ZSH
Learning Objectives
- Get to know about zsh
- Use it if you must. It is default on macOS, but not the PI
You may use zsh on the PI, but we find it better to just use a default shell such as bash. The reaon we have included it is that it became default on macOS and many are accessing the Pis from the Mac.
Topics covered
Introduction
Z shell (zsh) is an alternative to bash. It is used as an interactive shell or command interpreter. Zsh has been chosen by apple as a replacement for bash. A large number of plugins for zsh is avalable at the Web site Oh My Zsh.
Features of zsh include:
- commandline completion
- global history that can be shared in shells
- build in file globing
- multiline commands
- spell correction
- compatibillity modes to impersonate other shells
- themes for prompts
- in addition to which a wher ecommand
- shortcut to names directories with ~
In principal it does not matter much whcih shell you use as long as you
use to set up your envireonment properly. While bash zupporst
.bash_profile and .bashrc, zsh supports ~/.zprofile and ~/.zshrc
A good overview of the loading process is documented at
Setting up zsh on an older OSX is relatively simple.
$ brew install zsh
To add Oh My Zsh you can do:
$ sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh)"
To chnge the default shell to zsh you can than execute
$ chsh -s $(which zsh)
To activate the shell you can as usal do
$ source ~/.zshrc
However if you start a new terminal, you do not have to do this as it is added automatically.
To use a number of useful plugins, you can activate them with
$ plugins=(osx git colored-man colorize pip python brew zsh-syntax-highlighting zsh-autosuggestions)
If you like to change the theme you can find a large number at
Using zsh on your operating systems
For other operationg systems see
zsh on Windows 10
To install zsh on Windows 10, please look at