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231 lines
10 KiB
Text
231 lines
10 KiB
Text
-----------------
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THE Z SHELL (ZSH)
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-----------------
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Version
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-------
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This is version 4.3.4 of the shell. This is a development release,
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but is believed to be reasonably stable. Sites where the users need to
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edit command lines with multibyte characters (in particular UTF-8)
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will probably want to upgrade.
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Installing Zsh
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--------------
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The instructions for compiling zsh are in the file INSTALL. You should
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also check the file MACHINES in the top directory to see if there
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are any special instructions for your particular architecture.
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Features
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--------
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Zsh is a shell with lots of features. For a list of some of these, see the
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file FEATURES, and for the latest changes see NEWS. For more
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details, see the documentation.
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Possible incompatibilities
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---------------------------
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Since 4.2:
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The option SH_WORD_SPLIT, used in Bourne/Korn/Posix shell compatibility
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mode, has been made more like other shells in the case of substitutions of
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the form ${1+"$@"} (a common trick used to work around problems in older
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Bourne shells) or any of the related forms with the + replaced by - or =
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with an optional colon preceding. Previously, with SH_WORD_SPLIT in
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effect, this expression would cause splitting on all white space in the
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shell arguments. (This was always regarded as a bug but was long-standing
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behaviour.) Now it is treated identically to "$@". The same change
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applies to expressions with forced splitting such as ${=1+"$@"}, but
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otherwise the case where SH_WORD_SPLIT is not set is unaffected.
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The "unset" builtin now does not regard the unsetting of non-existent
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variables as an error, so can still return status 0 (depending on the
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handling of other arguments). This appears to be the standard shell
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behaviour.
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The variable BAUD is no longer set automatically by the shell.
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In previous versions it was set to the baud rate reported by
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the terminal driver in order to initialise the line editor's
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compensation mechanism for slow baud rates. However, the baud
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rate so reported is very rarely related to the limiting speed of
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screen updates on modern systems. Users who need the compensation
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mechanism should set BAUD to an appropriate rate by hand.
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The variable HOME is no longer set by the shell if zsh is emulating any
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other shell at startup; it must be present in the environment or set
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subsequently by the user. It is valid for the variable to be unset.
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Parameter substitutions in the form ${param//#%search/replace} match
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against "search" anchored at both ends of the parameter value. Previously
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this syntax would have matched against "%search", anchored only at the head
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of the value. The form ${param//#$search/replace} where the value
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$search starts with "%" considers the "%" to be part of the search
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string as before.
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The MULTIBYTE option is on by default where it is available; this
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causes many operations to recognise characters as in the current locale.
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Older versions of the shell always assumed a character was one byte.
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In some places the width of the character will be used; this is transparent
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when used for calculations of screen position, but also occurs, for
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example, in calculations of padding width.
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Zsh has previously been lax about whether it allows octets with the
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top bit set to be part of a shell identifier. Older versions of the shell
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assumed all such octets were allowed in identifiers, however the POSIX
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standard does not allow such characters in identifiers. The older
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behaviour is still obtained with --disable-multibyte in effect.
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With --enable-multibyte in effect (this is now the default anywhere
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it is supported) there are three possible cases:
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MULTIBYTE option unset: only ASCII characters are allowed; the
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shell does not attempt to identify non-ASCII characters at all.
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MULTIBYTE option set, POSIX_IDENTIFIERS option unset: in addition
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to the POSIX characters, any alphanumeric characters in the
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local character set are allowed. Note that scripts and functions that
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take advantage of this are non-portable; however, this is in the spirit
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of previous versions of the shell. Note also that the options must
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be set before the shell parses the script or function; setting
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them during execution is not sufficient.
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MULITBYTE option set, POSIX_IDENTIFIERS set: only ASCII characters
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are allowed in identifiers even though the shell will recognise
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alphanumeric multibyte characters.
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The sched builtin now keeps entries in time order. This means that
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after adding an entry the index of an existing entry used for deletion
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may change, if that entry had a later time than the new entry. However,
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deleting a entry with a later time will now never change the index of an
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entry with an earlier time, which could happen with the previous method.
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The completion style pine-directory must now be set to use completion
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for PINE mailbox folders; previously it had the default ~/mail. This
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change was necessary because otherwise recursive directories under
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~/mail were searched by default, which could be a considerable unnecessary
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hit for anyone not using PINE. The previous default can be restored with:
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zstyle ':completion:*' pine-directory ~/mail
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The default maximum function depth (configurable with
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--enable-max-function-depth) has been decreased to 1000 from 4096. The
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previous value was observed to be large enough that crashes still occurred
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on some fairly common PC configurations. This change is only likely to
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affect some highly specialised uses of the shell.
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The variables HISTCHARS and histchars now reject any attempt to
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set non-ASCII characters for history or comments. Multibyte characters
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have never worked and the most consistent change was to restrict the
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set to portable characters only.
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Documentation
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-------------
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There are a number of documents about zsh in this distribution:
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Doc/Zsh/*.yo The master source for the zsh documentation is written in
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yodl. Yodl is a document language written by Karel Kubat.
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It is not required by zsh but but it is a nice program so
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you might want to get it anyway, especially if you are a
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zsh developer. It can be downloaded from
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ftp://yodl.sourceforge.net/
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Doc/zsh*.1 Man pages in nroff format. These will be installed
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by "make install.man" or "make install". By default,
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these will be installed in /usr/local/man/man1, although
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you can change this with the --mandir option to configure
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or editing the user configuration section of the top level
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Makefile.
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Doc/zsh.texi Everything the man pages have, but in texinfo format. These
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will be installed by "make install.info" or "make install".
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By default, these will be installed in /usr/local/info,
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although you can change this with the --infodir option to
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configure or editing the user configuration section of the
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top level Makefile. Version 4.0 or above of the
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Texinfo tools are recommended for processing this file.
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Also include in the distribution are:
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Doc/intro.ms An introduction to zsh in troff format using the ms
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macros. This document explains many of the features
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that make zsh more equal than other shells.
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Unfortunately this is based on zsh-2.5 so some examples
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may not work without changes but it is still a good
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introduction.
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For more information, see the website, as described in the META-FAQ.
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If you do not have the necessary tools to process these documents, PDF,
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Info and DVI versions are available in the separate file zsh-doc.tar.gz at
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the archive sites listed in the META-FAQ.
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The distribution also contains a Perl script in Utils/helpfiles which
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can be used to extract the descriptions of builtin commands from the
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zshbuiltins manual page. See the comments at the beginning of the
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script about its usage. The files created by this script can be used
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by example function run-help located in the subdirectory Functions/Misc to
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show information about zsh builtins and run `man' on external commands.
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For this the shell variable HELPDIR should point to a directory containing
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the files generated by the helpfiles script. run-help should be
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unaliased before loading the run-help function. After that this function
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will be executed by the run-help ZLE function which is by default bound
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to ESC-h in emacs mode.
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Examples
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--------
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Examples of zsh startup files are located in the subdirectory
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StartupFiles. Examples of zsh functions and scripts are located in
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the subdirectory Functions. Examples of completion control commands
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(compctl) are located in the file Misc/compctl-examples.
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Zsh FTP Sites, Web Pages, and Mailing Lists
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-------------------------------------------
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The current list of zsh FTP sites, web pages, and mailing lists can be
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found in the META-FAQ. A copy is included in this distribution and is
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available separately at any of the zsh FTP sites.
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Common Problems and Frequently Asked Questions
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----------------------------------------------
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Zsh has a list of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) maintained by Peter
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Stephenson <pws@zsh.org>. It covers many common problems encountered
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when building, installing, and using zsh. A copy is included in this
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distribution in Etc/FAQ and is available separately at any of the zsh
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ftp sites.
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Zsh Maintenance and Bug Reports
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-------------------------------
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Zsh is currently maintained by the members of the zsh-workers mailing list
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and coordinated by Peter Stephenson <coordinator@zsh.org>. Please send
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any feedback and bugs reports to <zsh-workers@sunsite.dk>.
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Reports are most helpful if you can reproduce the bug starting zsh with
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the -f option. This skips the execution of local startup files except
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/etc/zshenv. If a bug occurs only when some options set try to locate
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the option which triggers the bug.
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There is a script "reporter" in the subdirectory Util which will print out
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your current shell environment/setup. If you cannot reproduce the bug
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with "zsh -f", use this script and include the output from sourcing this
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file. This way, the problem you are reporting can be recreated.
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The known bugs in zsh are listed in the file Etc/BUGS. Check this as
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well as the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list before sending a bug
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report. Note that zsh has some features which are not compatible with
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sh but these are not bugs. Most of these incompatibilities go away
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when zsh is invoked as sh or ksh (e.g. using a symbolic link).
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If you send a bug report to the list and are not a subscriber, please
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mention this in your message if you want a response.
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If you would like to contribute to the development and maintenance of zsh,
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then you should join the zsh-workers mailing list (check the META-FAQ
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for info on this). You should also read the "zsh-development-guide"
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located in the subdirectory Util.
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Contributors
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------------
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The people who have contributed to this software project are listed
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in Etc/CONTRIBUTORS.
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