ZSH(1)							      General Commands Manual							    ZSH(1)

NAME

       zsh - the Z shell

SYNOPSIS

       Because zsh contains many features, the zsh manual has been split into a number of sections:

       zsh	    Zsh overview (this section)
       zshmisc	    Anything not fitting into the other sections
       zshexpn	    Zsh command and parameter expansion
       zshparam     Zsh parameters
       zshoptions   Zsh options
       zshbuiltins  Zsh built-in functions
       zshzle	    Zsh command line editing
       zshcompwid   Zsh completion widgets
       zshcompsys   Zsh completion system
       zshcompctl   Zsh completion control
       zshmodules   Zsh loadable modules
       zshzftpsys   Zsh built-in FTP client
       zshall	    Meta-man page containing all of the above

DESCRIPTION

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

AUTHOR

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

AVAILABILITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MAILING LISTS

       Zsh has 3 mailing lists:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE ZSH FAQ

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

THE ZSH WEB PAGE

       Zsh  has  a web page which is located at http://www.zsh.org/.  This is maintained by Karsten Thygesen <karthy@zsh.org>, of SunSITE Denmark.
       The contact address for web-related matters is <webmaster@zsh.org>.

THE ZSH USERGUIDE

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

INVOCATION OPTIONS

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

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

       -i     Force shell to be interactive.

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

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

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

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

	      zsh -x -o shwordsplit scr

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

       Options	may also be specified by name in GNU long option style, `--option-name'.  When this is done, `-' characters in the option name are
       permitted: they are translated into `_', and thus ignored.  So, for example, `zsh  --sh-word-split'  invokes  zsh  with	the  SH_WORD_SPLIT
       option turned on.  Like other option syntaxes, options can be turned off by replacing the initial `-' with a `+'; thus `+-sh-word-split' is
       equivalent to `--no-sh-word-split'.  Unlike other option syntaxes, GNU-style long options cannot be stacked with any other options, so  for
       example `-x-shwordsplit' is an error, rather than being treated like `-x --shwordsplit'.

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

       Option processing may be finished, allowing following arguments that start with `-' or `+' to be treated as normal arguments, in two  ways.
       Firstly,  a  lone  `-'  (or  `+') as an argument by itself ends option processing.  Secondly, a special option `--' (or `+-'), which may be
       specified on its own (which is the standard POSIX usage) or may be stacked with preceding options (so `-x-'  is	equivalent  to	`-x  --').
       Options	are  not  permitted  to  be  stacked after `--' (so `-x-f' is an error), but note the GNU-style option form discussed above, where
       `--shwordsplit' is permitted and does not end option processing.

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

COMPATIBILITY

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

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

       The usual zsh startup/shutdown scripts are not executed.  Login shells source /etc/profile followed by $HOME/.profile.  If the ENV environ-
       ment variable is set on invocation, $ENV is sourced after the profile scripts.  The value of ENV is subjected to parameter expansion,  com-
       mand  substitution, and arithmetic expansion before being interpreted as a pathname.  Note that the PRIVILEGED option also affects the exe-
       cution of startup files.

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

RESTRICTED SHELL

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

       o      changing directories with the cd builtin

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

       o      specifying command names containing /

       o      specifying command pathnames using hash

       o      redirecting output to files

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

       o      using jobs -Z to overwrite the shell process' argument and environment space

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

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

       These  restrictions  are enforced after processing the startup files.  The startup files should set up PATH to point to a directory of com-
       mands which can be safely invoked in the restricted environment.  They may also add further restrictions by disabling selected builtins.

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

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

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

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

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

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

       Any of these files may be pre-compiled with the zcompile builtin command (see zshbuiltins(1)).  If a compiled file exists  (named  for  the
       original file plus the .zwc extension) and it is newer than the original file, the compiled file will be used instead.

FILES

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

SEE ALSO

       sh(1),  csh(1),	tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1), zshbuiltins(1), zshcompwid(1), zshcompsys(1), zshcompctl(1), zshexpn(1), zshmisc(1), zsh-
       modules(1), zshoptions(1), zshparam(1), zshzle(1)

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

zsh 4.0.6							  August 14, 2002							    ZSH(1)