How zsh is more useful than bash • Hacker News Board

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#11

Post by [deleted] » Sat, May 11, 2013, 12:47 PM UTC

eatitraw wrote: post #2

I like process substitution feature in zsh. In bash you can write: vimdiff And this will create two pipes, where output of each ls will go. Unfortunately, vimdiff sometimes needs to do second pass on the files, so this command won't work properly when outputs are large. But in zsh you can write vimdiff =(ls /bin) =(ls /usr/bin) and this will create temporary normal files, instead of just pipes, and vimdiff will work…

[deleted]

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#12

Post by awestroke » Sat, May 11, 2013, 12:47 PM UTC

eisbaw wrote: post #4

Problem is zsh is not omnipresent like bash is. I'm sure that if you use zsh you also use Plan 9, code in D, write LuaTeX in Emacs and wear a monocle.

I use zsh on ubuntu, write code in ruby and java in sublime text. Your strawman non-argument has no place on HN

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#13

Post by gabipurcaru » Sat, May 11, 2013, 12:48 PM UTC

eisbaw wrote: post #4

Problem is zsh is not omnipresent like bash is. I'm sure that if you use zsh you also use Plan 9, code in D, write LuaTeX in Emacs and wear a monocle.

I don't get your point. I use zsh+oh-my-zsh, and I don't know what Plan 9 is, don't code in D, never used LuaTeX (esp. not in Emacs), and I don't happen to wear a monocle.

In fact I find zsh much easier for beginners and people who don't master the arcane intricacies of *nix.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#14

Post by zackkitzmiller » Sat, May 11, 2013, 12:52 PM UTC

mbi wrote: post #7

The killer feature to me is scp completion, e.g. scp someuser@someserver: … will ssh into the server, fetch the file list and offer it for completion locally (granted you have set up public key authentication)

bash does this.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#15

Post by zackkitzmiller » Sat, May 11, 2013, 12:54 PM UTC

gabipurcaru wrote: post #13

eisbaw wrote: post #4

Problem is zsh is not omnipresent like bash is. I'm sure that if you use zsh you also use Plan 9, code in D, write LuaTeX in Emacs and wear a monocle.

I don't get your point. I use zsh+oh-my-zsh, and I don't know what Plan 9 is, don't code in D, never used LuaTeX (esp. not in Emacs), and I don't happen to wear a monocle. In fact I find zsh much easier for beginners and people who don't master the arcane intricacies of *nix.

I -think- the (albiet, overly exaggerated) point is that if you only know zsh, you could potentially be at a disadvantage if you need to use someone else's terminal. Especially a remote server.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#16

Post by lclarkmichalek » Sat, May 11, 2013, 12:57 PM UTC

awestroke wrote: post #12

eisbaw wrote: post #4

Problem is zsh is not omnipresent like bash is. I'm sure that if you use zsh you also use Plan 9, code in D, write LuaTeX in Emacs and wear a monocle.

I use zsh on ubuntu, write code in ruby and java in sublime text. Your strawman non-argument has no place on HN

Only half his argument is a strawman. He's still correct that zsh is not omnipresent in the way that bash is, and therefore being proficient in bash is still very useful, regardless of the increase in productivity that putting the time into learning zsh would bring.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#17

Post by andyhmltn » Sat, May 11, 2013, 1:02 PM UTC

mbi wrote: post #7

The killer feature to me is scp completion, e.g. scp someuser@someserver: … will ssh into the server, fetch the file list and offer it for completion locally (granted you have set up public key authentication)

Turn on bash autocompletition and bash does this perfectly.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#18

Post by patrickg » Sat, May 11, 2013, 1:05 PM UTC

I use bash as my everyday shell since 1996. I keep on reading the "how great zsh is" articles. And I always try zsh. But after a few minutes/hours, I go back to bash. It's really hard to change.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#19

Post by melvinmt » Sat, May 11, 2013, 1:13 PM UTC

I love using zsh (in combination with oh-my-zsh) on OSX but the only thing I've noticed after using it a year is that it's becoming very very slow. As in, it usually takes me 5-10 seconds to login to a new session (locally) and be able to see the prompt and type something.

Tab auto completion takes a second or two (even for files).

Combined with the git plugin I have enabled (which does "git status" on every prompt in a git folder) it's almost unbearable to work with.

I've looked into it a couple of times, there are some people with the same issues on oh-my-zsh's github, but I could never really solve it.

Would any pro zsh user know what my issue could be? I'm seriously considering going back to bash, I use it at work and it reminds me how fast the terminal can be.

Re: How zsh is more useful than bash

#20

Post by remi » Sat, May 11, 2013, 1:20 PM UTC

melvinmt wrote: post #19

I love using zsh (in combination with oh-my-zsh) on OSX but the only thing I've noticed after using it a year is that it's becoming very very slow. As in, it usually takes me 5-10 seconds to login to a new session (locally) and be able to see the prompt and type something. Tab auto completion takes a second or two (even for files). Combined with the git plugin I have enabled (which does "git status" on every prompt i…

You could put "echo" marks all over your .zshrc file to figure out which parts are taking the longest to execute.