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ZSHROADMAP(1)                                                                                  ZSHROADMAP(1)



NAME
       zshroadmap - informal introduction to the zsh manual

       The  Zsh  Manual,  like the shell itself, is large and often complicated.  This section of the manual
       provides some pointers to areas of the shell that are likely to be  of  particular  interest  to  new
       users, and indicates where in the rest of the manual the documentation is to be found.


WHEN THE SHELL STARTS
       When  it starts, the shell reads commands from various files.  These can be created or edited to cus-tomize customize
       tomize the shell.  See the section Startup/Shutdown Files in zsh(1).

       If no personal initialization files exist for the current user, a function is run to help you  change
       some of the most common settings.  It won't appear if your administrator has disabled the zsh/newuser
       module.  The function is designed to be self-explanatory.  You can run it by hand with `autoload  -Uz
       zsh-newuser-install;  zsh-newuser-install  -f'.  See also the section User Configuration Functions in
       zshcontrib(1).


INTERACTIVE USE
       Interaction with the shell uses the builtin Zsh Line Editor, ZLE.  This is  described  in  detail  in
       zshzle(1).

       The  first  decision  a user must make is whether to use the Emacs or Vi editing mode as the keys for
       editing are substantially different.  Emacs editing mode is probably more natural for  beginners  and
       can be selected explicitly with the command bindkey -e.

       A  history  mechanism  for  retrieving  previously typed lines (most simply with the Up or Down arrow
       keys) is available; note that, unlike other shells, zsh will not save  these  lines  when  the  shell
       exits  unless  you  set appropriate variables, and the number of history lines retained by default is
       quite small (30 lines).  See the description of the shell variables (referred to in the documentation
       as parameters) HISTFILE, HISTSIZE and SAVEHIST in zshparam(1).

       The  shell  now  supports the UTF-8 character set (and also others if supported by the operating sys-tem). system).
       tem).  This is (mostly) handled transparently by the shell, but the degree  of  support  in  terminal
       emulators is variable.  There is some discussion of this in the shell FAQ, http://zsh.dotsrc.org/FAQ/
       .  Note in particular that for combining characters to be handled the option COMBINING_CHARS needs to
       be set.


   Completion
       Completion  is  a feature present in many shells. It allows the user to type only a part (usually the
       prefix) of a word and have the shell fill in the rest.  The completion system in zsh is programmable.
       For  example,  the shell can be set to complete email addresses in arguments to the mail command from
       your ~/.abook/addressbook; usernames, hostnames, and even remote paths in arguments to  scp,  and  so
       on.   Anything  that  can be written in or glued together with zsh can be the source of what the line
       editor offers as possible completions.

       Zsh has two completion systems, an old, so called compctl completion (named after the builtin command
       that  serves  as  its complete and only user interface), and a new one, referred to as compsys, orga-nized organized
       nized as library of builtin and user-defined functions.  The two systems differ  in  their  interface
       for  specifying  the  completion  behavior.  The new system is more customizable and is supplied with
       completions for many commonly used commands; it is therefore to be preferred.

       The completion system must be enabled explicitly when the shell starts.   For  more  information  see
       zshcompsys(1).


   Extending the line editor
       Apart from completion, the line editor is highly extensible by means of shell functions.  Some useful
       functions are provided with the shell; they provide facilities such as:

       insert-composed-char
              composing characters not found on the keyboard

       match-words-by-style
              configuring what the line editor considers a word when moving or deleting by word

       history-beginning-search-backward-end, etc.
              alternative ways of searching the shell history

       replace-string, replace-pattern
              functions for replacing strings or patterns globally in the command line

       edit-command-line
              edit the command line with an external editor.

       See the section `ZLE Functions' in zshcontrib(1) for descriptions of these.


OPTIONS
       The shell has a large number of options for changing its behaviour.  These cover all aspects  of  the
       shell; browsing the full documentation is the only good way to become acquainted with the many possi-bilities. possibilities.
       bilities.  See zshoptions(1).


PATTERN MATCHING
       The shell has a rich set of patterns which are available for file matching (described in the documen-tation documentation
       tation as `filename generation' and also known for historical reasons as `globbing') and for use when
       programming.  These are described in the section `Filename Generation' in zshexpn(1).

       Of particular interest are the following patterns that are not commonly supported by other systems of
       pattern matching:

       **     for matching over multiple directories

       ~, ^   the ability to exclude patterns from matching when the EXTENDED_GLOB option is set

       (...)  glob qualifiers, included in parentheses at the end of the pattern, which select files by type
              (such as directories) or attribute (such as size).


GENERAL COMMENTS ON SYNTAX
       Although the syntax of zsh is in ways similar to the Korn shell, and therefore more remotely  to  the
       original  UNIX  shell,  the Bourne shell, its default behaviour does not entirely correspond to those
       shells.  General shell syntax is introduced in the section `Shell Grammar' in zshmisc(1).

       One commonly encountered difference is that variables substituted onto the command line are not split
       into  words.   See the description of the shell option SH_WORD_SPLIT in the section `Parameter Expan-sion' Expansion'
       sion' in zshexpn(1).  In zsh, you can either explicitly request the splitting (e.g. ${=foo})  or  use
       an  array  when  you want a variable to expand to more than one word.  See the section `Array Parame-ters' Parameters'
       ters' in zshparam(1).


PROGRAMMING
       The most convenient way of adding enhancements to the shell is typically by writing a shell  function
       and  arranging  for  it to be autoloaded.  Functions are described in the section `Functions' in zsh-misc(1). zshmisc(1).
       misc(1).  Users changing from the C shell and its relatives should notice that aliases are less  used
       in zsh as they don't perform argument substitution, only simple text replacement.

       A  few general functions, other than those for the line editor described above, are provided with the
       shell and are described in zshcontrib(1).  Features include:

       promptinit
              a prompt theme system for changing prompts easily, see the section `Prompt Themes'


       zsh-mime-setup
              a MIME-handling system which dispatches commands according to the suffix of a file as done  by
              graphical file managers

       zcalc  a calculator

       zargs  a version of xargs that makes the find command redundant

       zmv    a command for renaming files by means of shell patterns.



zsh 4.3.9                                     October 30, 2008                                 ZSHROADMAP(1)

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