Table of Contents generated with DocToc
- 26 User Contributions
- 26.1 Description
- 26.2 Utilities
- 26.3 Remembering Recent Directories
- 26.4 Abbreviated dynamic references to directories
- 26.5 Gathering information from version control systems
- 26.6 Prompt Themes
- 26.7 ZLE Functions
- 26.8 Exception Handling
- 26.9 MIME Functions
- 26.10 Mathematical Functions
- 26.11 User Configuration Functions
- 26.12 Other Functions
26 User Contributions
26.1 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 significant of these are documented here. For documentation on other contributed items such as shell functions, look for comments in the function source files.
26.2 Utilities
26.2.1 Accessing On-Line Help
The key sequence ESC h
is normally bound by ZLE to execute the
run-help
widget (see Zsh Line
Editor). This invokes the
run-help
command with the command 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 redefining 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 Functions/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
directory 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-5.8/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
Parameters Used By The
Shell). This should
already be the case if you have a standard zsh installation; if it is
not, copy Functions/Misc/run-help
to an appropriate directory.
26.2.2 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 status 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 compilation for
at least one of the files failed.
If the -p
option is given, the arg
s are interpreted as one or more
sets of arguments for zcompile
, separated by ‘-``-
’. For example:
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 mapping. 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 digests
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
personal 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
arguments.
26.2.3 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-5.8/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
associative 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
Parameters Used By The
Shell). 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.
26.2.4 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 release. Usually it is sufficient to send a description of the problem to one of the zsh mailing lists (see Mailing Lists), 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
distribution, 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 another 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-5.8/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 defaults. 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
reporter
, 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 compdump
function instead (see Completion
System).
-
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-stylecompctl
commands. New completion is covered byfunctions
andzstyles
. -
functions
Output autoloads and function definitions. -
limits
Outputlimit
commands. -
options
Outputsetopt
commands. -
styles
Same aszstyles
. -
variables
Output shell parameter assignments, plusexport
commands for any environment variables. -
zstyles
Outputzstyle
commands.
If the
state
is omitted,all
is assumed.With the exception of ‘
all
’, everystate
can be abbreviated by any prefix, even a single letter; thusa
is the same asaliases
,z
is the same aszstyles
, etc. -
26.2.5 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, Functions, in that they
are automatically 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 question. 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 executed 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, Widgets, 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
,
corresponding 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 -- "$@"
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 array
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
corresponding function to be loaded the first time the hook is called.
The arrays of widgetname
are currently maintained in zstyle
contexts, 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.
26.3 Remembering Recent Directories
The function cdr
allows you to change the working directory to a
previous working directory from a list maintained automatically. It is
similar 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.
26.3.1 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 command you use, the directory to which you change will be remembered in most-recent-first order.
26.3.2 Use
All direct user interaction is via the cdr
function.
The argument to cdr is a number N
corresponding to the N
th 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 argument. 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 preserved, so the first choice is the most recent directory before the current 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.
26.3.3 Options
The behaviour of cdr
may be modified by the following options.
-
-l
lists the numbers and the corresponding directories in abbreviated 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 variablereply
to the current set of directories. Nothing 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); directories are in unabbreviated from 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 extended glob pattern; the pattern needs to be quoted from immediate 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
.
26.3.4 Configuration
Configuration is by means of the styles mechanism that should be
familiar from completion; if not, see the description of the zstyle
command in The zsh/zutil
Module. The context for
setting styles should be ’:chpwd:*’
in case the meaning of the context
is extended in future, for example:
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
(’:completion:*’
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 recognises this, too; see recent-dirs-insert for how to control completion when this option is in use. -
recent-dirs-file
The file where the list of directories is saved. The default is${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.chpwd-recent-dirs
, i.e. this is in your home directory unless you have set the variableZDOTDIR
to point somewhere else. Directory names are saved in$’``...``’
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 directory list, if there are fewer than the maximum number of entries 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 supplemented from the default file.
It is possible to use
zstyle -e
to make the directory configurable 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 directories, else use the default. -
recent-dirs-insert
Used by completion. Ifrecent-dirs-default
is true, then setting this totrue
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 argument was already typed, normal directory completion rather than recent directory completion is done; this is because recent directory completion is expected to be done by cycling through entries menu fashion.If the value of the style is
always
, then only recent directories will be completed; in that case, use thecd
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 results, with recent directories tagged asrecent-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 overwritten. For example, changing from ~pws to ~pws/some/other/dir causes ~pws not to be left on the recent 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/another 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 element can be repeated to add different patterns. For example,’pattern:/tmp(|/*)’
stops/tmp
or its descendants from being added. TheEXTENDED_GLOB
option is always turned on for these patterns.
-
-
recent-dirs-pushd
If set to true,cdr
will usepushd
instead ofcd
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 reason to do this.
26.3.5 Use with dynamic directory naming
It is possible to refer to recent directories using the dynamic
directory 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.
26.3.6 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 preserved 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 directory 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.
26.4 Abbreviated dynamic references to directories
The dynamic directory naming system is described in the subsection
Dynamic named directories of Filename
Expansion. 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 directory
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 abbreviations 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 directory 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, particularly 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 components 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.
26.4.1 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_diretory_name_generic zdn_mywrapper
add-zsh-hook -U zsh_directory_name zdn_mywrapper
26.4.2 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 optional
suffix with a slash followed by a colon and the name of a variable 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
referred 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/$USER/git
and uses the associative array second2
to match
the second component; g
and ga
use the associative array second1
to match the second component.
When expanding a name to a directory, if the first component is not g
or ga
or gs
, it is not an error; the function simply returns 1 so
that a later hook function can be tried. However, matching the first
component commits the function, so if a later component does not match,
an error is printed (though this still does not stop later hooks from
being executed).
For components after the first, a relative path is expected, but note
that multiple levels may still appear. Here is an example of second1
:
local -A second1=(
p myproject
s somproject
os otherproject/subproject/:third
)
The path as found from zdn_top
is extended with the matching
directory, so ~[g:p]
becomes ~/git/myproject
. The slash between is
added automatically (it’s not possible to have a later component modify
the name of a directory already matched). Only os
specifies a variable
for a third component, and there’s no :default:
, so it’s an error to
use a name like ~[g:p:x]
or ~[ga:s:y]
because there’s nowhere to
look up the x
or y
.
The associative arrays need to be visible within this function; the
generic function therefore uses internal variable names beginning
_zdn_
in order to avoid clashes. Note that the variable reply
needs
to be passed back to the shell, so should not be local in the calling
function.
The function does not test whether directories assembled by component actually exist; this allows the system to work across automounted file systems. The error from the command trying to use a non-existent directory should be sufficient to indicate the problem.
26.4.3 Complete example
Here is a full fictitious but usable autoloadable definition of the
example function defined by the code above. So ~[gs:p:s]
expands to
/scratch/$USER/git/myscratchproject/top/srcdir
(with $USER
also
expanded).
local -A zdn_top=(
g ~/git
ga ~/alternate/git
gs /scratch/$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 "$@
It is also possible to use global associative arrays, suitably named, and set the style for the context of your wrapper function to refer to this. Then your set up code would contain the following:
typeset -A zdn_mywrapper_top=(...)
# ... and so on for other associative arrays ...
zstyle ':zdn:zdn_mywrapper:' mapping zdn_mywrapper_top
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook zsh_directory_name_generic zdn_mywrapper
add-zsh-hook -U zsh_directory_name zdn_mywrapper
and the function zdn_mywrapper
would contain only the following:
zsh_directory_name_generic "$@"
26.5 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://savannah.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.
26.5.1 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.
26.5.2 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
orfossil
. 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 tovcs_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 being a CVS checkout, you can setrepo-root-name
tozsh
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-contexts 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 generation 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 revision
string (see branchformat
) to include either or both. It’s only useful
when get-revision
is true. Note, the full 40-character revision id is
not available (except when using the use-simple
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-
context. 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 enable
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
contains
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 $QUILT_PATCHES
environment variable. See
Quilt Support for details.
quiltcommand
When quilt
itself is called in quilt support, the value of this style
is used as the command name.
check-for-changes
If enabled, this style causes the %c
and %u
format escapes to show
when the working directory has uncommitted changes. The strings
displayed by these escapes can be controlled via the stagedstr
and
unstagedstr
styles. The only backends that currently support this
option are git
, hg
, and bzr
(the latter two only support
unstaged).
For this style to be evaluated with the hg
backend, the get-revision
style needs to be set and the use-simple
style needs to be unset. The
latter is the default; the former is not.
With the bzr
backend, lightweight checkouts only honor this style if
the use-server
style is set.
Note, the actions taken if this style is enabled are potentially expensive (read: they may be slow, depending on how big the current repository is). Therefore, it is disabled by default.
check-for-staged-changes
This style is like check-for-changes
, but it never checks the worktree
files, only the metadata in the .${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 command
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-default
installation directories. Assume, git
is installed in /usr/bin but
your sysadmin installed a newer version in /usr/local/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 environment variable
P4CONFIG
to a file name and have corresponding files in the root
directories of each Perforce client. See comments 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
and
hg
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 revision 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 number 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
${backend_misc[patches]}
(also if a set-patch-format
hook is used).
get-unapplied
This boolean style controls whether a backend should attempt to gather a list of unapplied patches (for example with Mercurial Queue patches).
Used by the quilt
and hg
backends.
The default values for these styles in all contexts are:
-
formats
" (%s)-[%b]%u%c-" -
actionformats
" (%s)-[%b|%a]%u%c-" -
branchformat
"%b:%r" (for bzr, svn, svk and hg) -
nvcsformats
"" -
hgrevformat
"%r:%h" -
max-exports
2 -
enable
ALL -
disable
(empty list) -
disable-patterns
(empty list) -
check-for-changes
false -
check-for-staged-changes
false -
stagedstr
(string: "S") -
unstagedstr
(string: "U") -
command
(empty string) -
use-server
false -
use-simple
false -
get-revision
false -
get-mq
true -
get-bookmarks
false -
use-prompt-escapes
true -
debug
false -
hooks
(empty list) -
use-quilt
false -
quilt-standalone
false -
quilt-patch-dir
empty - use$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 inactionformats
. -
%i
The current revision number or identifier. Forhg
thehgrevformat
style may be used to customize the output. -
%c
The string from thestagedstr
style if there are staged changes in the repository. -
%u
The string from theunstagedstr
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
isrepoXY
. -
%S
A subdirectory within a repository. If$PWD
is/foo/bar/repoXY/beer/tasty
,%S
isbeer/tasty
.
-
%m
A "misc" replacement. It is at the discretion of the backend to decide what this replacement expands to.The
hg
andgit
backends use this expando to display patch information.hg
sources patch information from themq
extensions;git
from in-progressrebase
andcherry-pick
operations and from thestgit
extension. Thepatch-format
andnopatch-format
styles control the generated string. The former is used when at least one patch from the patch queue has been applied, and the latter otherwise.The
hg
backend displays bookmark information in this expando (in addition tomq
information). See theget-mq
andget-bookmarks
styles. Both of these styles may be enabled at the same time. If both are enabled, both resulting strings will be shown separated 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 quilt series’patch-format
string. Theset-patch-format
hook andnopatch-format
style are honoured.See Quilt Support below for details.
In branchformat
these replacements are done:
-
%b
The branch name. -
%r
The current revision number or thehgrevformat
style forhg
.
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 theapplied-string
hook. -
%u
The number of unapplied patches; may be overridden by theunapplied-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 activemq
guards (hg
backend). -
%G
The number of activemq
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.
26.5.3 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.
26.5.4 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:default:``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
directory 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-patches
’ 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
activate the get-unapplied
style in the appropriate context.
vcs_info
allows for very detailed control over how the gathered
information is presented (see
Configuration and Hooks in
vcs_info), all of which are documented below.
Note there are a number of other patch tracking systems that work on top
of a certain version control 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
detection 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
different 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
‘always’/‘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 active.
If quilt-standalone
is an associative array, the keys are taken as
directory 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.
26.5.5 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 unregistered. 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 last ${vcs_info_msg_*_}
value. Takes into account the
value of the use-prompt-escapes
style in
’:vcs_info:formats:command:-all-’
. It also only prints max-exports
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 restarting the shell.
All functions named VCS_INFO_*
are for internal use only.
26.5.6 Variable Description
${vcs_info_msg_``N``_}
(Note the trailing underscore)
WhereN
is an integer, e.g.,vcs_info_msg_0_
. These variables are the storage for the informational message the lastvcs_info
call has assembled. These are strongly connected to theformats
,actionformats
andnvcsformats
styles described above. Those styles are lists. The first member of that list gets expanded into${vcs_info_msg_0_}
, the second into${vcs_info_msg_1_}
and the Nth into${vcs_info_msg_N-1_}
. (See themax-exports
style above.)
All variables named VCS_INFO_*
are for internal use only.
26.5.7 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
executed 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 changedret
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 exceptstart-up
.
Finally, the full list of currently available hooks:
-
start-up
Called after startingvcs_info
but before the VCS in this directory is determined. It can be used to deactivatevcs_info
temporarily if necessary. Whenret
is set to1
,vcs_info
aborts and does nothing; when set to2
,vcs_info
sets up everything as if no version control were active and exits. -
pre-get-data
Same asstart-up
but after the VCS was detected. -
gen-hg-bookmark-string
Called in the Mercurial backend when a bookmark string is generated; theget-revision
andget-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-bookmark-string]}
will be used in the%m
escape informats
andactionformats
and will be available in the globalbackend_misc
array as${backend_misc[bookmarks]}
. -
gen-applied-string
Called in thegit
(withstgit
or during rebase or merge), andhg
(withmq
) backends and inquilt
support when theapplied-string
is generated; theuse-quilt
zstyle must be true forquilt
(themq
andstgit
backends are active by default).This hook gets the names of all applied patches which
vcs_info
collected so far in the opposite order, which means that the first argument is the top-most patch and so forth.When setting
ret
to non-zero, the string in${hook_com[applied-string]}
will be available as%p
in thepatch-format
andnopatch-format
styles. This hook is, in concert withset-patch-format
, responsible for%
-escaping that value for use in the prompt. (See Oddities.) -
gen-unapplied-string
Called in thegit
(withstgit
or during rebase), andhg
(withmq
) backend and inquilt
support when theunapplied-string
is generated; theget-unapplied
style must be true.This hook gets the names of all unapplied patches which
vcs_info
collected so far in order, which means that the first argument is the patch next-in-line to be applied and so forth.When setting
ret
to non-zero, the string in${hook_com[unapplied-string]}
will be available as%u
in thepatch-format
andnopatch-format
styles. This hook is, in concert withset-patch-format
, responsible for%
-escaping that value for use in the prompt. (See Oddities.) -
gen-mqguards-string
Called in thehg
backend whenguards-string
is generated; theget-mq
style must be true (default).This hook gets the names of any active
mq
guards.When setting
ret
to non-zero, the string in${hook_com[guards-string]}
will be used in the%g
escape in thepatch-format
andnopatch-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 information.The ‘
hook_com
’ keys available are as for theset-message
hook. -
post-quilt
Called after thequilt
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 information (the ‘.pc’ directory) or the string"-nopc-"
if that directory 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 byvcs_info
and any change will be used directly when the actual replacement is done.If
ret
is set to non-zero, the string in${hook_com[branch-replace]}
will be used unchanged as the ‘%b
’ replacement in the variables set byvcs_info
. -
set-hgrev-format
Called before a ‘hgrevformat
’ is set. The only argument to the hook is the format that is configured at this point.The ‘
hook_com
’ keys considered are ‘hash
’ and ‘localrev
’. They are set to the values figured out so far byvcs_info
and any change will be used directly when the actual replacement is done.If
ret
is set to non-zero, the string in${hook_com[rev-replace]}
will be used unchanged as the ‘%i
’ replacement in the variables set byvcs_info
. -
pre-addon-quilt
This hook is used whenvcs_info
’s quilt functionality is active in "addon" mode (quilt used on top of a real version control system). 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 inpatch-format
andnopatch-format
styles with patch queue systems such as quilt, mqueue and the like.This hook is used in the
git
,hg
andquilt
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-replace]}
will be used unchanged instead of an expanded format frompatch-format
ornopatch-format
.This hook is, in concert with the
gen-applied-string
orgen-unapplied-string
hooks if they are defined, responsible for%
-escaping the finalpatch-format
value for use in the prompt. (See Oddities.) -
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 variable name, the second is the currently configuredformats
oractionformats
.There are a number of ‘
hook_com
’ keys, that are used here: ‘action
’, ‘branch
’, ‘base
’, ‘base-name
’, ‘subdir
’, ‘staged
’, ‘unstaged
’, ‘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 byvcs_info
and any change will be used directly when the actual replacement is done.Since this hook is triggered multiple times (once for each configured
formats
oractionformats
), each of the ‘hook_com
’ keys mentioned above (except for themiscN
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${hook_com[message]}
will be used unchanged as the message byvcs_info
.
If all of this sounds rather confusing, take a look at
Examples and also in the
Misc/vcs_info-examples
file in the Zsh source. They contain some
explanatory code.
26.5.8 Examples
Don’t use vcs_info
at all (even though it’s in your prompt):
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable NONE
Disable the backends for bzr
and svk
:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr svk
Disable everything but bzr
and svk
:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable bzr svk
Provide a special formats for git
:
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' formats ' GIT, BABY! [%b]'
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' actionformats ' GIT ACTION! [%b|%a]'
All %x
expansion in all sorts of formats (formats
, actionformats
,
branchformat
, you name it) are done using the ‘zformat
’ builtin from
the ‘zsh/zutil
’ module. That means you can do everything with these
%x
items what zformat supports. In particular, if you want something
that is really long to have a fixed width, like a hash in a mercurial
branchformat, you can do this: %12.12i
. That’ll shrink the 40
character hash to its 12 leading characters. The form is actually
‘%``min``.``max``x
’. More is possible. See The zsh/zutil
Module for details.
Use the quicker bzr
backend
zstyle ':vcs_info:bzr:*' use-simple true
If you do use use-simple
, please report if it does
‘the-right-thing[tm]’.
Display the revision number in yellow for bzr
and svn
:
zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%{'${fg[yellow]}'%}:%r'
If you want colors, 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):
alias vcsi='vcs_info command; vcs_info_lastmsg'
This way, you can even define different formats for output via
vcs_info_lastmsg
in the ’:vcs_info:*:command:*
’ 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
message 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
function 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() {
[[ ${hook_com[vcs_orig]} == svn ]] && hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}
Simple enough. And it could have even been simpler, if only we had
registered our function in a less generic context. If we do it only in
the ‘svn
’ backend’s context, we don’t need to test which the active
backend is:
zstyle ':vcs_info:svn+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion
function +vi-svn2subversion() {
hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}
And finally a little more elaborate example, that uses a hook to create
a customised bookmark string for the hg
backend.
Again, we start off by registering a function:
zstyle ':vcs_info:hg+gen-hg-bookmark-string:*' hooks hgbookmarks
And then we define the ‘+vi-hgbookmarks
’ function:
function +vi-hgbookmarks() {
# The default is to connect all bookmark names by
# commas. This mixes things up a little.
# Imagine, there's one type of bookmarks that is
# special to you. Say, because it's *your* work.
# Those bookmarks look always like this: "sh/*"
# (because your initials are sh, for example).
# This makes the bookmarks string use only those
# bookmarks. If there's more than one, it
# concatenates them using commas.
# The bookmarks returned by `hg' are available in
# the function's positional parameters.
local s="${(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 available 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
.
26.6 Prompt Themes
26.6.1 Installation
You should make sure all the functions from the Functions/Prompts
directory 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
26.6.2 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 atheme
argument, the theme with that name is set as the current theme. The available themes are determined at run time; use the-l
option to see a list. The specialtheme
‘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 bytheme
, or all themes if notheme
is given. -
-h
Show help for the theme named bytheme
, or for theprompt
function if notheme
is given. -
-s
Settheme
as the current theme and save state.
-
-
prompt_``theme``_setup
Each availabletheme
has a setup function which is called by theprompt
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.
26.6.3 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 defined 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.
26.6.4 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
assignments 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 arrayprompt_opts
may be assigned any of"bang"
,"cr"
,"percent"
,"sp"
, and/or"subst"
as values. The corresponding setopts (promptbang
, etc.) are turned on, all other prompt-related options are turned off. Theprompt_opts
array preserves setopts even beyond the scope oflocaloptions
, should your function need that. -
Modify precmd and preexec
Use ofadd-zsh-hook
is recommended. Theprecmd
andpreexec
hooks are automatically adjusted if 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 callprompt_cleanup command
where
command
should be suitably quoted. If your theme is ever disabled or replaced by another,command
is executed witheval
. You may declare more than one such cleanup hook. -
Define preview
Define or autoload a functionprompt_name_preview
to display a simulated version of your prompt. A simple default previewer is defined bypromptinit
for themes that do not define their own. This preview function is called by ‘prompt -p
’. -
Provide help
Define or autoload a functionprompt_name_help
to display documentation or help text for your theme. This help function is called by ‘prompt -h
’.
26.7 ZLE Functions
26.7.1 Widgets
These functions all implement user-defined ZLE widgets (see Zsh Line
Editor) 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 functions described in the next section. The following is sufficient: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 functionselect-word-style
, the way words are matched can be altered.select-word-match
is intended to be used as a text object in vi mode but with custom word styles. For comparison, the widgets described in Text Objects use fixed definitions of words, compatible with thevim
editor.The simplest way of configuring the functions is to use
select-word-style
, which can either be called as a normal function with the appropriate argument, or invoked as a user-defined widget 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 character is examined.
-
bash
Word characters are alphanumeric characters only. -
normal
As in normal shell operation: word characters are alphanumeric characters plus any characters present in the string given by the parameter$WORDCHARS
. -
shell
Words are complete shell command arguments, possibly including 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 considered a word. The stylesubword-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 described in The zsh/zutil Module. Each style is looked up in the context:zle:``widget
wherewidget
is the name of the user-defined widget, not the name of the function implementing it, so in the case of the definitions supplied byselect-word-style
the appropriate contexts are:zle:forward-word
, and so on. The functionselect-word-style
itself always defines styles for the context ‘:zle:*
’ which can be overridden by more specific (longer) patterns 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 stylesword-chars
orword-class
. -
specified
Similar tonormal
, 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 generating shell command arguments. In addition, special tokens 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
$WORDCHARS
, but the value in the parameter can be overridden by the styleword-chars
, which works in exactly the same way as$WORDCHARS
. In addition, the styleword-class
uses character class syntax to group characters and takes precedence overword-chars
if both are set. Theword-class
style does not include the surrounding brackets of the character class; for example, ‘-:[:alnum:]
’ is a validword-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 fortranspose-words
and similar functions. If set, it gives a count of characters starting at the cursor position which will not be considered part of the word and are treated as space, regardless of what they actually are. For example, ifzstyle ':zle:transpose-words' skip-chars 1
has been set, and
transpose-words-match
is called with the cursor on theX
offoo``X``bar
, whereX
can be any character, then the resulting expression isbar``X``foo
.Finer grained control can be obtained by setting the style
word-context
to an array of pairs of entries. Each pair of entries consists of apattern
and asubcontext
. The shell argument the cursor is on is matched against eachpattern
in turn until one matches; if it does, the context is extended by a colon and the correspondingsubcontext
. Note that the test is made against the original word on the line, with no stripping of quotes. Special handling is done between words: the current context is examined and if it contains the stringbetween
the word is set to a single space; else if it is contains the stringback
, 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 theforward-word
widget. If it is set to true, thenforward-word
skips any non-word-characters, followed by any non-word-characters: this is similar to the behaviour of other word-orientated widgets, and also that used by other editors, however it differs from the standard zsh behaviour. When usingselect-word-style
the widget is set in the context:zle:*
totrue
if the word style isbash
andfalse
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
backward-kill-space-word
usingbackward-kill-word-match
, the generic widget implementingbackward-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 parameter
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
norword-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
depending 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:transpose-words
.The word matching and all the handling of
zstyle
settings is actually implemented by the functionmatch-words-by-style
. This can be used to create new user-defined widgets. The calling function should set the local parametercurcontext
to:zle:``widget
, create the local parametermatched_words
and callmatch-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 theskip-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 tomatch-words-by-style
as an associative array (local -A matched_words
), then the seven values given above should be retrieved from it as elements namedstart
,word-before-cursor
,ws-before-cursor
,ws-after-cursor
,word-after-cursor
,ws-after-word
, andend
. In addition the elementis-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 thews-after-cursor
element) and 0 otherwise. This form is recommended 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 functionmatch-word-context
. This should not usually need to be called directly. -
-
bracketed-paste-magic
Thebracketed-paste
widget (see Miscellaneous in Widgets) inserts pasted text literally into the editor buffer rather than interpret it as keystrokes. This disables some common usages where the self-insert widget is replaced in order to accomplish some extra processing. An example is the contributedurl-quote-magic
widget described below.The
bracketed-paste-magic
widget is meant to replacebracketed-paste
with a wrapper that re-enables these self-insert actions, and other actions as selected by zstyles. Therefore this widget is installed withautoload -Uz bracketed-paste-magic zle -N bracketed-paste bracketed-paste-magic
Other than enabling some widget processing,
bracketed-paste-magic
attempts to replicatebracketed-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 active 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 ‘
undefined-key
’, any unknown sequences are discarded from the pasted text. -
inactive-keys
The inverse ofactive-widgets
, a list of key sequences that always useself-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 normal values and side-effects, and full history is available, so for examplepaste-init
functions may move words fromBUFFER
intoPASTED
to make those words visible to theactive-widgets
.A non-zero return from a
paste-init
function does not prevent the paste itself from proceeding.Loading
bracketed-paste-magic
definesbackward-extend-paste
, a helper function for use inpaste-init
.zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic paste-init \ backward-extend-paste
When a paste would insert into the middle of a word or append text to a word already on the line,
backward-extend-paste
moves the prefix fromLBUFFER
intoPASTED
so that theactive-widgets
see the full word so far. This may be useful withurl-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 theactive-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 definesquote-paste
, a helper function for use inpaste-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 thequote-style
value. To forcibly turn off the built-in numeric prefix quoting ofbracketed-paste
, use:zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic:finish quote-style \ none
Important: During
active-widgets
processing of the paste (afterpaste-init
and beforepaste-finish
),BUFFER
starts empty and history is restricted, so cursor motions, etc., may not pass outside of the pasted content. Text assigned toBUFFER
by the active widgets is copied back intoPASTED
beforepaste-finish
. -
-
copy-earlier-word
This widget works like a combination ofinsert-last-word
andcopy-prev-shell-word
. Repeated invocations of the widget retrieve earlier words on the relevant history line. With a numeric argumentN
, insert theN
th 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 being 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 asinsert-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 interesting 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 definingkill-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 functionsup-line-or-search
anddown-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 ofhistory-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 inksh
.bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line
-
expand-absolute-path
Expand the file name under the cursor to an absolute path, resolving 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 widgetshistory-beginning-search-backward-end
andhistory-beginning-search-forward-end
. These commands work by first calling the corresponding builtin widget (see History Control) and then moving the cursor to the end of the line. The original cursor position is remembered and restored before calling the builtin widget a second time, so that the same search is repeated to look farther 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 history, as forhistory-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 distinction 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 functionhistory-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 incremented by one. With a numeric argument, the number is incremented by the amount of the argument (decremented if the numeric argument is negative). The shell parameterincarg
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
orDEL
. Pressing return accepts the completion so far and returns you to normal editing (that is, the command line is not immediately executed). You can hitTAB
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 command 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 examplehttp://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 keyboard; 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 advantages over use of aFor best results zsh should have been built with support for multibyte characters (configured with
–enable-multibyte
); however, 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 inserted into the command line at the cursor position. (The conversion 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 Unicode characters using their hexadecimal character number.The set of accented characters is reasonably complete up to Unicode character U+0180, the set of special characters less so. However, it is very sporadic from that point. Adding new characters is easy, however; see the function
define-composed-chars
. Please send any additions tozsh-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 accent.
-
!
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 ofi
no dot, or in the case ofL
andl
a centered dot. -
:
Diaeresis (Umlaut). -
c
Cedilla. -
_
Underline, however there are currently no underlined characters. -
/
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 appropriate sequences. In addition, a set of two letter codes not in RFC 1345 are available for the double-width characters corresponding to ASCII characters from
!
to~
(0x21 to 0x7e) by preceding the character with^
, for example^A
for a double-widthA
.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 alphabet:-
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 quotations 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 expansions 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 toinsert-unicode-char
. The digits are then turned into the corresponding Unicode character. For example, if the widget is bound to^XU
, the character sequence ‘^XU 4 c ^XU
’ insertsL
(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
predict-on
This set of functions implements predictive typing using history search. Afterpredict-on
, typing characters causes the editor to look backward in the history for the first line beginning with what you have typed so far. Afterpredict-off
, editing returns to normal for the line found. In fact, you often don’t even need to usepredict-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, editing in the middle of a line is liable to confuse prediction; see thetoggle
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 advance 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 needing 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 thebackward-delete-char
widget. You do not need to bind this yourself. -
insert-and-predict
Implements predictive typing by replacing theself-insert
widget. You do not need to bind this yourself. -
predict-off
Turns off predictive typing.
Although you
autoload
only thepredict-on
function, it is necessary to create a keybinding forpredict-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 widget, 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,execute-named-cmd
). The value is then returned to the calling function 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$REPLY
.One option is available: ‘
-k
num
’ specifies thatnum
characters are to be read instead of a whole line. The line editor is not invoked recursively in this case, so depending on the terminal settings the input may not be visible, and only the input keys are placed in$REPLY
, not the entire buffer. Note that unlike theread
builtinnum
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
executed-named-cmd
and similar functions while reading a value. -
replace-argument
,replace-argument-edit
The functionreplace-argument
can be used to replace a command line argument in the current command line or, if the current command 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 replaced; 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 aszle -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 initially empty.
-
replace-string
,replace-pattern
replace-string-again
,replace-pattern-again
The functionreplace-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 everywhere 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 replace-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 effect. 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 theN
th 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, respecting the setting of the optionRE_MATCH_PCRE
(see the description of the functionregexp-replace
below). The special replacement 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
) totrue
. In addition, a positive numeric argument forces the previous values to be offered, a negative or zero argument forces them not to be.The function
replace-string-again
can be used to repeat the previous replacement; no prompting is done. As withreplace-string
, if the name of the widget contains the word ‘pattern
’ or ‘regex
’, pattern or regular expression matching is performed, else a literal string replacement. Note that the previous source and replacement 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 thatundo
will cycle through changes to the replacement 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 interactively reads input from the keyboard. However, the input being typed is concealed and a string of asterisks (‘*
’) is shown instead. The value is saved in the parameter$INVISIBLE
to which a reference is inserted into the editing buffer at the restored cursor position. If the read was aborted by a keyboard break (typically^G
) or another escape from editing such aspush-line
,$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$INVISIBLE
that is inserted into the buffer. The default is to open with${
, thenINVISIBLE
, and close with}
, but many other effects are possible. -
smart-insert-last-word
This function may replace theinsert-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
, except that words in comments are ignored whenINTERACTIVE_COMMENTS
is set.Otherwise, the rightmost ‘‘interesting’’ word from the previous command is found and inserted. The default definition of ‘‘interesting’’ is that the word contains at least one alphabetic character, slash, or backslash. This definition may be overridden by use of the
match
style. The context used to look up the style is the widget name, so usually the context is:insert-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 history. Whenauto-previous
is unset or false (the default), the widget must be invoked repeatedly in order to search earlier history 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-inself-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 current word is not already in quotes, a backslash is inserted before the input character.Styles to control quoting behavior:
-
url-metas
This style is looked up in the context ‘:url-quote-magic:``scheme
’ (wherescheme
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 alsourl-seps
. -
url-seps
Likeurl-metas
, but lists characters that should be considered command separators, redirections, history references, 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 (seeurl-local-schema
), only theurl-seps
characters are quoted; theurl-metas
are left alone, allowing them to affect command-line parsing, completion, etc. The default values are a literal ‘noglob
’ plus (when thezsh/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 ‘:urlglobber
’, 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 specified relative to a web-server-defined document root. The defaults are "ftp
" and "file
". -
url-other-schema
Likeurl-local-schema
, but lists all other URI schema upon whichurlglobber
andurl-quote-magic
should act. If the URI on the command line does not have a scheme appearing either in this list or inurl-local-schema
, it is not magically quoted. The default values are "http
", "https
", and "ftp
". When a scheme appears both here and inurl-local-schema
, it is quoted differently depending on whether the command name appears inurl-globbers
.
Loading
url-quote-magic
also defines a helper function ‘urlglobber
’ 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 replaced 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 command from within a user-defined widget.
-
which-command
This function is a drop-in replacement for the builtin widgetwhich-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 executed.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 iswhence -c
. -
zcalc-auto-insert
This function is useful together with thezcalc
function described in 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 variableZCALC_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 meaningful.When not in zcalc, the key simply inserts the symbol itself.
26.7.2 Utility Functions
These functions are useful in constructing widgets. They should be
loaded with ‘autoload -U
function
’ and called as indicated from
user-defined widgets.
split-shell-arguments
This function splits the line currently being edited into shell
arguments and whitespace. The result is stored in the array reply
. The
array contains all the parts of the line in order, starting with any
whitespace before the first argument, and finishing 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 elements 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
enclosing function.
See the function modify-current-argument
, described below, for an
example of how to call this function.
modify-current-argument
[ expr-using-``$ARG
| func
]
This function provides a simple method of allowing user-defined widgets to modify the command line argument under the cursor (or immediately to the left of the cursor if the cursor is between arguments).
The argument can be an expression which when evaluated operates on the
shell parameter ARG
, which will have been set to the command line
argument under the cursor. The expression should be suitably quoted to
prevent it being evaluated too early.
Alternatively, if the argument does not contain the string ARG
, it is
assumed to be a shell function, to which the current command line
argument is passed as the only argument. The function should set the
variable REPLY
to the new value for the command line argument. If the
function returns non-zero status, so does the calling function.
For example, a user-defined widget containing the following code converts the characters in the argument under the cursor into all upper case:
modify-current-argument '${(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.
26.7.3 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 context ‘: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 then
th occurrence of the character just inserted, wheren
is the number of times that character appeared in the word before completion was attempted. In short, this has the effect of leaving the cursor after the character just typed even if the completion 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:incremental
’.
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-insert-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 generated the matches (without the leading underscore). -
%l
When thelist
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 thelist
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 function.
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 situations 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 messages.
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 determine
whether the widget
style is used.
26.8 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
functions.
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 function 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 possible 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 Complex
Commands. This is important as
only this construct provides the required support for exceptions. A
typical example is as follows.
{
# "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 preferable.
{
# ... 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
EXCEPTION
remains set and may be incorrectly recognised as the name of
an exception if a shell error subsequently occurs. Adding unset EXCEPTION
at the start of the outermost layer of any code that uses
exception handling will eliminate this problem.
26.9 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 autoloaded
and run. This allows files with extensions to be treated 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 overwritten.
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 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
mappings without altering them. Suffixes to list (which may contain
pattern characters that should be quoted from immediate interpretation
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
copiousoutput
, see man page mailcap(4).
The functions use the following styles, which are defined with the
zstyle
builtin command (The zsh/zutil
Module). 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 always 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 executed in its current form, with no
handler. This is useful for files which might have suffixes is not set,
the pattern *(*) *(/)
is used; handler, and the option 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 the MIME
handler matches execute-as-is
. This is useful for file 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 executed as MIME
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 Modifiers; 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 contains a ‘/
’. The
full context is :mime:.``suffix``:
, as described 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
handle-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 handler
.
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 extended glob patterns for arguments that will be passed to the
handler even if they don’t exist. If it is not explicitly 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
handler
.
handler
Specifies a handler for a suffix; the suffix is given by the context as
:mime:.``suffix``:
, and the format of the handler is exactly that in
mailcap
. Note in particular the ‘.
’ and trailing colon to
distinguish this use of the context. 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 copiousoutput
.
mailcap
A list of files in the format of ~/.mailcap
and /etc/mailcap
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 following elements, in descending order of priority; later entries will be used if earlier entries are unable to resolve the entries being compared. If none of the tests resolve the entries, the first entry encountered is retained.
-
files
The order of files (entries in themailcap
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 priority is an integer from 0 to 9 with the default value being 5. -
flags
The test given by themailcap-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 default list which consists of
those two files. The context is :mime:
. A +
in the list will be
replaced by the default 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 following
should be checked if attempting to execute a file by extension .``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 installed 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.
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 decide 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 values of elements may be-
running
Use a GUI browser that is already running when an X Window display is available. The browsers listed in thex-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 understand the Mozilla syntax for opening a URL remotely. -
x
Start a new GUI browser when an X Window display is available. Search for the availability of one of the browsers listed in thex-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 thetty-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 recommended). 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 isfirefox mozilla netscape opera konqueror
. -
tty-browsers
An array similar tox-browsers
, except that it gives browsers to use when no X Window display is available. The default iselinks 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 thex-browsers
ortty-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 using running browsers are equivalent to the valueskfmclient openURL %u
for Konqueror,firefox -new-tab %u
for Firefox,opera -newpage %u
for Opera, and%b -remote "openUrl(%u)"
for all others.
26.10 Mathematical Functions
zcalc
[ -erf
] [ expression
... ]
A reasonably powerful calculator based on zsh’s arithmetic evaluation facility. The syntax is similar to that of formulae in most programming languages; see Arithmetic Evaluation 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 function
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 zsh/mathfunc
Module. The mathematical
functions correspond to the raw system libraries, so trigonometric
functions are evaluated using radians, 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 removed, the function
prompts for more input (the prompt is preceded 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 variables 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
- 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 contained in an array namedstack
with the most recent value in${stack[1]}
. -
Operators and functions
If the line entered matches an operator (+
,-
,*
,/
,**
,^
,|
or&
) or a function supplied by thezsh/mathfunc
library, 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 arguments. The result is then pushed into${stack[1]}
. -
Expressions
Other expressions are evaluated normally, printed, and added to the stack as numeric values. The syntax within expressions on a single line is normal shell arithmetic (not RPN). -
Stack listing
If an integer follows the option-r
with no space, then on every evaluation that many elements of the stack, where available, are printed instead of just the most recent result. Hence, for example,zcalc -r4
shows$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-functionpop
causes the most recent element of the stack to be popped. A ‘>
’ on its own has the same effect. -
>``ident
The expression>
followed (with no space) by a shell identifier causes the most recent element of the stack to be popped and assigned to the variable with that name. The variable is local to thezcalc
function. -
<``ident
The expression<
followed (with no space) by a shell identifier 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 standardzcalc
prompt) is put on the stack. -
Exchange:
xy
The pseudo-functionxy
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
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 digits. -
:sci
digits
Scientific notation, corresponding to the printf%g
output format with the precision given bydigits
. This produces either fixed point or exponential notation depending on the value output. -
:fix
digits
Fixed point notation, corresponding to the printf%f
output format with the precision given bydigits
. -
:eng
digits
Exponential notation, corresponding to the printf%E
output format with the precision given bydigits
. -
: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...
Executeline...
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 nobody
) delete it.:function
may be abbreviated to:func
or simply:f
. Thename
may contain the same characters as a shell function name. The function is defined usingzmathfuncdef
, see below.Note that
zcalc
takes care of all quoting. Hence for example::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 examplecube
function. If there are optional arguments only the mandatory 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 tobase
. 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 themselves 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. Arguments
can be of different types (ints and floats).
Not to be confused with the zsh/mathfunc
module, described in The
zsh/mathfunc Module.
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 contain
references to position parameters $1
, $2
, ... to refer to mandatory
parameters and ${1:-``defvalue``}
... to refer to optional parameters.
Note that the forms must be strictly adhered to for the function to
calculate the correct number of arguments. The implementation is held in
a shell function named zsh_math_func_``mathfunc
; usually the user will
not need to refer to the shell function directly. Any existing function
of the same name is silently replaced.
With one argument, remove the mathematical function mathfunc
as well
as the shell function implementation.
With no arguments, list all mathfunc
functions in a form The functions
have not necessarily been defined by zmathfuncdef
.
26.11 User Configuration Functions
The zsh/newuser
module comes with a function to aid in configuring
shell options for new users. If the module is installed, this function
can also be run by hand. It is available even if the module’s default
behaviour, namely running the function for a new user logging in without
startup files, is inhibited.
-
zsh-newuser-install
[-f
]
The function presents the user with various options for customizing their initialization scripts. Currently only~/.zshrc
is handled.$ZDOTDIR/.zshrc
is used instead if the parameterZDOTDIR
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 function 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 overridden.
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 improvements 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.
26.12 Other Functions
There are a large number of helpful functions in the Functions/Misc
directory of the zsh distribution. Most are very simple and do not
require documentation here, but a few are worthy of special mention.
26.12.1 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 (Prompt Themes). You
seldom should need to run colors
more than once.
The eight base colors are: black
, red
, green
, yellow
, blue
,
magenta
, cyan
, and white
. Each of these has codes for foreground
and background. In addition there are seven intensity attributes:
bold
, faint
, standout
, underline
, blink
, reverse
, and
conceal
. 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 intensities.
The associative arrays are:
-
color
colour
Map all the color names to their integer codes, and integer 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 thebg-
form for backgrounds.Although it is a misnomer to call them ‘colors’, these arrays 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 properties. Thefg
sequences change the color without changing 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 properties. Thebg
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 distribution,
but can be created by linking zed
to the name fned
in some directory
in your fpath
.
is-at-least
needed
[ present
]
Perform a greater-than-or-equal-to comparison of two strings having the
format of a zsh version number; that is, a string of numbers 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-number 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 The zsh/zpty
Module). It behaves exactly
like the standard nslookup
except that it provides customizable
prompts (including a right-side prompt) and completion of nslookup
commands, 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 are used, unless the
option RE_MATCH_PCRE
has been set, in which case Perl-compatible
regular expressions are used (this requires 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 $MATCH
will be replaced by the text matched by the
pattern.
The return status is 0 if at least one match was performed, else 1.
run-help
cmd
This function is designed to be invoked by the run-help
ZLE widget, in
place of the default alias. See ‘Accessing On-Line Help’
(Utilities) for setup instructions.
In the discussion which follows, if cmd
is a file system path, it is
first reduced to its rightmost component (the file name).
Help is first sought by looking for a file named cmd
in the directory
named by the HELPDIR
parameter. If no file is found, an assistant
function, alias, or command named run-help-cmd
is sought. If found,
the assistant is executed with the rest of the current command line
(everything after the command name cmd
) as its arguments. When neither
file nor assistant is found, the external command ‘man
cmd
’ is run.
An example assistant for the "ssh" command:
run-help-ssh() {
emulate -LR zsh
local -a args
# Delete the "-l username" option
zparseopts -D -E -a args l:
# Delete other options, leaving: host command
args=(${@:#-*})
if [[ ${#args} -lt 2 ]]; then
man ssh
else
run-help $args[2]
fi
}
Several of these assistants are provided in the Functions/Misc
your
search path, in order to be found and used by run-help
.
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 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 automatically 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
collection of strings (often file names) that become the arguments of
the command
, analogous to the standard input of xargs
. Finally, 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 filenames
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 circumstances.
The options -i
, -I
, -l
, -L
, and -n
differ slightly from their
usage 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 man page xargs(1) (but
note the difference in function between zargs
and xargs
) or run
zargs
with the -``-help
option.
zed
[ -f
[ -x
num
] ] name
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 functions 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.
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 bindings 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 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
’ (note, however,
that because of zed’s rebindings you will have to type ^j
at the end
instead of the return key), 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 with ‘zed -f
’.
While zed-set-file-name
is running, zed uses the keymap
zed-normal-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’ (Utilities).
zmv
[ -finqQsvwW
] [ -C
| -L
| -M
| -{p
|P
} program
]
[ -o
optstring
]
``srcpat
dest
Move (usually, rename) files matching the pattern srcpat
to
corresponding 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 ignored. 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 $f
can be referrred
to in the second (replacement) argument. This makes it possible to use
variable substitution to alter the argument; see examples below.
Options:
-
-f
Force overwriting of destination files. Not currently passed down to themv
/cp
/ln
command due to vagaries of implementations (but you can use-o-f
to do that). -
-i
Interactive: show each line to be executed and ask the user whether to execute it. ‘Y
’ or ‘y
’ will execute it, anything else will skip it. Note that you just need to type one character. -
-n
No execution: print what would happen, but don’t do it. -
-q
Turn bare glob qualifiers off: now assumed by default, so this has no effect. -
-Q
Force bare glob qualifiers on. Don’t turn this on unless you are actually using glob qualifiers in a pattern. -
-s
Symbolic, passed down toln
; only works with-L
. -
-v
Verbose: print each command as it’s being executed. -
-w
Pick out wildcard parts of the pattern, as described above, and implicitly add parentheses for referring to them. -
-W
Just like-w
, with the addition of turning wildcards in the replacement pattern into sequential${1}
..${N}
references. -
-C
-L
-M
Forcecp
,ln
ormv
, respectively, regardless of the name of the function. -
-p
program
Callprogram
instead ofcp
,ln
ormv
. Whatever it does, it should at least understand the formprogram -- oldname newname
where
oldname
andnewname
are filenames generated byzmv
.program
will be split into words, so might be e.g. the name of an archive tool plus a copy or rename subcommand. -
-P
program
As-p
program
, except thatprogram
does not accept a following-``-
to indicate the end of options. In this case filenames must already be in a sane form for the program in question. -
-o
optstring
Theoptstring
is split into words and passed down verbatim to thecp
,ln
ormv
command called to perform the work. It should probably begin with a ‘-
’.
Further examples:
zmv -v '(* *)' '${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 distribution.
zrecompile
See ‘Recompiling Functions’ (Utilities).
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
subcontext
may be the empty string to re-use the first context
unchanged.
26.12.2 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, respectively. The usual
expansions for the PS1
and RPS1
parameters may be used (see Prompt
Expansion).
This document was generated on February 15, 2020 using
texi2html 5.0.
Zsh version 5.8, released on February 14, 2020.