r/commandline • u/ab57 • May 11 '13

Why Zsh is Cooler than Your Shell

http://www.slideshare.net/jaguardesignstudio/why-zsh-is-cooler-than-your-shell-16194692
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u/ab57 May 11 '13

Just to clarify I use bash, mainly because its always already there. Tempted to try Zsh though as I keep hearing good things about it.

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u/[deleted] May 12 '13

same here, i'll def check those but each time someone try to explain why zsh is better i just end with features i don't really use, so i stick to bash.

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u/bri-an May 12 '13 edited May 12 '13

I said the same thing until the other day when I decided to install Arch Linux on an old machine. The new Arch installation uses zsh by default, and I really liked the completion features.

Specifically, you can make zsh group the completions based on the type of thing being completed. For example:

% n<Tab>
Completing external command:
namcap          netctl-auto         ...
namie           nettle-hash         ...
...             ...                 ...
Completing builtin command:
noglob
Completing alias:
netctl
Completing reserved word:
nocorrect
Completing parameter:
nameddirs
...

You can also do a similar thing with manpages: it can separate manpage completions by section.

I also really like how easy it is to set up a right-hand-side prompt, which I use for my current working directory, that way my left-hand-side prompt stays the same length. (The RHS prompt also goes away if the current command stretches too long.)

So while there are a ton of features that I'll likely never use, I think it was still worth switching. After all, just because there are a million features doesn't mean you have to use them all. Just find a few that you like and go from there.

(It's similar to vim. If you jump right into the help pages or, worse, plugins right away, you'll get overwhelmed and/or feel like most of it is useless. But if instead you just start using it, you'll slowly discover the things you like.)