Z Shell (zsh)

History

The Z Shell (zsh) was created by Paul Falstad in 1990. It was designed to be an extended Bourne Shell (sh) with many improvements, including features from other shells like the Korn Shell (ksh) and the C Shell (csh). Over time, zsh has become popular for its powerful scripting capabilities, user-friendly features, and extensive customization options.

Features

Command Line Editing: Supports advanced command line editing with Emacs and Vi modes.
Tab Completion: Provides powerful and customizable tab completion for commands, file names, and more.
Scripting: Supports advanced scripting capabilities.
Job Control: Manages multiple processes within a single shell session.
Aliases: Creates shortcuts for frequently used commands.
Prompt Customization: Allows extensive customization of the shell prompt.
History Mechanism: Enables users to recall and edit previous commands.
Globbing: Supports advanced pattern matching for file names.

Basic Commands

pwd: Print the current working directory.
cd [directory]: Change the current directory to the specified directory.
ls: List the contents of the current directory.

File and Directory Management

touch [filename]: Create a new empty file.
mkdir [directory]: Create a new directory.
rm [filename]: Remove a file.
rmdir [directory]: Remove an empty directory.
cp [source] [destination]: Copy a file or directory.
mv [source] [destination]: Move or rename a file or directory.

Scripting

Basic Script

#!/bin/zsh
# This is a comment
echo "Hello, World!"

Variables

#!/bin/zsh
name="John"
echo "Hello, $name!"

Conditional Statements

#!/bin/zsh
number=10
if [[ $number -gt 5 ]]; then
  echo "The number is greater than 5"
else
  echo "The number is 5 or less"
fi

Loops

For Loop

#!/bin/zsh
for i in {1..5}; do
  echo "Iteration $i"
done

While Loop

#!/bin/zsh
counter=1
while [[ $counter -le 5 ]]; do
  echo "Counter: $counter"
  ((counter++))
done

Functions

#!/bin/zsh
greet() {
  echo "Hello, $1!"
}

greet "Alice"
greet "Bob"

File Operations

Creating a File

#!/bin/zsh
echo "This is a new file" > newfile.txt

Reading a File

#!/bin/zsh
while IFS= read -r line; do
  echo "$line"
done < newfile.txt

Deleting a File

#!/bin/zsh
rm newfile.txt

Example: Backup Script

#!/bin/zsh
source_dir="/path/to/source"
backup_dir="/path/to/backup"
timestamp=$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)
backup_file="$backup_dir/backup_$timestamp.tar.gz"

tar -czf $backup_file $source_dir
echo "Backup created at $backup_file"

This script compresses the contents of the source directory into a tar.gz file and saves it in the backup directory with a timestamp.

Last modified: 14 December 2024

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