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THE Z SHELL (ZSH)
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Version
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This is zsh version 3.1 (beta)
Note that this is a beta version. The latest stable version is zsh-3.0.7.
Installing Zsh
--------------
The instructions for compiling zsh are in the file INSTALL. You should
also check the file MACHINES in the subdirectory Etc to see if there
are any special instructions for your particular architecture.
Features
--------
Zsh is a shell with lots of features. For a list of these, see the
file Etc/FEATURES, and for the latest changes see Etc/NEWS. For more
details, see the documentation.
Possible incompatibilities
---------------------------
If you have been using recent versions of zsh 3.1, the following changes in
the shell may affect you:
- The traditional bindings of \M-n (history-search-backward) and
\M-p (history-search-forward) in older versions of zsh have returned,
as has the traditional behaviour of those functions and the functions
up-line-or-search and down-line-or-search. In 3.1.5, the functions
behaved differently and \M-n and \M-p were bound by default to
history-beginning-search-backward and history-beginning-search-forward.
- Prompt truncation behaviour via %<...< and %>...> (or %[<...] etc.) has
changed slightly: the string to be truncated runs to the end of the
prompt or to the next truncation sequence; %<< will turn off truncation.
Previously it only covered individual prompt escapes. So for example the
prompt `%10<...<%~%% ' will now include the `%% ' in the string to be
truncated, and you should change the prompt to `%10<...<%~%<<%% ' to turn
off truncation immediately after the `%~'.
- If for some reason you have `setopt norcs' or `unsetopt rcs' anywhere in
your startup files (e.g. to stop .zlogout being run), this will now
take effect immediately, preventing later startup files from being
run. It is safe to put `setopt norcs' in .zlogin as this is always
the last run.
See the FAQ for a discussion of changes over the longer term.
Documentation
-------------
There are a number of documents about zsh in this distribution:
Doc/Zsh/*.yo The master source for the zsh documentation is written in
yodl. Yodl is a document language written by Karel Kubat.
It is not required by zsh but but it is a nice program so
you might want to get it anyway, especially if you are a
zsh developer. It can be downloaded from
ftp://ftp.lilypond.org/pub/yodl/
Doc/zsh*.1 Man pages in nroff format. These will be installed
by "make install.man" or "make install". By default,
these will be installed in /usr/local/man/man1, although
you can change this with the --mandir option to configure
or editing the user configuration section of the top level
Makefile.
Doc/zsh.texi Everything the man pages have, but in texinfo format. These
will be installed by "make install.info" or "make install".
By default, these will be installed in /usr/local/info,
although you can change this with the --infodir option to
configure or editing the user configuration section of the
top level Makefile.
Also include in the distribution are:
Doc/intro.ms An introduction to zsh in troff format using the ms
macros. This document explains many of the features
that make zsh more equal than other shells.
Unfortunately this is based on zsh-2.5 so some examples
may not work without changes but it is still a good
introduction.
If you do not have the necessary tools to process these documents,
PostScript, ASCII, Info and DVI versions are available in the separate
file zsh-beta-doc.tar.gz at the archive sites listed in the META-FAQ.
The distribution also contains a Perl script in Utils/helpfiles which
can be used to extract the descriptions of builtin commands from the
zshbuiltins manual page. See the comments at the beginning of the
script about its usage. The files created by this script can be used
by example function run-help located in the subdirectory Functions/Misc to
show information about zsh builtins and run `man' on external commands.
For this the shell variable HELPDIR should point to a directory containing
the files generated by the helpfiles script. run-help should be
unaliased before loading the run-help function. After that this function
will be executed by the run-help ZLE function which is by default bound
to ESC-h in emacs mode.
Examples
--------
Examples of zsh startup files are located in the subdirectory
StartupFiles. Examples of zsh functions and scripts are located in
the subdirectory Functions. Examples of completion control commands
(compctl) are located in the file Misc/compctl-examples.
Zsh FTP Sites, Web Pages, and Mailing Lists
-------------------------------------------
The current list of zsh FTP sites, web pages, and mailing lists can be
found in the META-FAQ. A copy is included in this distribution and is
available separately at any of the zsh FTP sites.
Common Problems and Frequently Asked Questions
----------------------------------------------
Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) maintained by Peter
Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. It covers many common problems encountered
when building, installing, and using zsh. A copy is included in this
distribution in Etc/FAQ and is available separately at any of the zsh
ftp sites.
Zsh Maintenance and Bug Reports
-------------------------------
Zsh is currently maintained by the members of the zsh-workers mailing list
and coordinated by Peter Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. Please send
any feedback and bugs reports to <zsh-workers@sunsite.dk>.
There is a script "reporter" in the subdirectory Util which will print
out your current shell environment/setup. If you report a bug, please
use this script and include the output from sourcing this file. This way,
the problem you are reporting can be recreated.
You can help even more if you can reproduce the bug starting zsh with
the -f option. This skips the execution of local startup files except
/etc/zshenv. If a bug occurs only when some options set try to locate
the option which triggers the bug.
The known bugs in zsh are listed in the file Etc/BUGS. Check this as
well as the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list before sending a bug
report. Note that zsh has some features which are not compatible with
sh but these are not bugs. Most of these incompatibilities go away
when zsh is invoked as sh or ksh (e.g. using a symbolic link).
If you send a bug report to the list and are not a subscriber, please
mention this in your message if you want a response.
If you would like to contribute to the development and maintenance of zsh,
then you should join the zsh-workers mailing list (check the META-FAQ
for info on this). You should also read the "zsh-development-guide"
located in the subdirectory Util.
Contributors
------------
The people who have contributed to this software project are listed
in Etc/CONTRIBUTORS.
