The Z shell (Zsh) is a

Unix shell A Unix shell is a command-line Interpreter (computing), interpreter or shell (computing), shell that provides a command line user interface for Unix-like operating systems. The shell is both an interactive command language and a scripting langua ...

that can be used as an

interactive Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but mo ...

shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

and as a

command interpreter A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...

for

shell script A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be scripting languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manip ...

ing. Zsh is an extended

Bourne shell The Bourne shell (sh) is a Shell (computing), shell Command-line interface#Command-line interpreter, command-line interpreter for computer operating systems. The Bourne shell was the default Unix shell, shell for Version 7 Unix. Unix-like syste ...

with many improvements, including some features of

Bash Bash or BASH may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Bash!'' (Rockapella album), 1992 * ''Bash!'' (Dave Bailey album), 1961 * '' Bash: Latter-Day Plays'', a dramatic triptych * ''BASH!'' (role-playing game), a 2005 superhero game * "Bash" ('' ...

, ksh, and

tcsh tcsh ( “tee-see-shell”, “tee-shell”, or as “tee see ess aitch”, tcsh) is a Unix shell based on and backward compatible with the C shell (csh). Shell It is essentially the C shell with programmable command-line completion, command-l ...

History

Paul Falstad wrote the first version of Zsh in 1990 while a student at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

. The name ''zsh'' derives from the name of

Yale Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wor ...

professor Zhong Shao (then a teaching assistant at Princeton University) – Paul Falstad regarded Shao's login-id, "zsh", as a good name for a shell. Zsh was at first intended to be a subset of csh for the Commodore Amiga, but expanded far beyond that. By the time of the release of version 1.0 in 1990 the aim was to be a cross between ksh and tcsh – a powerful "command and programming language" that is well-designed and logical (like ksh), but also built for humans (like tcsh), with all the neat features like spell checking, login/logout watching and termcap support that were "probably too weird to make it into an AT&T product". Zsh is available as a separate package for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

as part of the

UnxUtils UnxUtils is a collection of ports of common GNU Unix-like utilities to native Win32, with executables only depending on the Microsoft C- runtime msvcrt.dll. The collection was last updated externally on April 15, 2003, by Karl M. Syring. The mo ...

collection of

native Native may refer to: People * Jus soli, citizenship by right of birth * Indigenous peoples, peoples with a set of specific rights based on their historical ties to a particular territory ** Native Americans (disambiguation) In arts and entert ...

Win32 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...

ports A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as H ...

of common

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

Unix-like utilities. In 2019,

macOS Catalina macOS Catalina (version 10.15) is the sixteenth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop operating system for Macintosh computers. It is the successor to macOS Mojave and was announced at WWDC 2019 on June 3, 2019 and released to the publ ...

adopted Zsh as the default login shell, replacing the

GPLv2 The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

licensed version of

, and when Bash is run interactively on Catalina, a warning is shown by default. In 2020,

Kali Linux Kali Linux is a Debian-derived Linux distribution designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. It is maintained and funded by Offensive Security. Kali Linux has around 600 penetration-testing programs (tools), including Armitage (a gr ...

adopted Zsh as the default shell since its 2020.4 release.

Features

Features include: * Programmable

command-line completion Command-line completion (also tab completion) is a common feature of command-line interpreters, in which the program automatically fills in partially typed commands. Command line interpreters are programs that allow a user to interact with the u ...

that can help the user type both options and arguments for most used commands, with out-of-the-box support for several hundred commands * Sharing of

command history Command history is a feature in many operating system shells, computer algebra programs, and other software that allows the user to recall, edit and rerun previous commands. Command line history was added to Unix in Bill Joy's C shell of 1978 ...

among all running shells * Extended file globbing allows file specification without needing to run an external program such as

find Find, FIND or Finding may refer to: Computing * find (Unix), a command on UNIX platforms * find (Windows), a command on DOS/Windows platforms Books * ''The Find'' (2010), by Kathy Page * ''The Find'' (2014), by William Hope Hodgson Film and t ...

* Improved

variable Variable may refer to: * Variable (computer science), a symbolic name associated with a value and whose associated value may be changed * Variable (mathematics), a symbol that represents a quantity in a mathematical expression, as used in many ...

array An array is a systematic arrangement of similar objects, usually in rows and columns. Things called an array include: {{TOC right Music * In twelve-tone and serial composition, the presentation of simultaneous twelve-tone sets such that the ...

handling * Editing of multi-line commands in a single buffer * Spelling correction and

autofill Autofill is a function found in some computer applications or programs, typically those containing forms, which prefills a field automatically and can save a user time. A web browser's autofill feature is used to fill out forms with previously en ...

of command names (and optionally arguments, assumed to be file names) * Various compatibility modes, e.g. Zsh can pretend to be a

when run as /bin/sh * Themeable prompts, including the ability to put prompt information on the right side of the screen and have it auto-hide when typing a long command * Loadable modules, providing among other things: full TCP and

Unix domain socket A Unix domain socket aka UDS or IPC socket ( inter-process communication socket) is a data communications endpoint for exchanging data between processes executing on the same host operating system. It is also referred to by its address family AF_U ...

controls, an

FTP The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...

client, and extended math functions. * The built-in where command. Works like the which command but shows all locations of the target command in the directories specified in $PATH rather than only the one that will be used. * Named directories. This allows the user to set up shortcuts such as ~mydir, which then behave the way ~ and ~user do.

Community

A user community website known as "Oh My Zsh" collects third-party plug-ins and themes for the Z shell. As of 2021, their

GitHub GitHub, Inc. () is an Internet hosting service for software development and version control using Git. It provides the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous ...

repository has over 1900 contributors, over 300 plug-ins, and over 140 themes. It also comes with an auto-update tool that makes it easier to keep installed plug-ins and themes updated.

References

External links

* *
ZSH Wiki
* {{Unix Shells Scripting languages

History

Features

Community

See also

References

External links