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Zsh 5.0 released

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Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#41

Post by gsa »

Afal wrote: post #39
riobard wrote: post #13

I know this has been asked thousands times before, but I want to know with this latest release, should I switch from Bash to Zsh now? What features do Zsh offer which are not in Bash? Currently I'm thinking about the Fish-style syntax highlighting. Fish is really nice, but it's not very compatible with the rest of the shell environment. So I'm back on Bash, but really miss the syntax highlighting. I need some good re…

The problem I have with zsh is that I don't really notice any benefits from it after switching from bash or whatever. I guess my problem is that I'm still using it like bash, which probably isn't a bad thing but I'm probably missing out on the other features it has. Thing is there's no real feature I've noticed that made me think "Wow! How did I live without this?". Yeah I see some nice things but they feel like part…

My favourite feature is shared command line history among all open shells. It was my "how I lived without that" feature, and one which I use a lot. Of course, it's only useful if you use the shell for extended periods.

The glob features are certainly quite useful too, for example, if there's a file nested deep inside some directory I can just enter

    vim **/filename
and zsh will expand it for me.

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#42

Post by ithkuil »

gsa wrote: post #41
Afal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with zsh is that I don't really notice any benefits from it after switching from bash or whatever. I guess my problem is that I'm still using it like bash, which probably isn't a bad thing but I'm probably missing out on the other features it has. Thing is there's no real feature I've noticed that made me think "Wow! How did I live without this?". Yeah I see some nice things but they feel like part…

My favourite feature is shared command line history among all open shells. It was my "how I lived without that" feature, and one which I use a lot. Of course, it's only useful if you use the shell for extended periods. The glob features are certainly quite useful too, for example, if there's a file nested deep inside some directory I can just enter vim **/filename and zsh will expand it for me.

should be there in bash 4

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#44

Post by chasingtheflow »

Afal wrote: post #39
riobard wrote: post #13

I know this has been asked thousands times before, but I want to know with this latest release, should I switch from Bash to Zsh now? What features do Zsh offer which are not in Bash? Currently I'm thinking about the Fish-style syntax highlighting. Fish is really nice, but it's not very compatible with the rest of the shell environment. So I'm back on Bash, but really miss the syntax highlighting. I need some good re…

The problem I have with zsh is that I don't really notice any benefits from it after switching from bash or whatever. I guess my problem is that I'm still using it like bash, which probably isn't a bad thing but I'm probably missing out on the other features it has. Thing is there's no real feature I've noticed that made me think "Wow! How did I live without this?". Yeah I see some nice things but they feel like part…

You may want to look at https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#45

Post by srathbun »

riobard wrote: post #13

I know this has been asked thousands times before, but I want to know with this latest release, should I switch from Bash to Zsh now? What features do Zsh offer which are not in Bash? Currently I'm thinking about the Fish-style syntax highlighting. Fish is really nice, but it's not very compatible with the rest of the shell environment. So I'm back on Bash, but really miss the syntax highlighting. I need some good re…

I switched because of the massive control over the prompt.

I've currently got a three line prompt that includes info about my current repository: (git)[45afc8f02fef U master [origin/master ] ]

It lists type (git/hg) [checkout (U)pdated branch [remote branch] ]. It'll tell you how many branches different the remote is, what you are up to (staged), and colors.

That, better tab completion, and syntax highlighting of the command line are my killer features. I'm running a fork of the oh-my-zsh project, so you can see the features by grabbing a copy: https://github.com/srathbun/oh-my-zsh

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#46

Post by dserodio »

Afal wrote: post #39
riobard wrote: post #13

I know this has been asked thousands times before, but I want to know with this latest release, should I switch from Bash to Zsh now? What features do Zsh offer which are not in Bash? Currently I'm thinking about the Fish-style syntax highlighting. Fish is really nice, but it's not very compatible with the rest of the shell environment. So I'm back on Bash, but really miss the syntax highlighting. I need some good re…

The problem I have with zsh is that I don't really notice any benefits from it after switching from bash or whatever. I guess my problem is that I'm still using it like bash, which probably isn't a bad thing but I'm probably missing out on the other features it has. Thing is there's no real feature I've noticed that made me think "Wow! How did I live without this?". Yeah I see some nice things but they feel like part…

Besides the awesome TAB completion, here are a few features that I use daily:

- Keyboard navigation for TAB completion (using the arrows)

- Coloured TAB completion

- "for" one-liners: for f in /*.py; wc -l $f

- Named directories (cd ~named_dir)

(edit: formatting)

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#47

Post by paul-woolcock »

Produce wrote: post #40
greyfade wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completion in Zsh alone made it worthwhile for me. The completion scripts for Zsh are worlds more powerful and complete than anything I've found for Bash. And, there's even a script that offers Fish-like syntax coloring for Zsh: https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-syntax-highlighting/ But not having used Fish yet myself, I can't really offer any reasons to use Zsh over Fish.

>I can't really offer any reasons to use Zsh over Fish. Bash script compatibility, bigger userbase and therefore more third party customizations.

Definitely this. I switched to Fish for a while and was very happy, but the lack of Bash compatibility got a very old after a while. You never think about how much out there assumes you have a sh/bash-compatible shell running, and watching ordinary tasks fail hard because of an incompatible shell gets very, very frustrating.

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#48

Post by Afal »

chasingtheflow wrote: post #44
Afal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with zsh is that I don't really notice any benefits from it after switching from bash or whatever. I guess my problem is that I'm still using it like bash, which probably isn't a bad thing but I'm probably missing out on the other features it has. Thing is there's no real feature I've noticed that made me think "Wow! How did I live without this?". Yeah I see some nice things but they feel like part…

You may want to look at https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh

Erm.. ok? If you don't mind me asking, why would I want to look at that? I can't really tell what it can do for me other than "make zsh more awesome". How? How does it make it more awesome?

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#49

Post by Afal »

dserodio wrote: post #46
Afal wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem I have with zsh is that I don't really notice any benefits from it after switching from bash or whatever. I guess my problem is that I'm still using it like bash, which probably isn't a bad thing but I'm probably missing out on the other features it has. Thing is there's no real feature I've noticed that made me think "Wow! How did I live without this?". Yeah I see some nice things but they feel like part…

Besides the awesome TAB completion, here are a few features that I use daily: - Keyboard navigation for TAB completion (using the arrows) - Coloured TAB completion - "for" one-liners: for f in /*.py; wc -l $f - Named directories (cd ~named_dir) (edit: formatting)

That for loop looks pretty neat, however I don't tend to write loops that often on the command line so it doesn't really benefit me that much.

Re: Zsh 5.0 released

#50

Post by tammer »

riobard wrote: post #13

I know this has been asked thousands times before, but I want to know with this latest release, should I switch from Bash to Zsh now? What features do Zsh offer which are not in Bash? Currently I'm thinking about the Fish-style syntax highlighting. Fish is really nice, but it's not very compatible with the rest of the shell environment. So I'm back on Bash, but really miss the syntax highlighting. I need some good re…

I know it seems like a big jump, but once you've gotten the swing of things you'll wonder why you ever bothered worrying.

Don't worry about learning all the benefits at once. Make your shell look exactly like what you've got now and figure out the new features as you go along. There'll always be something new to make you smile.

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