Festari - Learning shell scripting with Zsh: your one-stop guide to reading, writing, debugging simple and complex Z shell scripts

Gastn Festari is a scripting language enthusiast with over five years of experience and a firm believer in free, open source software. Currently working as a developer for Globant, he likes to spread the word about zsh at different meetups and events when away from the keyboard.

The number of people who deserve their name on this page for making this possible would require a book of its own, so allow me to start by apologizing if your name isn't here by saying: I owe you a hug and a big "thank you".

To my grandparents and my family for allowing me to follow my ambitions. My friends, Xeba and his wonderful family, Mathas and Eliana, Bruno, Lore, Ce, and Dan for putting up with this project of mine. Without your encouragement and support, this could have never been completed.

My colleagues, particularly Gabriel, Diego, and Ale, for their feedback and for getting me through those particularly difficult times around Chapter Four. To the technical reviewers Alice Ferrazzi, Chien-Wei Huang, and Takeshi Banse; and staff at Packt Publishing for their great suggestions and eagle-eyed corrections.

So now you know, if you don't see your name in here, come by with a frowning face, and you'll get that much-deserved hug. I promise.

So see you around and again, thank you.

Takeshi Banse lives in Tokyo, Japan. He likes to write code for Linux. His e-mail address is <>.

Alice Ferrazzi has been using zsh since 2011. She is currently living in Tokyo, studying Japanese at Tokyo Central Japanese Language School (TCJ) in the morning and working at MIRACLE LINUX in the afternoon.

She contributes to Gentoo and open source software in her free time. She has a wiki at http://aliceinwire.net.

Thanks for everyone's support and encouragement.

Chien-Wei Huang is a programmer from Yunlin, Taiwan. His main programming skills include C and Python, and he also has some experience of PHP/JavaScript/MongoDB/MySQL/Java/Shell. He loves developing programs to solve the problems he faces, sharing knowledge with others, and is also interested in new technologies. His ID on the Internet is carlcarl. You can find him on GitHub, Plurk, and many other places. He also has a blog for programming notes at http://blog.carlcarl.me.

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.

Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at > for more details.

At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.

http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com

Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can access, read and search across Packt's entire library of books.

Why Subscribe?

• Fully searchable across every book published by Packt
• Copy and paste, print and bookmark content
• On demand and accessible via web browser

Free Access for Packt account holders

If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view nine entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access.

Preface

If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say that you are reading these lines because, like me, you spend quite some time dealing with Unix systems. Be it because your job requires you to, or you simply love to poke around an operating system's internals, the shell is arguably how you deal with most of your activities.

Historically, shells were conceived for speeding up our work, but we all know that at some point, what was supposed to be a leaner way to get things done turned into a slugfest of arcane symbols and impossibly long-to-remember lines of code.

Wouldn't it be great then, if we could squeeze just a bit more out of our system? Imagine the things you are currently doing and being able to do them in a more efficient, elegant way, even the things that you thought were some sort of magic that only Linux's wizards with centuries' worth of experience were able to perform.

What if I told you that feats such as knowing which option flags are available to a program no longer require you to scan endless screens of manpages? Imagine not having to deal with journeys along infinite horizontal lines of characters anymore. And what about relying on automatic completion instead of typing the same lines again? What if knowing which directory you are currently working on merely required you to stare at your command prompt? Now imagine that all it takes for getting started with all of this only demands you to switch to a new shell.

What this book covers

, Getting Started , starts from scratch by explaining how to install and set up zsh. Learn about startup files and customizing the shell prompt.

, Alias and History , explains how aliasing works, how to define aliases in your startup files, and teaches you how to work with the shell's history log.

, Advanced Editing