Using ZSH(jbw.cc)
jbw.cc
Using ZSH
http://jbw.cc/2010/07/20/using-zsh/
5 comments
Bash's dead, baby. Viva zsh!
This is pretty convincing for me—I've been holding off on switching from bash for years now.
The single thing keeping me back is that bash is the shell to use, and some scripts you need to setup xxx thing are written for bash, and trying to debug some small difference in behavior between zsh and bash is something I don't want to find myself doing.
Has anyone else not switched because of this, or switched after grappling with similar issues? What are your thoughts?
The single thing keeping me back is that bash is the shell to use, and some scripts you need to setup xxx thing are written for bash, and trying to debug some small difference in behavior between zsh and bash is something I don't want to find myself doing.
Has anyone else not switched because of this, or switched after grappling with similar issues? What are your thoughts?
I used to use zsh, long long ago. Then, when I became a sysadmin I switched to bash because of its ubiquity. I've been a bash user for well over a decade, until recently when I switched back to zsh.
During my switch, I learned a few things. First, it really wasn't particularly painful to switch all my personal scripts to zsh. I guess I probably wasn't using that many bashisms, and the few I was using were easily convertible to zsh syntax.
Second, day to day use of zsh does not feel all that much different from bash, and it really takes very little time to get used to if you already know bash. Of course, learning and getting comfortable with using some of the completely different zsh features will take time. I'm learning them in small bites.
Third, despite bash's ubiquity, I now wish I'd just used zsh all along, as they're really not different enough to hamper the use of bash when you need to use it.
Fourth, (depending on what you want to do) getting in to the nitty-gritty of configuring zsh is not always easy. zsh is thoroughly documented, but at the same time the documentation is not very user friendly, and there really aren't enough well-written introductory tutorials to quickly get you up to speed on doing more advanced things like writing your own completion widgets (or even editing existing ones, as they're so poorly commented). So if you want to customize zsh's more advanced features, be prepared to spend a lot of time with the man pages and user's guide.
On the other hand, there are some really helpful people on freenode's #zsh channel. With their help your transition to zsh should be pretty painless.
As to your particular concern about debugging existing bash scripts, I wouldn't worry too much about it. The shells are really not so different in syntax that you'd be completely lost when you wanted to debug some bash script. And if you do run in to problems with them, you could always ask for help on freenode's #bash.
During my switch, I learned a few things. First, it really wasn't particularly painful to switch all my personal scripts to zsh. I guess I probably wasn't using that many bashisms, and the few I was using were easily convertible to zsh syntax.
Second, day to day use of zsh does not feel all that much different from bash, and it really takes very little time to get used to if you already know bash. Of course, learning and getting comfortable with using some of the completely different zsh features will take time. I'm learning them in small bites.
Third, despite bash's ubiquity, I now wish I'd just used zsh all along, as they're really not different enough to hamper the use of bash when you need to use it.
Fourth, (depending on what you want to do) getting in to the nitty-gritty of configuring zsh is not always easy. zsh is thoroughly documented, but at the same time the documentation is not very user friendly, and there really aren't enough well-written introductory tutorials to quickly get you up to speed on doing more advanced things like writing your own completion widgets (or even editing existing ones, as they're so poorly commented). So if you want to customize zsh's more advanced features, be prepared to spend a lot of time with the man pages and user's guide.
On the other hand, there are some really helpful people on freenode's #zsh channel. With their help your transition to zsh should be pretty painless.
As to your particular concern about debugging existing bash scripts, I wouldn't worry too much about it. The shells are really not so different in syntax that you'd be completely lost when you wanted to debug some bash script. And if you do run in to problems with them, you could always ask for help on freenode's #bash.
One last thing you forgot to mention. zsh is rarely installed on remote hosts. bash is everywhere.
This is a game changer in my case where I can simply download my configuration, load it in the current session and start using all my scripts, aliases on a remote host in less than a minute.
Don't get me wrong, I'm using zsh for personal stuff and computers I have complete control over. But, if I have to write a script, I'll make sure it works with Bash first.
This is a game changer in my case where I can simply download my configuration, load it in the current session and start using all my scripts, aliases on a remote host in less than a minute.
Don't get me wrong, I'm using zsh for personal stuff and computers I have complete control over. But, if I have to write a script, I'll make sure it works with Bash first.
"I can simply download my configuration, load it in the current session and start using all my scripts, aliases on a remote host in less than a minute"
Nothing's stopping you from uploading zsh itself to your remote hosts along with your .zshrc.
Or just use the package manager to install zsh on those machines. On any modern Linux distro it's as easy as typing something like "emerge zsh" or "apt-get install zsh".
Nothing's stopping you from uploading zsh itself to your remote hosts along with your .zshrc.
Or just use the package manager to install zsh on those machines. On any modern Linux distro it's as easy as typing something like "emerge zsh" or "apt-get install zsh".
Thanks for that! It sounds like zsh is worth whatever small troubles it could cause.
I think that settles it. I'll be spending some time switching to zsh next time I have the chance.
I think that settles it. I'll be spending some time switching to zsh next time I have the chance.
Fixed a typo in the HTML for your viewing pleasure...
I am going to use your blog post to make the switch over from bash. I've tried zsh 2 times but reverted (can't recall why).
Please keep logging your journey. Also, what are the problems you have faced ? What did not work ? Any bash_profile or bashrc lines you could not convert? Any bash scripts that did not run ?
Please keep logging your journey. Also, what are the problems you have faced ? What did not work ? Any bash_profile or bashrc lines you could not convert? Any bash scripts that did not run ?
I would check out Oh-My-ZSH on GitHub (https://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh). This makes it very quick and painless to get ZSH set up.
As for any problems, I didn't really face any. I'm not a system admin so bash wasn't a big part of my day to day. I can still run bash scripts in ZSH (because of the shebang line) and there wasn't anything in my bash_profile that could not be converted. Because of this, there was hardly anything to stopping me using ZSH.
But check out oh-my-zsh it's a good starting point which I found soon after I had set up my own configuration and I now use it too.
As for any problems, I didn't really face any. I'm not a system admin so bash wasn't a big part of my day to day. I can still run bash scripts in ZSH (because of the shebang line) and there wasn't anything in my bash_profile that could not be converted. Because of this, there was hardly anything to stopping me using ZSH.
But check out oh-my-zsh it's a good starting point which I found soon after I had set up my own configuration and I now use it too.
Your first easy installation procedure fails, and asks me to use this:
--no-check-certificate
I used this with wget and it works. I hope this is okay. Thanks a lot.
I used this with wget and it works. I hope this is okay. Thanks a lot.
The cost is that the default config requires a fair bit of tweaking to get usable, and the knowledge to do that tweaking is not easily found, not so newbie-friendly as another commenter above mentions, so I have to learn a bunch of beginner stuff first before I can start to get the extra power benefits.
FWIW, I found that really understanding readline and .inputrc gave me much greater power in bash for less effort than having to learn zsh. The extra return of zsh wasn't worth the effort.