zsh - the Z shell

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

zsh Zsh overview (this section) zshbuiltins Zsh built-in functions zshcompctl Zsh completion control zshexpn Zsh command and parameter expansion zshparam Zsh parameters zshzle Zsh command line editing zshoptions Zsh options zshmisc Currently everything else zshall Meta-man page containing all of the above

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 comand line editing, builtin spelling correction, programmable command completion, shell functions (with autoloading), a history mechanism, and a host of other features.

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. The remaining arguments are assigned to the positional parameters. The following flags are interpreted by the shell when invoked:

-c string Read commands from string.

-i

Force shell to be interactive.

-s

Read command from the standard input.

Commands are first read from %zshenv%. If the RCS option is unset within %zshenv%, all other initialization files are skipped. Otherwise, commands are read from $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv. (If ZDOTDIR is unset, HOME is used instead). If the first character of argument zero passed to the shell is -, or if the -l flag is present, then the shell is assumed to be a login shell, and commands are read from /etc/zsh30/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile. Then, if the shell is interactive, commands are read from %zshrc% and then $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc. Finally, if the shell is a login shell, /etc/zsh30/zlogin and $ZDOTDIR/.zlogin are read.

$ZDOTDIR/.zshenv

$ZDOTDIR/.zprofile

$ZDOTDIR/.zshrc

$ZDOTDIR/.zlogin

$ZDOTDIR/.zlogout

${TMPPREFIX}* (default is /tmp/zsh*)

%zshenv%

/etc/zsh30/zprofile

%zshrc%

/etc/zsh30/zlogin

/etc/zsh30/zlogout

Zsh was originally written by Paul Falstad <pjf@cts.com>. Zsh is now maintained by the members of the zsh workers mailing list zsh-workers@math.gatech.edu. The development is currently coordinated by Zoltan Hidvegi <hzoli@cs.elte.hu>.

sh(1), csh(1), tcsh(1), rc(1), bash(1), ksh(1), zshbuiltins(1), zshcompctl(1), zshexpn(1), zshparam(1), zshzle(1), zshoptions(1), zshmisc(1).

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