires the
zsh/zpty module (see zshmodules(1)). It behaves exactly like the
standard nslookup except that it provides customizable prompts
(including a right-side prompt) and completion of nslookup com-
mands, host names, etc. (if you use the function-based completion
system). Completion styles may be set with the context prefix
`:completion:nslookup'.
See also the pager, prompt and rprompt styles below.
regexp-replace var regexp replace
Use regular expressions to perform a global search and replace
operation on a variable. POSIX extended regular expressions
(ERE) are used, unless the option RE_MATCH_PCRE has been set, in
which case Perl-compatible regular expressions are used (this re-
quires the shell to be linked against the pcre library).
var is the name of the variable containing the string to be
matched. The variable will be modified directly by the function.
The variables MATCH, MBEGIN, MEND, match, mbegin, mend should be
avoided as these are used by the regular expression code.
regexp is the regular expression to match against the string.
replace is the replacement text. This can contain parameter,
command and arithmetic expressions which will be replaced: in
particular, a reference to $MATCH will be replaced by the text
matched by the pattern.
The return status is 0 if at least one match was performed, else
1.
Note that if using POSIX EREs, the ^ or word boundary operators
(where available) may not work properly.
run-help cmd
This function is designed to be invoked by the run-help ZLE wid-
get, in place of the default alias. See `Accessing On-Line Help'
above for setup instructions.
In the discussion which follows, if cmd is a file system path, it
is first reduced to its rightmost component (the file name).
Help is first sought by looking for a file named cmd in the di-
rectory named by the HELPDIR parameter. If no file is found, an
assistant function, alias, or command named run-help-cmd is
sought. If found, the assistant is executed with the rest of the
current command line (everything after the command name cmd) as
its arguments. When neither file nor assistant is found, the ex-
ternal command `man cmd' is run.
An example assistant for the "ssh" command:
run-help-ssh() {
emulate -LR zsh
local -a args
# Delete the "-l username" option
zparseopts -D -E -a args l:
# Delete other options, leaving: host command
args=(${@:#-*})
if [[ ${#args} -lt 2 ]]; then
man ssh
else
run-help $args[2]
fi
}
Several of these assistants are provided in the Functions/Misc
directory. These must be autoloaded, or placed as executable
scripts in your search path, in order to be found and used by
run-help.
run-help-btrfs
run-help-git
run-help-ip
run-help-openssl
run-help-p4
run-help-sudo
run-help-svk
run-help-svn
Assistant functions for the btrfs, git, ip, openssl, p4,
sudo, svk, and svn, commands.
tetris Zsh was once accused of not being as complete as Emacs, because
it lacked a Tetris game. This function was written to refute
this vicious slander.
This function must be used as a ZLE widget:
autoload -U tetris
zle -N tetris
bindkey keys tetris
To start a game, execute the widget by typing the keys. Whatever
command line you were editing disappears temporarily, and your
keymap is also temporarily replaced by the Tetris control keys.
The previous editor state is restored when you quit the game (by
pressing `q') or when you lose.
If you quit in the middle of a game, the next invocation of the
tetris widget will continue where you left off. If you lost, it
will start a new game.
tetriscurses
This is a port of the above to zcurses. The input handling is
improved a bit so that moving a block sideways doesn't automati-
cally advance a timestep, and the graphics use unicode block
graphics.
This version does not save the game state between invocations,
and is not invoked as a widget, but rather as:
autoload -U tetriscurses
tetriscurses
zargs [ option ... -- ] [ input ... ] [ -- command [ arg ... ] ]
This function has a similar purpose to GNU xargs. Instead of
reading lines of arguments from the standard input, it takes them
from the command line. This is useful because zsh, especially
with recursive glob operators, often can construct a command line
for a shell function that is longer than can be accepted by an
external command.
The option list represents options of the zargs command itself,
which are the same as those of xargs. The input list is the col-
lection of strings (often file names) that become the arguments
of the command, analogous to the standard input of xargs. Fi-
nally, the arg list consists of those arguments (usually options)
that are passed to the command each time it runs. The arg list
precedes the elements from the input list in each run. If no
command is provided, then no arg list may be provided, and in
that event the default command is `print' with arguments `-r --'.
For example, to get a long ls listing of all non-hidden plain
files in the current directory or its subdirectories:
autoload -U zargs
zargs -- **/*(.) -- ls -ld --
The first and third occurrences of `--' are used to mark the end
of options for zargs and ls respectively to guard against file-
names starting with `-', while the second is used to separate the
list of files from the command to run (`ls -ld --').
The first `--' would also be needed if there was a chance the
list might be empty as in:
zargs -r -- ./*.back(#qN) -- rm -f
In the event that the string `--' is or may be an input, the -e
option may be used to change the end-of-inputs marker. Note that
this does not change the end-of-options marker. For example, to
use `..' as the marker:
zargs -e.. -- **/*(.) .. ls -ld --
This is a good choice in that example because no plain file can
be named `..', but the best end-marker depends on the circum-
stances.
The options -i, -I, -l, -L, and -n differ slightly from their us-
age in xargs. There are no input lines for zargs to count, so -l
and -L count through the input list, and -n counts the number of
arguments passed to each execution of command, including any arg
list. Also, any time -i or -I is used, each input is processed
separately as if by `-L 1'.
For details of the other zargs options, see the xargs(1) man page
(but note the difference in function between zargs and xargs) or
run zargs with the --help option.
zed [ -f [ -x num ] ] name
zed [ -h [ name ] size ]
zed -b This function uses the ZLE editor to edit a file or function.
Only one name argument is allowed. If the -f option is given,
the name is taken to be that of a function; if the function is
marked for autoloading, zed searches for it in the fpath and
loads it. Note that functions edited this way are installed into
the current shell, but not written back to the autoload file. In
this case the -x option specifies that leading tabs indenting the
function according to syntax should be converted into the given
number of spaces; `-x 2' is consistent with the layout of func-
tions distributed with the shell.
Without -f, name is the path name of the file to edit, which need
not exist; it is created on write, if necessary. With -h, the
file is presumed to contain history events.
When no file name is provided for -h the current shell history is
edited in place. The history is renumbered when zed exits suc-
cessfully.
When editing history, multi-line events must have a trailing
backslash on every line before the last.
While editing, the function sets the main keymap to zed and the
vi command keymap to zed-vicmd. These will be copied from the
existing main and vicmd keymaps if they do not exist the first
time zed is run. They can be used to provide special key bind-
ings used only in zed.
If it creates the keymap, zed rebinds the return key to insert a
line break and `^X^W' to accept the edit in the zed keymap, and
binds `ZZ' to accept the edit in the zed-vicmd keymap.
The bindings alone can be installed by running `zed -b'. This is
suitable for putting into a startup file. Note that, if rerun,
this will overwrite the existing zed and zed-vicmd keymaps.
Completion is available, and styles may be set with the context
prefix `:completion:zed:'.
A zle widget zed-set-file-name is available. This can be called
by name from within zed using `\ex zed-set-file-name' or can be
bound to a key in either of the zed or zed-vicmd keymaps after
`zed -b' has been run. When the widget is called, it prompts for
a new name for the file being edited. When zed exits the file
will be written under that name and the original file will be
left alone. The widget has no effect when invoked from `zed -f'.
The completion context is changed to `:comple-
tion:zed-set-file-name:'. When editing the current history with
`zed -h', the history is first updated and then the file is writ-
ten, but the global setting of HISTFILE is not altered.
While zed-set-file-name is running, zed uses the keymap zed-nor-
mal-keymap, which is linked from the main keymap in effect at the
time zed initialised its bindings. (This is to make the return
key operate normally.) The result is that if the main keymap has
been changed, the widget won't notice. This is not a concern for
most users.
zcp [ -finqQvwW ] srcpat dest
zln [ -finqQsvwW ] srcpat dest
Same as zmv -C and zmv -L, respectively. These functions do not
appear in the zsh distribution, but can be created by linking zmv
to the names zcp and zln in some directory in your fpath.
zkbd See `Keyboard Definition' above.
zmv [ -finqQsvwW ] [ -C | -L | -M | -{p|P} program ] [ -o optstring ]
srcpat dest
Move (usually, rename) files matching the pattern srcpat to cor-
responding files having names of the form given by dest, where
srcpat contains parentheses surrounding patterns which will be
replaced in turn by $1, $2, ... in dest. For example,
zmv '(*).lis' '$1.txt'
renames `foo.lis' to `foo.txt', `my.old.stuff.lis' to
`my.old.stuff.txt', and so on.
The pattern is always treated as an EXTENDED_GLOB pattern. Any
file whose name is not changed by the substitution is simply ig-
nored. Any error (a substitution resulted in an empty string,
two substitutions gave the same result, the destination was an
existing regular file and -f was not given) causes the entire
function to abort without doing anything.
In addition to pattern replacement, the variable $f can be re-
ferred to in the second (replacement) argument. This makes it
possible to use variable substitution to alter the argument; see
examples below.
Options:
-f Force overwriting of destination files. Not currently
passed down to the mv/cp/ln command due to vagaries of im-
plementations (but you can use -o-f to do that).
-i Interactive: show each line to be executed and ask the
user whether to execute it. `Y' or `y' will execute it,
anything else will skip it. Note that you just need to
type one character.
-n No execution: print what would happen, but don't do it.
-q Turn bare glob qualifiers off: now assumed by default, so
this has no effect.
-Q Force bare glob qualifiers on. Don't turn this on unless
you are actually using glob qualifiers in a pattern.
-s Symbolic, passed down to ln; only works with -L.
-v Verbose: print each command as it's being executed.
-w Pick out wildcard parts of the pattern, as described
above, and implicitly add parentheses for referring to
them.
-W Just like -w, with the addition of turning wildcards in
the replacement pattern into sequential ${1} .. ${N} ref-
erences.
-C
-L
-M Force cp, ln or mv, respectively, regardless of the name
of the function.
-p program
Call program instead of cp, ln or mv. Whatever it does,
it should at least understand the form `program -- oldname
newname' where oldname and newname are filenames generated
by zmv. program will be split into words, so might be
e.g. the name of an archive tool plus a copy or rename
subcommand.
-P program
As -p program, except that program does not accept a fol-
lowing -- to indicate the end of options. In this case
filenames must already be in a sane form for the program
in question.
-o optstring
The optstring is split into words and passed down verbatim
to the cp, ln or mv command called to perform the work.
It should probably begin with a `-'.
Further examples:
zmv -v '(* *)' '${1// /_}'
For any file in the current directory with at least one space in
the name, replace every space by an underscore and display the
commands executed.
zmv -v '* *' '${f// /_}'
This does exactly the same by referring to the file name stored
in $f.
For more complete examples and other implementation details, see
the zmv source file, usually located in one of the directories
named in your fpath, or in Functions/Misc/zmv in the zsh distrib-
ution.
zrecompile
See `Recompiling Functions' above.
zstyle+ context style value [ + subcontext style value ... ]
This makes defining styles a bit simpler by using a single `+' as
a special token that allows you to append a context name to the
previously used context name. Like this:
zstyle+ ':foo:bar' style1 value1 \
+':baz' style2 value2 \
+':frob' style3 value3
This defines style1 with value1 for the context :foo:bar as
usual, but it also defines style2 with value2 for the context
:foo:bar:baz and style3 with value3 for :foo:bar:frob. Any sub-
context may be the empty string to re-use the first context un-
changed.
Styles
insert-tab
The zed function sets this style in context `:completion:zed:*'
to turn off completion when TAB is typed at the beginning of a
line. You may override this by setting your own value for this
context and style.
pager The nslookup function looks up this style in the context
`:nslookup' to determine the program used to display output that
does not fit on a single screen.
prompt
rprompt
The nslookup function looks up this style in the context
`:nslookup' to set the prompt and the right-side prompt, respec-
tively. The usual expansions for the PS1 and RPS1 parameters may
be used (see EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES in zshmisc(1)).
zsh 5.9 May 14, 2022 ZSHCONTRIB(1)
Generated by dwww version 1.16 on Tue Dec 16 04:12:35 CET 2025.