zshall - the Z shell meta-man page


SYNOPSIS

       Because  zsh  contains  many  features, the zsh manual has
       been split into a number of sections.   This  manual  page
       includes  all  the  separate manual pages in the following
       order:

       zshmisc      Anything not fitting into the other sections
       zshexpn      Zsh command and parameter expansion
       zshparam     Zsh parameters
       zshoptions   Zsh options
       zshbuiltins  Zsh built-in functions
       zshzle       Zsh command line editing
       zshcompwid   Zsh completion widgets
       zshcompsys   Zsh completion system
       zshcompctl   Zsh completion control
       zshmodules   Zsh loadable modules
       zshzftpsys   Zsh built-in FTP client


DESCRIPTION

       Zsh is a UNIX command interpreter  (shell)  usable  as  an
       interactive login shell and as a shell script command pro­
       cessor.  Of the standard shells, zsh most  closely  resem­
       bles  ksh but includes many enhancements.  Zsh has command
       line editing, builtin  spelling  correction,  programmable
       command  completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a
       history mechanism, and a host of other features.


AUTHOR

       Zsh was originally written by Paul  Falstad  <pf@zsh.org>.
       Zsh  is  now  maintained by the members of the zsh-workers
       mailing list <zsh-workers@sunsite.dk>.  The development is
       currently  coordinated  by Peter Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>.
       The coordinator can be contacted at <coordinator@zsh.org>,
       but  matters  relating  to the code should generally go to
       the mailing list.


AVAILABILITY

       Zsh is available from the following anonymous  FTP  sites.
       These  mirror  sites  are kept frequently up to date.  The
       sites marked with  (H)  may  be  mirroring  ftp.cs.elte.hu
       instead of the primary site.

       Primary site
              ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
              http://www.zsh.org/pub/zsh/

       Australia
              ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
              http://www.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
              ftp://ftp.ips.gov.au/pub/packages/zsh/  (H)

              ftp://sunsite.dk/pub/unix/shells/zsh/

       Finland
              ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/unix/shells/zsh/

       France
              ftp://ftp.cenatls.cena.dgac.fr/shells/zsh/

       Germany
              ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/unix/shells/zsh/  (H)
              ftp://ftp.gmd.de/packages/zsh/
              ftp://ftp.uni-trier.de/pub/unix/shell/zsh/

       Hungary
              ftp://ftp.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
              http://www.cs.elte.hu/pub/zsh/
              ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/packages/zsh/

       Israel
              ftp://ftp.math.technion.ac.il/pub/zsh/
              http://www.math.technion.ac.il/pub/zsh/

       Italy
              ftp://ftp.unina.it/pub/Unix/pkgs/shell/zsh/

       Japan
              ftp://ftp.nisiq.net/pub/shells/zsh/  (H)
              ftp://ftp.win.ne.jp/pub/shell/zsh/

       Norway
              ftp://ftp.uit.no/pub/unix/shells/zsh/

       Poland
              ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/unix/shells/zsh/

       Romania
              ftp://ftp.roedu.net/pub/mirrors/ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/
              ftp://ftp.kappa.ro/pub/mirrors/ftp.zsh.org/pub/zsh/

       Slovenia
              ftp://ftp.siol.net/mirrors/zsh/

       Sweden
              ftp://ftp.lysator.liu.se/pub/unix/zsh/

       UK
              ftp://ftp.net.lut.ac.uk/zsh/
              ftp://sunsite.org.uk/packages/zsh/

       USA
              ftp://uiarchive.uiuc.edu/pub/packages/shells/zsh/
              ftp://ftp.rge.com/pub/shells/zsh/
              ftp://foad.org/pub/zsh/



MAILING LISTS

       Zsh has 3 mailing lists:

       <zsh-announce@sunsite.dk>
              Announcements  about releases, major changes in the
              shell and the  monthly  posting  of  the  Zsh  FAQ.
              (moderated)

       <zsh-users@sunsite.dk>
              User discussions.

       <zsh-workers@sunsite.dk>
              Hacking, development, bug reports and patches.

       To  subscribe  or unsubscribe, send mail to the associated
       administrative address for the mailing list.

       <zsh-announce-subscribe@sunsite.dk>
       <zsh-users-subscribe@sunsite.dk>
       <zsh-workers-subscribe@sunsite.dk>
       <zsh-announce-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk>
       <zsh-users-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk>
       <zsh-workers-unsubscribe@sunsite.dk>

       YOU ONLY NEED TO JOIN ONE OF THE MAILING LISTS AS THEY ARE
       NESTED.  All submissions to zsh-announce are automatically
       forwarded to zsh-users.  All submissions to zsh-users  are
       automatically forwarded to zsh-workers.

       If  you  have problems subscribing/unsubscribing to any of
       the mailing lists, send mail to <listmaster@zsh.org>.  The
       mailing   lists   are   maintained   by  Karsten  Thygesen
       <karthy@kom.auc.dk>.

       The mailing  lists  are  archived;  the  archives  can  be
       accessed  via  the  administrative addresses listed above.
       There is also a hypertext  archive,  maintained  by  Geoff
       Wing  <gcw@zsh.org>, available at http://www.zsh.org/mla/.


THE ZSH FAQ

       Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ),  main­
       tained by Peter Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>.  It is regularly
       posted  to   the   newsgroup   comp.unix.shell   and   the
       zsh-announce  mailing  list.   The  latest  version can be
       found   at   any   of   the   Zsh   FTP   sites,   or   at
       http://www.zsh.org/FAQ/.     The   contact   address   for
       FAQ-related matters is <faqmaster@zsh.org>.


THE ZSH WEB PAGE

       Zsh   has   a   web   page    which    is    located    at
       http://www.zsh.org/.  This is maintained by Karsten Thyge­
       sen <karthy@zsh.org>, of  SunSITE  Denmark.   The  contact



THE ZSH USERGUIDE

       A  userguide  is currently in preparation.  It is intended
       to complement the manual, with explanations and  hints  on
       issues  where the manual can be cabbalistic, hierographic,
       or downright mystifying (for  example,  the  word  `hiero­
       graphic' does not exist).  It can be viewed in its current
       state at http://sunsite.dk/zsh/Guide/.   At  the  time  of
       writing,  chapters  dealing  with  startup files and their
       contents and the new completion  system  were  essentially
       complete.


INVOCATION OPTIONS

       The  following  flags  are  interpreted  by the shell when
       invoked to determine where the shell  will  read  commands
       from:

       -c     Take  the  first  argument as a command to execute,
              rather than reading commands from a script or stan­
              dard  input.   If  any further arguments are given,
              the first one is assigned to $0, rather than  being
              used as a positional parameter.

       -i     Force shell to be interactive.

       -s     Force  shell  to  read  commands  from the standard
              input.  If the -s flag is not present and an  argu­
              ment  is  given,  the first argument is taken to be
              the pathname of a script to execute.

       After the first one or two arguments have  been  appropri­
       ated  as  described  above,  the  remaining  arguments are
       assigned to the positional parameters.

       For further options, which are common  to  invocation  and
       the set builtin, see zshoptions(1).

       Options  may be specified by name using the -o option.  -o
       acts like a single-letter option, but  takes  a  following
       string as the option name.  For example,

              zsh -x -o shwordsplit scr

       runs the script scr, setting the XTRACE option by the cor­
       responding letter `-x' and  the  SH_WORD_SPLIT  option  by
       name.   Options  may  be  turned  off  by name by using +o
       instead of -o.  -o can be stacked up with  preceding  sin­
       gle-letter  options,  so  for example `-xo shwordsplit' or
       `-xoshwordsplit' is equivalent to `-x -o shwordsplit'.

       Options may also be specified by name in GNU  long  option
       style, `--option-name'.  When this is done, `-' characters
       in the option name are permitted: they are translated into

       --sh-word-split' invokes zsh with the SH_WORD_SPLIT option
       turned  on.   Like  other  option syntaxes, options can be
       turned off by replacing the initial `-' with a  `+';  thus
       `+-sh-word-split'  is  equivalent to `--no-sh-word-split'.
       Unlike other option syntaxes, GNU-style long options  can­
       not  be  stacked  with  any  other options, so for example
       `-x-shwordsplit' is an error, rather  than  being  treated
       like `-x --shwordsplit'.

       The  special  GNU-style  option `--version' is handled; it
       sends to standard output the shell's version  information,
       then  exits  successfully.   `--help'  is also handled; it
       sends to standard output a list of  options  that  can  be
       used when invoking the shell, then exits successfully.

       Option  processing  may  be  finished,  allowing following
       arguments that start with `-' or `+' to be treated as nor­
       mal  arguments, in two ways.  Firstly, a lone `-' (or `+')
       as an argument by itself  ends  option  processing.   Sec­
       ondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'), which may be spec­
       ified on its own (which is the standard  POSIX  usage)  or
       may be stacked with preceding options (so `-x-' is equiva­
       lent to `-x --').  Options are not permitted to be stacked
       after `--' (so `-x-f' is an error), but note the GNU-style
       option form discussed above, where `--shwordsplit' is per­
       mitted and does not end option processing.

       Except when the sh/ksh emulation single-letter options are
       in effect, the option `-b' (or `+b') ends option  process­
       ing.  `-b' is like `--', except that further single-letter
       options can be stacked after the `-b' and will take effect
       as normal.


COMPATIBILITY

       Zsh tries to emulate sh or ksh when it is invoked as sh or
       ksh respectively; more precisely, it looks  at  the  first
       letter  of the name by which it was invoked, excluding any
       initial `r' (assumed to stand for  `restricted'),  and  if
       that  is  `s'  or `k' it will emulate sh or ksh.  Further­
       more, if invoked as su (which happens on  certain  systems
       when  the  shell is executed by the su command), the shell
       will try to find an alternative name from the SHELL  envi­
       ronment variable and perform emulation based on that.

       In sh and ksh compatibility modes the following parameters
       are not special and not initialized by  the  shell:  ARGC,
       argv,  cdpath,  fignore,  fpath, HISTCHARS, mailpath, MAN­
       PATH, manpath, path,  prompt,  PROMPT,  PROMPT2,  PROMPT3,
       PROMPT4, psvar, status, watch.

       The  usual  zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed.

       file.   If  the ENV environment variable is set on invoca­
       tion, $ENV is sourced  after  the  profile  scripts.   The
       value  of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion, command
       substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being inter­
       preted  as  a  pathname.   Note that the PRIVILEGED option
       also affects the execution of startup files.

       The following options are set if the shell is  invoked  as
       sh   or  ksh:  NO_BAD_PATTERN,  NO_BANG_HIST,  NO_BG_NICE,
       NO_EQUALS,        NO_FUNCTION_ARGZERO,         GLOB_SUBST,
       NO_GLOBAL_EXPORT,       NO_HUP,      INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS,
       KSH_ARRAYS,     NO_MULTIOS,     NO_NOMATCH,     NO_NOTIFY,
       POSIX_BUILTINS,     NO_PROMPT_PERCENT,     RM_STAR_SILENT,
       SH_FILE_EXPANSION,       SH_GLOB,       SH_OPTION_LETTERS,
       SH_WORD_SPLIT.      Additionally    the    BSD_ECHO    and
       IGNORE_BRACES options are set if zsh  is  invoked  as  sh.
       Also,  the  KSH_OPTION_PRINT,  LOCAL_OPTIONS, PROMPT_BANG,
       PROMPT_SUBST and SINGLE_LINE_ZLE options are set if zsh is
       invoked as ksh.


RESTRICTED SHELL

       When the basename of the command used to invoke zsh starts
       with the letter `r' or the `-r'  command  line  option  is
       supplied  at  invocation,  the  shell  becomes restricted.
       Emulation mode is determined after  stripping  the  letter
       `r'  from the invocation name.  The following are disabled
       in restricted mode:

       ·      changing directories with the cd builtin

       ·      changing or unsetting the PATH, path,  MODULE_PATH,
              module_path,  SHELL, HISTFILE, HISTSIZE, GID, EGID,
              UID,     EUID,      USERNAME,      LD_LIBRARY_PATH,
              LD_AOUT_LIBRARY_PATH,         LD_PRELOAD        and
              LD_AOUT_PRELOAD parameters

       ·      specifying command names containing /

       ·      specifying command pathnames using hash

       ·      redirecting output to files

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

       ·      using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process' argu­
              ment and environment space

       ·      using the ARGV0 parameter to override  argv[0]  for
              external commands

       ·      turning off restricted mode with set +r or unsetopt
              RESTRICTED

       startup  files.   The  startup files should set up PATH to
       point to a directory  of  commands  which  can  be  safely
       invoked  in the restricted environment.  They may also add
       further restrictions by disabling selected builtins.

       Restricted mode can also be activated any time by  setting
       the  RESTRICTED  option.  This immediately enables all the
       restrictions described above even if the shell  still  has
       not processed all startup files.


STARTUP/SHUTDOWN FILES

       Commands  are  first read from /etc/zshenv; this cannot be
       overridden.  Subsequent behaviour is modified by  the  RCS
       and  GLOBAL_RCS  options;  the  former affects all startup
       files, while the second only affects  those  in  the  /etc
       directory.   If  one of the options is unset at any point,
       any subsequent startup file(s) of the  corresponding  type
       will  not  be  read.   It  is  also possible for a file in
       $ZDOTDIR to re-enable GLOBAL_RCS. Both RCS and  GLOBAL_RCS
       are set by default.

       Commands  are  then  read  from  $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv.  If the
       shell is a login shell, commands are read from  /etc/zpro­
       file  and  then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile.  Then, if the shell is
       interactive, commands are read from  /etc/zshrc  and  then
       $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc.   Finally, if the shell is a login shell,
       /etc/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.

       When a login shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout  and
       then  /etc/zlogout  are read.  This happens with either an
       explicit exit via the  exit  or  logout  commands,  or  an
       implicit  exit  by  reading end-of-file from the terminal.
       However, if the shell terminates due to  exec'ing  another
       process,  the  logout  files are not read.  These are also
       affected by the RCS and  GLOBAL_RCS  options.   Note  also
       that  the  RCS option affects the saving of history files,
       i.e. if RCS is unset when the shell exits, no history file
       will be saved.

       If  ZDOTDIR  is  unset, HOME is used instead.  Those files
       listed above as being in /etc may be in another directory,
       depending on the installation.

       As  /etc/zshenv  is  run  for  all instances of zsh, it is
       important that it be kept as small as possible.   In  par­
       ticular,  it is a good idea to put code that does not need
       to be run for every single shell behind a test of the form
       `if  [[  -o  rcs ]]; then ...' so that it will not be exe­
       cuted when zsh is invoked with the `-f' option.

       Any of these files may be pre-compiled with  the  zcompile
       builtin  command (see zshbuiltins(1)).  If a compiled file
       exists  (named  for  the  original  file  plus  the   .zwc

       compiled file will be used instead.

       $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv
       $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile
       $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
       $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin
       $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout
       ${TMPPREFIX}*   (default is /tmp/zsh*)
       /etc/zshenv
       /etc/zprofile
       /etc/zshrc
       /etc/zlogin
       /etc/zlogout    (installation-specific - /etc is the
              default)


SEE ALSO

       sh(1), csh(1), tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1)

       IEEE  Standard for information Technology - Portable Oper­
       ating System Interface (POSIX) - Part 2: Shell and  Utili­
       ties, IEEE Inc, 1993, ISBN 1-55937-255-9.


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