Is there a way to make zsh complete parameters of commands (just like the fish shell do). For example, when I type ls -- and use TAB it will pop up a list of all ls parameters.
I know that I can use fish shell for this, and I know that fish shell is amazing, but there is a lot of missing functionalities in the fish shell. That's why I am looking to bring this parameter completion in zsh.
Try with single hyphen, like ls -. All built in commands are working fine. Btw for custom oh-my-zsh plugin autocompletion, it depends on plugin configuration.
oh-my-zsh has over 200 plugins for different commands. But unfortunately the auto completions are all hand made. So there will be never auto complete function for every command.
Related
I recently switched from bash to zsh and I am trying to figure out how to change the double tab autocomplete behavior. I'd like it to autocomplete only if there is a unique match.
This can be controlled by shell options. You can try it in interactive shell first, then add your preferred options to ~/.zshrc.
To make zsh auto complete behave more like bash, you can start with this:
setopt NO_AUTOLIST BASH_AUTOLIST NO_MENUCOMPLETE
Also check official zsh documentation, section 6 and especially subsection 6.2. Currently it can be found here: https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Guide/zshguide06.html#l147
In macOS Catalina (10.15.6), I want to use zsh for Terminal sessions. Formerly I had been using the default bash. For bash, I had a .profile containing the line
export PS1="[\u#\h:\w]$ "
which gave a prompt of the form:
[me#myhost:current-dir]$
I want something similar for zsh, but without the user-name#host-name prefix and with # instead of $ for the actual prompt.
In a zsh Terminal session, the command
PROMPT='[%/]%% '
gives the expected prompt, with the current directory enclosed in square brackets.
Of course I don't want to enter that manually each time. Instead, I want to set this in .zprofile. So in .zprofile I included the line
export PROMPT='[%/]%% '
However, that does not work as expected -- the prompt now has the form:
me#myhost current-dir %
Question: How can I get the zsh prompt to have the desired form as follows?
[current-dir] %
Just add the following export to ~/.zshrc, otherwise it won't work.
export PROMPT='[%1~] %%'
That will give you the following, my directory name is test-workflow-branch-only
[test-workflow-branch-only] %
NOTE: This will give you [~] % when in ~/ directory so don't be alarmed when you see that
UPDATE - per comment questions
We add it to ~/.zshrc as this file gets sourced in all interactive shell configurations. The file ~/.zprofile are for commands that we want to execute when we log in, therefore a non-login shell won't source this file.
Thanks for info from Edward Romero. My critique of answer is that it contains four wasted characters, '[',']',' ','%'. Using instead PROMPT='%d>' yields the nice clear absolute path, something like this:
/Users/myuser/test-workflow-branch-only>
In any case, nice to get this headache behind me, and begin reaping the wonderful benefits of using zsh, whatever they may be.
For my developer work I reside in the *nix shell environment pretty much all day, but still can't seem to memorize the name and argument specifics of programs I don't use daily. I wonder how other 'casual amnesiacs' handle this. Do you maintain an big cheat sheet? Do you rehearse the emacs shortcuts when you take your weekly shower? Or is your desk covered under sticky notes?
Using bash_completion is one way of not having to remember the precise syntax of program arguments.
> svn [tab][tab]
--help checkout delete lock pdel propget revert
--version ci diff log pedit proplist rm
-h cleanup export ls pget propset status
add co help merge plist pset switch
annotate commit import mkdir praise remove unlock
blame copy info move propdel rename update
cat cp list mv propedit resolved
If I don't use a command regularly enough to remember what I want, I tend to just use --help or the man pages when I need to.
Or, if I'm lucky, I use CTRL+R and let bash's history search find when I last used it.
Eventually you just remember them, well the set that you use anyway. I used to maintain a README in my home directory when I was starting out but that disappeared many years ago.
One useful command is man -k which you pass a word to and it will return a list of all commands whose man page summary contains that word.
'apropos' is also a very useful command. It will list all commands whose man pages contain the keyword.
How to create a new environment variable in unix and use it in a program??????
You can tell what shell you're running by ps -o comm= -p $$ — I think that's more-or-less universal. So, in bash and certain similar shells...
If you want to create the variable for one specific run, you can do
MYVAR=value the_command_that_needs_myvar
If you want to create it for an entire shell session (ie. until you log out):
export MYVAR=value
...and then you can run:
the_command_that_needs_myvar
...as many times as you like during that session, and it will still see MYVAR as having the value value.
If you want it to be set for yourself, for all your login sessions, put it in ~/.profile.
Please note that bash's initialisation files can be one great big WTF. Depending on whether it is run interactively, over a network, locally, AND depending on whether it is invoked as sh or bash, it will selectively read some combination of ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile and ~/.bash_profile. Read the FILES section of the bash man page for details.
If you want it to be set for every user, every time they log in, put it in the file /etc/profile (although there's also /etc/environment, I'm not sure how widely used that is.).
Check out the question "How to set environment variable for everyone under my linux system?" for some more details, too.
(Beware, some of this advice will vary depending on if you, or other users, use bash, dash, csh, ksh, etc... but it should work for most use cases.)
Depends on the shell. In bash, you can use:
export myvar=xyz
which will set the variable and make it available to other programs.
If you want to set it for one invocation of a program, you can use:
myvar=xyz ./myprog
This will have it set for the myprog process but not after it exits.
See setenv(3) and getenv(3) functions.
Is there any standard way of providing list of program switches, so it would be possible for zsh to determine possible completions? Or must it provided directly to zsh developers and only they can add completions to zsh?
Your first stop should be man zshcompsys.
Then you could look at an example such as /usr/share/zsh/functions/Completion/Unix/_vim.
The Z-Shell doesn't automatically know what possible switches work with which binary files. As far as I'm aware, there's no standard way for a shell to determine this.
ZSH works by using completion functions, which are written for specific programs. For example, zsh ships with completion functions for ssh, cvs, git, ls, etc.
If you want to look at these completion functions, you can. If you're in a zsh shell, echo $fpath to see the function path that zsh uses to load completion functions. There's a directory called /usr/local/share/zsh/4.3.17/function (location may vary for distributions / zsh versions), which has a bunch of files beginning with _ - _ssh, _cvs, etc. Those are the completion functions.
One massive clue that these are not generated automatically comes from a comment in the _ssh completion function that ships with 4.3.17 (may or may not be in your specific version):
# Completions currently based on OpenSSH 5.9 (released on 2011-09-06).
#
# TODO: update ssh-keygen (not based on 5.9)
# TODO: sshd, ssh-keyscan, ssh-keysign
Providing completion for the Z-Shell: using fpath
You can write your own completion functions, and developers can write functions for their programs and submit to the zsh developers for inclusion. Z-Shell completion functions go somewhere on the fpath.
If the program, say foobar, follows GNU conventions for options, you can use:
compdef _gnu_generic foobar
Otherwise you can write your own functions. The easiest to use IMO is _describe.
Create a file _foobar with contents:
#compdef foobar
cmds=(
'--one:option one'
'--four:option four'
'no-slashes:options do not need to start with a slash'
)
_describe 'foobar' cmds
Place the file somewhere in your $fpath
Add compdef _foobar foobar
If You are using ruby with the optparse package there is a hidden flag --*-completion-zsh=NAME that will output all that is needed for the completion for that ruby program. Store it in a file named _NAME somewhere in your $fpath and it will work. NAME should be exactly what your program/script is called.
I use a folder in my $HOME for that and added the path to $fpath but that required an additional line in my .zshrc:
autoload -U ~/.completion/*(:t)