Z shell (zsh)

The Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with many improvements, including some features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh.

Zsh was created by Paul Falstad in 1990 while he was a student at Princeton University. It combines features from both ksh and tcsh, offering functionality such as programmable command-line completion, extended file globbing, improved variable/array handling, and themeable prompts.
— Wikipedia

Shell is the interface between a user and the system itself. Which parts it consists of:

+----------------+
|  Program/User  |
+----------------+
|  Shell         |
+----------------+
|  Kernel        |
+----------------+
|  Hardware      |
+----------------+

ZSH vi mode

History

• ctrl-p : Previous command in history
• ctrl-n : Next command in history
• / : Search backward in history
• n : Repeat the last /

Vim edition

In Normal mode you can use vv to edit current command line in an editor (e.g. vi/vim/nvim…), because it is bound to the Visual mode.

You can change the editor by ZVM_VI_EDITOR option, by default it is $EDITOR.

Movement

• $ : To the end of the line
• ^ : To the first non-blank character of the line
• 0 : To the first character of the line
• w : [count] words forward
• W : [count] WORDS forward
• e : Forward to the end of word [count] inclusive
• E : Forward to the end of WORD [count] inclusive
• b : [count] words backward
• B : [count] WORDS backward
• t{char} : Till before [count]‘th occurrence of {char} to the right
• T{char} : Till before [count]‘th occurrence of {char} to the left
• f{char} : To [count]‘th occurrence of {char} to the right
• F{char} : To [count]‘th occurrence of {char} to the left
• ; : Repeat latest f, t, F or T [count] times
• , : Repeat latest f, t, F or T in opposite direction

Insertion

• i : Insert text before the cursor
• I : Insert text before the first character in the line
• a : Append text after the cursor
• A : Append text at the end of the line
• o : Insert new command line below the current one
• O : Insert new command line above the current one

Surround

There are 2 kinds of keybinding mode for surround operating, default is classic mode, you can choose the mode by setting ZVM_VI_SURROUND_BINDKEY option.

1. classic mode (verb→s→surround)

• S" : Add " for visual selection
• ys" : Add " for visual selection
• cs"' : Change " to '
• ds" : Delete "

2. s-prefix mode (s→verb→surround)

• sa" : Add " for visual selection
• sd" : Delete "
• sr"' : Change " to '

Note that key sequences must be pressed in fairly quick succession to avoid a timeout. You may extend this timeout with the ZVM_KEYTIMEOUT option

How to select surround text object?

• vi" : Select the text object inside the quotes
• va( : Select the text object including the brackets

Then you can do any operation for the selection:

1. Add surrounds for text object

• vi" → S[ or sa[ ⇒ "object" → "[object]"
• va" → S[ or sa[ ⇒ "object" → ["object"]

2. Delete/Yank/Change text object

• di( or vi( → d
• ca( or va( → c
• yi( or vi( → y

Increment and Decrement

In normal mode, typing ctrl-a will increase to the next keyword, and typing ctrl-x will decrease to the next keyword. The keyword can be at the cursor, or to the right of the cursor (on the same line). The keyword could be as below:

• Number (Decimal, Hexadecimal, Binary…)
• Boolean (True or False, Yes or No, On or Off…)
• Weekday (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…)
• Month (January, February, March, April, May…)
• Operator (&&, ||, ++, —, , !, and, or…)
• …

For example:

1. Increment

• 9 ⇒ 10
• aa99bb ⇒ aa100bb
• aa100bc ⇒ aa101bc
• 0xDe ⇒ 0xdf
• 0Xdf ⇒ 0Xe0
• 0b101 ⇒ 0b110
• 0B11 ⇒ 0B101
• true ⇒ false
• yes ⇒ no
• on ⇒ off
• T ⇒ F
• Fri ⇒ Sat
• Oct ⇒ Nov
• Monday ⇒ Tuesday
• January ⇒ February
• + ⇒ -
• ++ ⇒ --
• == ⇒ !=
• !== ⇒ ===
• && ⇒ ||
• and ⇒ or
• …

2. Decrement:

• 100 ⇒ 99
• aa100bb ⇒ aa99bb
• 0 ⇒ -1
• 0xdE0 ⇒ 0xDDF
• 0xffFf0 ⇒ 0xfffef
• 0xfffF0 ⇒ 0xFFFEF
• 0x0 ⇒ 0xffffffffffffffff
• 0Xf ⇒ 0Xe
• 0b100 ⇒ 0b010
• 0B100 ⇒ 0B011
• True ⇒ False
• On ⇒ Off
• Sun ⇒ Sat
• Jan ⇒ Dec
• Monday ⇒ Sunday
• August ⇒ July
• / ⇒ *
• ++ ⇒ --
• == ⇒ !=
• !== ⇒ ===
• || ⇒ &&
• or ⇒ and
• …

Kill process by pattern

Use pkill -f, which matches the pattern for any part of the command line

pkill -f my_pattern

Just in case it doesn’t work, try to use this one as well:

pkill -9 -f my_pattern

Source

• Kill process by pattern

Use pkill -f, which matches the pattern for any part of the command line

pkill -f my_pattern

Just in case it doesn’t work, try to use this one as well:

TODO: doesn’t work in z-shell pkill -9 -f my_pattern

Source

Search current line in ZSH (vi mode)

To search across the line, you can use f and F to search for the next and previous occurrence of a character on the current line.

You can combine this with ; and , to repeat the search in the same and the opposite direction and 0 to jump to the beginning of the line and then do search.

0f{char} - search for the first occurrence of {char} on the current line 5f{char} - search for the fifth occurrence of {char} on the current line 0f{char}; - search for the first occurrence of {char} on the current line and then repeat the search in the same direction.

Keyboard bindings

I think it’s very similar to GNU Readline.

List current shortcuts sh bindkey -L

Moving

ctrl + a::Goto BEGINNING of command line ctrl + e::Goto END of command line

ctrl + b::move back one character ctrl + f::move forward one character

alt + f::move cursor FORWARD one word alt + b::move cursor BACK one word

ctrl + xx::Toggle between the start of line and current cursor position

??? ctrl + ] + x::Moves the cursor forward to the next occurance of x (like vim’s f) alt + ctrl + ] + x::Where x is any character, moves the cursor backwards to the previous occurance of x

Edit / Other

ctrl + d::Delete the character under the cursor (del) alt + d::delete the word FROM the cursor ctrl + w::delete the word BEFORE the cursor alt + [Backspace]::delete PREVIOUS word

ctrl + h::Delete the previous character before cursor (backspace)

ctrl + u::Clear all / cut BEFORE cursor ctrl + k::Clear all / cut AFTER cursor

??? ctrl + y::paste (if you used a previous command to delete)

ctrl + i::command completion like Tab

ctrl + l::Clear the screen (same as clear command) ctrl + c::kill whatever is running ctrl + d::Exit shell (same as exit command when cursor line is empty) ctrl + z::Place current process in background

ctrl + x ctrl + u::Undo the last changes. ctrl+ _ does the same

??? ctrl + t::Swap the last two characters before the cursor ??? esc + t::Swap last two words before the cursor

alt + t::swap current word with previous ??? esc + . ??? esc + _ alt + <::Move to the first line in the history alt + >::Move to the end of the input history, i.e., the line currently being entered alt + ?::display the file/folder names in the current path as help alt + *::print all the file/folder names in the current path as parameter alt + .::print the LAST ARGUMENT (ie “vim file1.txt file2.txt” will yield “file2.txt”) alt + c::capitalize the first character to end of word starting at cursor (whole word if cursor is at the beginning of word) alt + u::make uppercase from cursor to end of word alt + l::make lowercase from cursor to end of word alt + n alt + p::Non-incremental reverse search of history. alt + r::Undo all changes to the line alt + ctl + e::Expand command line. ~[TAB][TAB]::List all users $[TAB][TAB]::List all system variables @[TAB][TAB]::List all entries in your /etc/hosts file [TAB]::Auto complete cd -::change to PREVIOUS working directory History command::description ctrl + r::Search backward starting at the current line and moving ‘up’ through the history as necessary crtl + s::Search forward starting at the current line and moving ‘down’ through the history as necessary ctrl + p::Fetch the previous command from the history list, moving back in the list (same as up arrow) ctrl + n::Fetch the next command from the history list, moving forward in the list (same as down arrow) ctrl + o::Execute the command found via Ctrl+r or Ctrl+s ctrl + g::Escape from history searching mode !!::Run PREVIOUS command (ie sudo !!) !vi::Run PREVIOUS command that BEGINS with vi !vi:p::Print previously run command that BEGINS with vi !n::Execute nth command in history !$::Last argument of last command !^::First argument of last command ^abc^xyz::Replace first occurance of abc with xyz in last command and execute it Kill a job n = job number, to list jobs, run jobs

kill %n Example:

kill %1

Use ESC or CTRL-[ to enter Normal mode.

Check also

dotfiles are usually source of interesting Bash snippets and scripts.

GNU Readline for additional keybindings.

External links

• Z Shell Keyboard Shortcuts - Copperlight Writes
• config_manager/xdg_config/zsh/.zshrc at master · tjdevries/config_manager · GitHub