ZSH(1)							      General Commands Manual							    ZSH(1)

NAME

       zsh - the Z shell

OVERVIEW

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

       zsh	    Zsh overview (this section)
       zshroadmap   Informal introduction to the manual
       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
       zshcalsys    Zsh built-in calendar functions
       zshtcpsys    Zsh built-in TCP functions
       zshzftpsys   Zsh built-in FTP client
       zshcontrib   Additional zsh functions and utilities
       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@zsh.org>.  The development is currently coordinated by Peter Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>.  The coordinator can be contacted at	<coordina-
       tor@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/
	      http://www.zsh.org/pub/

       Australia
	      ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub/
	      http://www.zsh.org/pub/

       Denmark
	      ftp://mirrors.dotsrc.org/zsh/

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

       France
	      ftp://nephtys.lip6.fr/pub/unix/shells/zsh/

       Germany
	      ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pub/unix/shells/zsh/

       Hungary
	      ftp://ftp.kfki.hu/pub/packages/zsh/

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

       The up-to-date source code is available via anonymous CVS and Git from Sourceforge.  See http://sourceforge.net/projects/zsh/ for  details.
       A summary of instructions for the CVS and Git archives can be found at http://zsh.sourceforget.net/.

MAILING LISTS

       Zsh has 3 mailing lists:

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

       <zsh-users@zsh.org>
	      User discussions.

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

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

       <zsh-announce-subscribe@zsh.org>
       <zsh-users-subscribe@zsh.org>
       <zsh-workers-subscribe@zsh.org>
       <zsh-announce-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
       <zsh-users-unsubscribe@zsh.org>
       <zsh-workers-unsubscribe@zsh.org>

       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.sourceforge.net/Guide/.  At the time of writing, chapters dealing with startup files and their contents and the
       new completion system were essentially complete.

THE ZSH WIKI

       A `wiki' website for zsh has been created at http://www.zshwiki.org/.  This is a site which can be added to and modified directly by  users
       without any special permission.	You can add your own zsh tips and configurations.

INVOCATION

       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.  It is still possible to specify a script to execute.

       -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.

       If there are any remaining arguments after option processing, and neither of the options -c or -s was supplied, the first argument is taken
       as the file name of a script containing shell commands to be executed.  If the option PATH_SCRIPT is set, and the file name does  not  con-
       tain  a directory path (i.e. there is no `/' in the name), first the current directory and then the command path given by the variable PATH
       are searched for the script.  If the option is not set or the file name contains a `/' it is used directly.

       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/zsh/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 global startup files (those shown here with an path starting
       with a /).  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/zsh/zprofile and then $ZDOT-
       DIR/.zprofile.  Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from /etc/zsh/zshrc and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc.  Finally, if	the  shell
       is a login shell, /etc/zsh/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.

       When  a	login  shell exits, the files $ZDOTDIR/.zlogout and then /etc/zsh/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.  Files listed above as being in /etc may be in another directory, depending on the installation.

       As /etc/zsh/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/zsh/zshenv
       /etc/zsh/zprofile
       /etc/zsh/zshrc
       /etc/zsh/zlogin
       /etc/zsh/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 4.3.17							 February 22, 2011							    ZSH(1)