Aliases

Zsh knows three different types of aliases:

Aliases for Commands

This is the regular alias, acting just like the one of bash:

alias less=/usr/share/vim/vim64/macros/less.sh

call without parameters to display defined aliases:

alias

Global Aliases

Global aliases act just like the ones described before, but with one exception: they don't have to be given at the beginning of the line. So e.g.:

alias -g G='|grep'

can be used like this:

dmesg G eth

and will be expanded to the following:

dmesg |grep eth

Suffix Aliases

This is quite crazy stuff: when entering just an existing filename as “command”, zsh can expand it as an alias by checking for the suffix of the filename. A simple example says more than a thousand words, so here it is:

alias -s pdf=xpdf

basically makes all files ending with “pdf” being opened using xpdf. Reminds me of the “double-click everything” behaviour of a certain operating system, but is better at the same time. So e.g. specifying the following on the commandline:

.pdf

will expand to:

xpdf *.pdf

this is because alias expansion is being applied before globbing.

Escape Sequences and Key Combinations

Create them using the builtin bindkey:

bindkey ^A "beginning-of-line"

to view all defined bindkeys, just call without arguments just like with alias:

bindkey

zsh assists you in finding the right name for a given key combination through ^V:

^V<key combination>

History Expansion

Although the syntax is quite identical to the one bash uses, the expansion may not be specified at the beginning of the line.

Command	Description
`'Display`'
history	show the full history
`'Expansion`'
!!	expands to the last entered command
!1	expands to the first entered command
!-2	expands to the command entered right before the last one
!!:1	expands to the second word of the last command
`'Substitution`'
!!:s	bla	blub	expands to the last command with “bla” being substituted by “blub”
	bla	blub	same as above, but a lot shorter

Colour Escape Sequences

I created a file defining variables for the relevant colours:

fg_green=$'%{\e[0;32m%}'
fg_blue=$'%{\e[0;34m%}'
fg_cyan=$'%{\e[0;36m%}'
fg_red=$'%{\e[0;31m%}'
fg_brown=$'%{\e[0;33m%}'
fg_purple=$'%{\e[0;35m%}'

fg_light_gray=$'%{\e[0;37m%}'
fg_dark_gray=$'%{\e[1;30m%}'
fg_light_blue=$'%{\e[1;34m%}'
fg_light_green=$'%{\e[1;32m%}'
fg_light_cyan=$'%{\e[1;36m%}'
fg_light_red=$'%{\e[1;31m%}'
fg_light_purple=$'%{\e[1;35m%}'
fg_no_colour=$'%{\e[0m%}'

fg_white=$'%{\e[1;37m%}'
fg_black=$'%{\e[0;30m%}'

and use the builtin source to include the file just before defining the prompt (or using colour escapes in general).

Killer Features

First things first.

Prompt

There is builtin support for right-aligned prompts in zsh. So one can have a prompt consisting of a left and a right part:

PROMPT="${fg_light_blue}%d %# ${fg_no_colour}"
RPROMPT=" ${fg_light_green}%n@%M${fg_no_colour}"

Which will look like this: <br> Zsh.jpg

String Handling

Addressing inside strings is just like with Python:

a="ich hab nix gemacht.";a[1]='I';a[-1]='. (Bart Simpson)'

Hashes

Take the following example:

typeset -A ass_array; ass_array=(one 1 two 2 three 3 four 4)

Then

print $ass_array[one]

returns the first element's value, 1.

print ${(k)ass_array}

returns the keys,

print ${(v)ass_array}

the values.

zcompile

The builtin zcompile can be used to precompile zsh source files for faster loading.

Option	Description
-R	create a “static” binary, being loaded for each process (recommended for small files)
-M	create a “shared” binary, being mapped into memory and shared among different processes

Precompiling All Zsh Functions

cd /usr/share/zsh/<version>/funtions
for i in **/*(.) ; do
	zcompile $i
done
cd /usr/share/zsh/site/functions
for i in *; do
	zcompile $i
done

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