ZSHCONTRIB(1) User Commands ZSHCONTRIB(1)

NAME

zshcontrib - user contributions to zsh

DESCRIPTION

The Zsh source distribution includes a number of items contributed by
the user community. These are not inherently a part of the shell,
and some may not be available in every zsh installation. The most
significant of these are documented here. For documentation on other
contributed items such as shell functions, look for comments in the
function source files.

UTILITIES

Accessing On-Line Help
The key sequence ESC h is normally bound by ZLE to execute the
run-help widget (see zshzle(1)). This invokes the run-help command
with the command word from the current input line as its argument.
By default, run-help is an alias for the man command, so this often
fails when the command word is a shell builtin or a user-defined
function. By redefining the run-help alias, one can improve the
on-line help provided by the shell.

The helpfiles utility, found in the Util directory of the
distribution, is a Perl program that can be used to process the zsh
manual to produce a separate help file for each shell builtin and for
many other shell features as well. The autoloadable run-help
function, found in Functions/Misc, searches for these helpfiles and
performs several other tests to produce the most complete help
possible for the command.

Help files are installed by default to a subdirectory of
/usr/share/zsh or /usr/local/share/zsh.

To create your own help files with helpfiles, choose or create a
directory where the individual command help files will reside. For
example, you might choose ~/zsh_help. If you unpacked the zsh
distribution in your home directory, you would use the commands:

mkdir ~/zsh_help
perl ~/zsh-5.9/Util/helpfiles ~/zsh_help

The HELPDIR parameter tells run-help where to look for the help
files. When unset, it uses the default installation path. To use
your own set of help files, set this to the appropriate path in one
of your startup files:

HELPDIR=~/zsh_help

To use the run-help function, you need to add lines something like
the following to your .zshrc or equivalent startup file:

unalias run-help
autoload run-help

Note that in order for `autoload run-help' to work, the run-help file
must be in one of the directories named in your fpath array (see
zshparam(1)). This should already be the case if you have a standard
zsh installation; if it is not, copy Functions/Misc/run-help to an
appropriate directory.

Recompiling Functions

If you frequently edit your zsh functions, or periodically update
your zsh installation to track the latest developments, you may find
that function digests compiled with the zcompile builtin are
frequently out of date with respect to the function source files.
This is not usually a problem, because zsh always looks for the
newest file when loading a function, but it may cause slower shell
startup and function loading. Also, if a digest file is explicitly
used as an element of fpath, zsh won't check whether any of its
source files has changed.

The zrecompile autoloadable function, found in Functions/Misc, can be
used to keep function digests up to date.

zrecompile [ -qt ] [ name ... ]
zrecompile [ -qt ] -p arg ... [ -- arg ... ]
This tries to find *.zwc files and automatically re-compile
them if at least one of the original files is newer than the
compiled file. This works only if the names stored in the
compiled files are full paths or are relative to the directory
that contains the .zwc file.

In the first form, each name is the name of a compiled file or
a directory containing *.zwc files that should be checked. If
no arguments are given, the directories and *.zwc files in
fpath are used.

When -t is given, no compilation is performed, but a return
status of zero (true) is set if there are files that need to
be re-compiled and non-zero (false) otherwise. The -q option
quiets the chatty output that describes what zrecompile is
doing.

Without the -t option, the return status is zero if all files
that needed re-compilation could be compiled and non-zero if
compilation for at least one of the files failed.

If the -p option is given, the args are interpreted as one or
more sets of arguments for zcompile, separated by `--'. For
example:

zrecompile -p \
-R ~/.zshrc -- \
-M ~/.zcompdump -- \
~/zsh/comp.zwc ~/zsh/Completion/*/_*

This compiles ~/.zshrc into ~/.zshrc.zwc if that doesn't exist
or if it is older than ~/.zshrc. The compiled file will be
marked for reading instead of mapping. The same is done for
~/.zcompdump and ~/.zcompdump.zwc, but this compiled file is
marked for mapping. The last line re-creates the file
~/zsh/comp.zwc if any of the files matching the given pattern
is newer than it.

Without the -p option, zrecompile does not create function
digests that do not already exist, nor does it add new
functions to the digest.

The following shell loop is an example of a method for creating
function digests for all functions in your fpath, assuming that you
have write permission to the directories:

for ((i=1; i <= $#fpath; ++i)); do
dir=$fpath[i]
zwc=${dir:t}.zwc
if [[ $dir == (.|..) || $dir == (.|..)/* ]]; then
continue
fi
files=($dir/*(N-.))
if [[ -w $dir:h && -n $files ]]; then
files=(${${(M)files%/*/*}#/})
if ( cd $dir:h &&
zrecompile -p -U -z $zwc $files ); then
fpath[i]=$fpath[i].zwc
fi
fi
done

The -U and -z options are appropriate for functions in the default
zsh installation fpath; you may need to use different options for
your personal function directories.

Once the digests have been created and your fpath modified to refer
to them, you can keep them up to date by running zrecompile with no
arguments.

Keyboard Definition

The large number of possible combinations of keyboards, workstations,
terminals, emulators, and window systems makes it impossible for zsh
to have built-in key bindings for every situation. The zkbd utility,
found in Functions/Misc, can help you quickly create key bindings for
your configuration.

Run zkbd either as an autoloaded function, or as a shell script:

zsh -f ~/zsh-5.9/Functions/Misc/zkbd

When you run zkbd, it first asks you to enter your terminal type; if
the default it offers is correct, just press return. It then asks
you to press a number of different keys to determine characteristics
of your keyboard and terminal; zkbd warns you if it finds anything
out of the ordinary, such as a Delete key that sends neither ^H nor
^?.

The keystrokes read by zkbd are recorded as a definition for an
associative array named key, written to a file in the subdirectory
.zkbd within either your HOME or ZDOTDIR directory. The name of the
file is composed from the TERM, VENDOR and OSTYPE parameters, joined
by hyphens.

You may read this file into your .zshrc or another startup file with
the `source' or `.' commands, then reference the key parameter in
bindkey commands, like this:

source ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.zkbd/$TERM-$VENDOR-$OSTYPE
[[ -n ${key[Left]} ]] && bindkey "${key[Left]}" backward-char
[[ -n ${key[Right]} ]] && bindkey "${key[Right]}" forward-char
# etc.

Note that in order for `autoload zkbd' to work, the zkdb file must be
in one of the directories named in your fpath array (see
zshparam(1)). This should already be the case if you have a standard
zsh installation; if it is not, copy Functions/Misc/zkbd to an
appropriate directory.

Dumping Shell State

Occasionally you may encounter what appears to be a bug in the shell,
particularly if you are using a beta version of zsh or a development
release. Usually it is sufficient to send a description of the
problem to one of the zsh mailing lists (see zsh(1)), but sometimes
one of the zsh developers will need to recreate your environment in
order to track the problem down.

The script named reporter, found in the Util directory of the
distribution, is provided for this purpose. (It is also possible to
autoload reporter, but reporter is not installed in fpath by
default.) This script outputs a detailed dump of the shell state, in
the form of another script that can be read with `zsh -f' to recreate
that state.

To use reporter, read the script into your shell with the `.' command
and redirect the output into a file:

. ~/zsh-5.9/Util/reporter > zsh.report

You should check the zsh.report file for any sensitive information
such as passwords and delete them by hand before sending the script
to the developers. Also, as the output can be voluminous, it's best
to wait for the developers to ask for this information before sending
it.

You can also use reporter to dump only a subset of the shell state.
This is sometimes useful for creating startup files for the first
time. Most of the output from reporter is far more detailed than
usually is necessary for a startup file, but the aliases, options,
and zstyles states may be useful because they include only changes
from the defaults. The bindings state may be useful if you have
created any of your own keymaps, because reporter arranges to dump
the keymap creation commands as well as the bindings for every
keymap.

As is usual with automated tools, if you create a startup file with
reporter, you should edit the results to remove unnecessary commands.
Note that if you're using the new completion system, you should not
dump the functions state to your startup files with reporter; use the
compdump function instead (see zshcompsys(1)).

reporter [ state ... ]
Print to standard output the indicated subset of the current
shell state. The state arguments may be one or more of:

all Output everything listed below.
aliases
Output alias definitions.
bindings
Output ZLE key maps and bindings.
completion
Output old-style compctl commands. New completion is
covered by functions and zstyles.
functions
Output autoloads and function definitions.
limits Output limit commands.
options
Output setopt commands.
styles Same as zstyles.
variables
Output shell parameter assignments, plus export
commands for any environment variables.
zstyles
Output zstyle commands.

If the state is omitted, all is assumed.

With the exception of `all', every state can be abbreviated by any
prefix, even a single letter; thus a is the same as aliases, z is the
same as zstyles, etc.

Manipulating Hook Functions

add-zsh-hook [ -L | -dD ] [ -Uzk ] hook function
Several functions are special to the shell, as described in
the section SPECIAL FUNCTIONS, see zshmisc(1), in that they
are automatically called at specific points during shell
execution. Each has an associated array consisting of names
of functions to be called at the same point; these are
so-called `hook functions'. The shell function add-zsh-hook
provides a simple way of adding or removing functions from the
array.

hook is one of chpwd, periodic, precmd, preexec,
zshaddhistory, zshexit, or zsh_directory_name, the special
functions in question. Note that zsh_directory_name is called
in a different way from the other functions, but may still be
manipulated as a hook.

function is name of an ordinary shell function. If no options
are given this will be added to the array of functions to be
executed in the given context. Functions are invoked in the
order they were added.

If the option -L is given, the current values for the hook
arrays are listed with typeset.

If the option -d is given, the function is removed from the
array of functions to be executed.

If the option -D is given, the function is treated as a
pattern and any matching names of functions are removed from
the array of functions to be executed.

The options -U, -z and -k are passed as arguments to autoload
for function. For functions contributed with zsh, the options
-Uz are appropriate.

add-zle-hook-widget [ -L | -dD ] [ -Uzk ] hook widgetname
Several widget names are special to the line editor, as
described in the section Special Widgets, see zshzle(1), in
that they are automatically called at specific points during
editing. Unlike function hooks, these do not use a predefined
array of other names to call at the same point; the shell
function add-zle-hook-widget maintains a similar array and
arranges for the special widget to invoke those additional
widgets.

hook is one of isearch-exit, isearch-update, line-pre-redraw,
line-init, line-finish, history-line-set, or keymap-select,
corresponding to each of the special widgets zle-isearch-exit,
etc. The special widget names are also accepted as the hook
argument.

widgetname is the name of a ZLE widget. If no options are
given this is added to the array of widgets to be invoked in
the given hook context. Widgets are invoked in the order they
were added, with
zle widgetname -Nw -f "nolast" -- "$@"

Note that this means that the `WIDGET' special parameter
tracks the widgetname when the widget function is called,
rather than tracking the name of the corresponding special
hook widget.

If the option -d is given, the widgetname is removed from the
array of widgets to be executed.

If the option -D is given, the widgetname is treated as a
pattern and any matching names of widgets are removed from the
array.

If widgetname does not name an existing widget when added to
the array, it is assumed that a shell function also named
widgetname is meant to provide the implementation of the
widget. This name is therefore marked for autoloading, and
the options -U, -z and -k are passed as arguments to autoload
as with add-zsh-hook. The widget is also created with `zle -N
widgetname' to cause the corresponding function to be loaded
the first time the hook is called.

The arrays of widgetname are currently maintained in zstyle
contexts, one for each hook context, with a style of
`widgets'. If the -L option is given, this set of styles is
listed with `zstyle -L'. This implementation may change, and
the special widgets that refer to the styles are created only
if add-zle-hook-widget is called to add at least one widget,
so if this function is used for any hooks, then all hooks
should be managed only via this function.

REMEMBERING RECENT DIRECTORIES

The function cdr allows you to change the working directory to a
previous working directory from a list maintained automatically. It
is similar in concept to the directory stack controlled by the pushd,
popd and dirs builtins, but is more configurable, and as it stores
all entries in files it is maintained across sessions and (by
default) between terminal emulators in the current session.
Duplicates are automatically removed, so that the list reflects the
single most recent use of each directory.

Note that the pushd directory stack is not actually modified or used
by cdr unless you configure it to do so as described in the
configuration section below.

Installation

The system works by means of a hook function that is called every
time the directory changes. To install the system, autoload the
required functions and use the add-zsh-hook function described above:

autoload -Uz chpwd_recent_dirs cdr add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook chpwd chpwd_recent_dirs

Now every time you change directly interactively, no matter which
command you use, the directory to which you change will be remembered
in most-recent-first order.

Use

All direct user interaction is via the cdr function.

The argument to cdr is a number N corresponding to the Nth most
recently changed-to directory. 1 is the immediately preceding
directory; the current directory is remembered but is not offered as
a destination. Note that if you have multiple windows open 1 may
refer to a directory changed to in another window; you can avoid this
by having per-terminal files for storing directory as described for
the recent-dirs-file style below.

If you set the recent-dirs-default style described below cdr will
behave the same as cd if given a non-numeric argument, or more than
one argument. The recent directory list is updated just the same
however you change directory.

If the argument is omitted, 1 is assumed. This is similar to pushd's
behaviour of swapping the two most recent directories on the stack.

Completion for the argument to cdr is available if compinit has been
run; menu selection is recommended, using:

zstyle ':completion:*:*:cdr:*:*' menu selection

to allow you to cycle through recent directories; the order is
preserved, so the first choice is the most recent directory before
the current one. The verbose style is also recommended to ensure the
directory is shown; this style is on by default so no action is
required unless you have changed it.

Options

The behaviour of cdr may be modified by the following options.

-l lists the numbers and the corresponding directories in
abbreviated form (i.e. with ~ substitution reapplied), one per
line. The directories here are not quoted (this would only be
an issue if a directory name contained a newline). This is
used by the completion system.

-r sets the variable reply to the current set of directories.
Nothing is printed and the directory is not changed.

-e allows you to edit the list of directories, one per line. The
list can be edited to any extent you like; no sanity checking
is performed. Completion is available. No quoting is
necessary (except for newlines, where I have in any case no
sympathy); directories are in unabbreviated form and contain
an absolute path, i.e. they start with /. Usually the first
entry should be left as the current directory.

-p 'pattern'
Prunes any items in the directory list that match the given
extended glob pattern; the pattern needs to be quoted from
immediate expansion on the command line. The pattern is
matched against each completely expanded file name in the
list; the full string must match, so wildcards at the end
(e.g. '*removeme*') are needed to remove entries with a given
substring.

If output is to a terminal, then the function will print the
new list after pruning and prompt for confirmation by the
user. This output and confirmation step can be skipped by
using -P instead of -p.

Configuration

Configuration is by means of the styles mechanism that should be
familiar from completion; if not, see the description of the zstyle
command in see zshmodules(1). The context for setting styles should
be ':chpwd:*' in case the meaning of the context is extended in
future, for example:

zstyle ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-max 0

sets the value of the recent-dirs-max style to 0. In practice the
style name is specific enough that a context of '*' should be fine.

An exception is recent-dirs-insert, which is used exclusively by the
completion system and so has the usual completion system context
(':completion:*' if nothing more specific is needed), though again
'*' should be fine in practice.

recent-dirs-default
If true, and the command is expecting a recent directory
index, and either there is more than one argument or the
argument is not an integer, then fall through to "cd". This
allows the lazy to use only one command for directory
changing. Completion recognises this, too; see
recent-dirs-insert for how to control completion when this
option is in use.

recent-dirs-file
The file where the list of directories is saved. The default
is ${ZDOTDIR:-$HOME}/.chpwd-recent-dirs, i.e. this is in your
home directory unless you have set the variable ZDOTDIR to
point somewhere else. Directory names are saved in $'...'
quoted form, so each line in the file can be supplied directly
to the shell as an argument.

The value of this style may be an array. In this case, the
first file in the list will always be used for saving
directories while any other files are left untouched. When
reading the recent directory list, if there are fewer than the
maximum number of entries in the first file, the contents of
later files in the array will be appended with duplicates
removed from the list shown. The contents of the two files
are not sorted together, i.e. all the entries in the first
file are shown first. The special value + can appear in the
list to indicate the default file should be read at that
point. This allows effects like the following:

zstyle ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-file \
~/.chpwd-recent-dirs-${TTY##*/} +

Recent directories are read from a file numbered according to
the terminal. If there are insufficient entries the list is
supplemented from the default file.

It is possible to use zstyle -e to make the directory
configurable at run time:

zstyle -e ':chpwd:*' recent-dirs-file pick-recent-dirs-file
pick-recent-dirs-file() {
if [[ $PWD = ~/text/writing(|/*) ]]; then
reply=(~/.chpwd-recent-dirs-writing)
else
reply=(+)
fi
}

In this example, if the current directory is ~/text/writing or
a directory under it, then use a special file for saving
recent directories, else use the default.

recent-dirs-insert
Used by completion. If recent-dirs-default is true, then
setting this to true causes the actual directory, rather than
its index, to be inserted on the command line; this has the
same effect as using the corresponding index, but makes the
history clearer and the line easier to edit. With this
setting, if part of an argument was already typed, normal
directory completion rather than recent directory completion
is done; this is because recent directory completion is
expected to be done by cycling through entries menu fashion.

If the value of the style is always, then only recent
directories will be completed; in that case, use the cd
command when you want to complete other directories.

If the value is fallback, recent directories will be tried
first, then normal directory completion is performed if recent
directory completion failed to find a match.

Finally, if the value is both then both sets of completions
are presented; the usual tag mechanism can be used to
distinguish results, with recent directories tagged as
recent-dirs. Note that the recent directories inserted are
abbreviated with directory names where appropriate.

recent-dirs-max
The maximum number of directories to save to the file. If
this is zero or negative there is no maximum. The default is
20. Note this includes the current directory, which isn't
offered, so the highest number of directories you will be
offered is one less than the maximum.

recent-dirs-prune
This style is an array determining what directories should (or
should not) be added to the recent list. Elements of the
array can include:

parent Prune parents (more accurately, ancestors) from the
recent list. If present, changing directly down by any
number of directories causes the current directory to
be overwritten. For example, changing from ~pws to
~pws/some/other/dir causes ~pws not to be left on the
recent directory stack. This only applies to direct
changes to descendant directories; earlier directories
on the list are not pruned. For example, changing from
~pws/yet/another to ~pws/some/other/dir does not cause
~pws to be pruned.

pattern:pattern
Gives a zsh pattern for directories that should not be
added to the recent list (if not already there). This
element can be repeated to add different patterns. For
example, 'pattern:/tmp(|/*)' stops /tmp or its
descendants from being added. The EXTENDED_GLOB option
is always turned on for these patterns.

recent-dirs-pushd
If set to true, cdr will use pushd instead of cd to change the
directory, so the directory is saved on the directory stack.
As the directory stack is completely separate from the list of
files saved by the mechanism used in this file there is no
obvious reason to do this.

Use with dynamic directory naming

It is possible to refer to recent directories using the dynamic
directory name syntax by using the supplied function
zsh_directory_name_cdr a hook:

autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook
add-zsh-hook -Uz zsh_directory_name zsh_directory_name_cdr

When this is done, ~[1] will refer to the most recent directory other
than $PWD, and so on. Completion after ~[... also works.

Details of directory handling

This section is for the curious or confused; most users will not need
to know this information.

Recent directories are saved to a file immediately and hence are
preserved across sessions. Note currently no file locking is
applied: the list is updated immediately on interactive commands and
nowhere else (unlike history), and it is assumed you are only going
to change directory in one window at once. This is not safe on
shared accounts, but in any case the system has limited utility when
someone else is changing to a different set of directories behind
your back.

To make this a little safer, only directory changes instituted from
the command line, either directly or indirectly through shell
function calls (but not through subshells, evals, traps, completion
functions and the like) are saved. Shell functions should use cd -q
or pushd -q to avoid side effects if the change to the directory is
to be invisible at the command line. See the contents of the
function chpwd_recent_dirs for more details.

ABBREVIATED DYNAMIC REFERENCES TO DIRECTORIES

The dynamic directory naming system is described in the subsection
Dynamic named directories of the section Filename Expansion in
zshexpn(1). In this, a reference to ~[...] is expanded by a function
found by the hooks mechanism.

The contributed function zsh_directory_name_generic provides a system
allowing the user to refer to directories with only a limited amount
of new code. It supports all three of the standard interfaces for
directory naming: converting from a name to a directory, converting
in the reverse direction to find a short name, and completion of
names.

The main feature of this function is a path-like syntax, combining
abbreviations at multiple levels separated by ":". As an example,
~[g:p:s] might specify:
g The top level directory for your git area. This first
component has to match, or the function will return indicating
another directory name hook function should be tried.

p The name of a project within your git area.

s The source area within that project. This allows you to
collapse references to long hierarchies to a very compact
form, particularly if the hierarchies are similar across
different areas of the disk.

Name components may be completed: if a description is shown at the
top of the list of completions, it includes the path to which
previous components expand, while the description for an individual
completion shows the path segment it would add. No additional
configuration is needed for this as the completion system is aware of
the dynamic directory name mechanism.

Usage

To use the function, first define a wrapper function for your
specific case. We'll assume it's to be autoloaded. This can have
any name but we'll refer to it as zdn_mywrapper. This wrapper
function will define various variables and then call this function
with the same arguments that the wrapper function gets. This
configuration is described below.

Then arrange for the wrapper to be run as a zsh_directory_name hook:

autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook zsh_directory_name_generic zdn_mywrapper
add-zsh-hook -U zsh_directory_name zdn_mywrapper

Configuration

The wrapper function should define a local associative array zdn_top.
Alternatively, this can be set with a style called mapping. The
context for the style is :zdn:wrapper-name where wrapper-name is the
function calling zsh_directory_name_generic; for example:

zstyle :zdn:zdn_mywrapper: mapping zdn_mywrapper_top

The keys in this associative array correspond to the first component
of the name. The values are matching directories. They may have an
optional suffix with a slash followed by a colon and the name of a
variable in the same format to give the next component. (The slash
before the colon is to disambiguate the case where a colon is needed
in the path for a drive. There is otherwise no syntax for escaping
this, so path components whose names start with a colon are not
supported.) A special component :default: specifies a variable in
the form /:var (the path section is ignored and so is usually empty)
that will be used for the next component if no variable is given for
the path. Variables referred to within zdn_top have the same format
as zdn_top itself, but contain relative paths.

For example,

local -A zdn_top=(
g ~/git
ga ~/alternate/git
gs /scratch/$USER/git/:second2
:default: /:second1
)

This specifies the behaviour of a directory referred to as ~[g:...]
or ~[ga:...] or ~[gs:...]. Later path components are optional; in
that case ~[g] expands to ~/git, and so on. gs expands to
/scratch/$USER/git and uses the associative array second2 to match
the second component; g and ga use the associative array second1 to
match the second component.

When expanding a name to a directory, if the first component is not g
or ga or gs, it is not an error; the function simply returns 1 so
that a later hook function can be tried. However, matching the first
component commits the function, so if a later component does not
match, an error is printed (though this still does not stop later
hooks from being executed).

For components after the first, a relative path is expected, but note
that multiple levels may still appear. Here is an example of
second1:

local -A second1=(
p myproject
s somproject
os otherproject/subproject/:third
)

The path as found from zdn_top is extended with the matching
directory, so ~[g:p] becomes ~/git/myproject. The slash between is
added automatically (it's not possible to have a later component
modify the name of a directory already matched). Only os specifies a
variable for a third component, and there's no :default:, so it's an
error to use a name like ~[g:p:x] or ~[ga:s:y] because there's
nowhere to look up the x or y.

The associative arrays need to be visible within this function; the
generic function therefore uses internal variable names beginning
_zdn_ in order to avoid clashes. Note that the variable reply needs
to be passed back to the shell, so should not be local in the calling
function.

The function does not test whether directories assembled by component
actually exist; this allows the system to work across automounted
file systems. The error from the command trying to use a
non-existent directory should be sufficient to indicate the problem.

Complete example

Here is a full fictitious but usable autoloadable definition of the
example function defined by the code above. So ~[gs:p:s] expands to
/scratch/$USER/git/myscratchproject/top/srcdir (with $USER also
expanded).

local -A zdn_top=(
g ~/git
ga ~/alternate/git
gs /scratch/$USER/git/:second2
:default: /:second1
)

local -A second1=(
p myproject
s somproject
os otherproject/subproject/:third
)

local -A second2=(
p myscratchproject
s somescratchproject
)

local -A third=(
s top/srcdir
d top/documentation
)

# autoload not needed if you did this at initialisation...
autoload -Uz zsh_directory_name_generic
zsh_directory_name_generic "$@

It is also possible to use global associative arrays, suitably named,
and set the style for the context of your wrapper function to refer
to this. Then your set up code would contain the following:

typeset -A zdn_mywrapper_top=(...)
# ... and so on for other associative arrays ...
zstyle ':zdn:zdn_mywrapper:' mapping zdn_mywrapper_top
autoload -Uz add-zsh-hook zsh_directory_name_generic zdn_mywrapper
add-zsh-hook -U zsh_directory_name zdn_mywrapper

and the function zdn_mywrapper would contain only the following:

zsh_directory_name_generic "$@"

GATHERING INFORMATION FROM VERSION CONTROL SYSTEMS

In a lot of cases, it is nice to automatically retrieve information
from version control systems (VCSs), such as subversion, CVS or git,
to be able to provide it to the user; possibly in the user's prompt.
So that you can instantly tell which branch you are currently on, for
example.

In order to do that, you may use the vcs_info function.

The following VCSs are supported, showing the abbreviated name by
which they are referred to within the system:
Bazaar (bzr)
https://bazaar.canonical.com/
Codeville (cdv)
http://freecode.com/projects/codeville/
Concurrent Versioning System (cvs)
https://www.nongnu.org/cvs/
Darcs (darcs)
http://darcs.net/
Fossil (fossil)
https://fossil-scm.org/
Git (git)
https://git-scm.com/
GNU arch (tla)
https://www.gnu.org/software/gnu-arch/
Mercurial (hg)
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/
Monotone (mtn)
https://monotone.ca/
Perforce (p4)
https://www.perforce.com/
Subversion (svn)
https://subversion.apache.org/
SVK (svk)
https://svk.bestpractical.com/

There is also support for the patch management system quilt
(https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/quilt). See Quilt Support below
for details.

To load vcs_info:

autoload -Uz vcs_info

It can be used in any existing prompt, because it does not require
any specific $psvar entries to be available.

Quickstart

To get this feature working quickly (including colors), you can do
the following (assuming, you loaded vcs_info properly - see above):

zstyle ':vcs_info:*' actionformats \
'%F{5}(%f%s%F{5})%F{3}-%F{5}[%F{2}%b%F{3}|%F{1}%a%F{5}]%f '
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' formats \
'%F{5}(%f%s%F{5})%F{3}-%F{5}[%F{2}%b%F{5}]%f '
zstyle ':vcs_info:(sv[nk]|bzr):*' branchformat '%b%F{1}:%F{3}%r'
precmd () { vcs_info }
PS1='%F{5}[%F{2}%n%F{5}] %F{3}%3~ ${vcs_info_msg_0_}%f%# '

Obviously, the last two lines are there for demonstration. You need
to call vcs_info from your precmd function. Once that is done you
need a single quoted '${vcs_info_msg_0_}' in your prompt.

To be able to use '${vcs_info_msg_0_}' directly in your prompt like
this, you will need to have the PROMPT_SUBST option enabled.

Now call the vcs_info_printsys utility from the command line:

% vcs_info_printsys
## list of supported version control backends:
## disabled systems are prefixed by a hash sign (#)
bzr
cdv
cvs
darcs
fossil
git
hg
mtn
p4
svk
svn
tla
## flavours (cannot be used in the enable or disable styles; they
## are enabled and disabled with their master [git-svn -> git])
## they *can* be used in contexts: ':vcs_info:git-svn:*'.
git-p4
git-svn
hg-git
hg-hgsubversion
hg-hgsvn

You may not want all of these because there is no point in running
the code to detect systems you do not use. So there is a way to
disable some backends altogether:

zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr cdv darcs mtn svk tla

You may also pick a few from that list and enable only those:

zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable git cvs svn

If you rerun vcs_info_printsys after one of these commands, you will
see the backends listed in the disable style (or backends not in the
enable style - if you used that) marked as disabled by a hash sign.
That means the detection of these systems is skipped completely. No
wasted time there.

Configuration

The vcs_info feature can be configured via zstyle.

First, the context in which we are working:
:vcs_info:vcs-string:user-context:repo-root-name

vcs-string
is one of: git, git-svn, git-p4, hg, hg-git, hg-hgsubversion,
hg-hgsvn, darcs, bzr, cdv, mtn, svn, cvs, svk, tla, p4 or
fossil. This is followed by `.quilt-quilt-mode' in Quilt mode
(see Quilt Support for details) and by `+hook-name' while
hooks are active (see Hooks in vcs_info for details).

Currently, hooks in quilt mode don't add the
`.quilt-quilt-mode' information. This may change in the
future.

user-context
is a freely configurable string, assignable by the user as the
first argument to vcs_info (see its description below).

repo-root-name
is the name of a repository in which you want a style to
match. So, if you want a setting specific to /usr/src/zsh,
with that being a CVS checkout, you can set repo-root-name to
zsh to make it so.

There are three special values for vcs-string: The first is named
-init-, that is in effect as long as there was no decision what VCS
backend to use. The second is -preinit-; it is used before vcs_info
is run, when initializing the data exporting variables. The third
special value is formats and is used by the vcs_info_lastmsg for
looking up its styles.

The initial value of repo-root-name is -all- and it is replaced with
the actual name, as soon as it is known. Only use this part of the
context for defining the formats, actionformats or branchformat
styles, as it is guaranteed that repo-root-name is set up correctly
for these only. For all other styles, just use '*' instead.

There are two pre-defined values for user-context:
default
the one used if none is specified
command
used by vcs_info_lastmsg to lookup its styles

You can of course use ':vcs_info:*' to match all VCSs in all
user-contexts at once.

This is a description of all styles that are looked up.

formats
A list of formats, used when actionformats is not used (which
is most of the time).

actionformats
A list of formats, used if there is a special action going on
in your current repository; like an interactive rebase or a
merge conflict.

branchformat
Some backends replace %b in the formats and actionformats
styles above, not only by a branch name but also by a revision
number. This style lets you modify how that string should
look.

nvcsformats
These "formats" are set when we didn't detect a version
control system for the current directory or vcs_info was
disabled. This is useful if you want vcs_info to completely
take over the generation of your prompt. You would do
something like PS1='${vcs_info_msg_0_}' to accomplish that.

hgrevformat
hg uses both a hash and a revision number to reference a
specific changeset in a repository. With this style you can
format the revision string (see branchformat) to include
either or both. It's only useful when get-revision is true.
Note, the full 40-character revision id is not available
(except when using the use-simple option) because executing hg
more than once per prompt is too slow; you may customize this
behavior using hooks.

max-exports
Defines the maximum number of vcs_info_msg_*_ variables
vcs_info will set.

enable A list of backends you want to use. Checked in the -init-
context. If this list contains an item called NONE no backend
is used at all and vcs_info will do nothing. If this list
contains ALL, vcs_info will use all known backends. Only with
ALL in enable will the disable style have any effect. ALL and
NONE are case insensitive.

disable
A list of VCSs you don't want vcs_info to test for
repositories (checked in the -init- context, too). Only used
if enable contains ALL.

disable-patterns
A list of patterns that are checked against $PWD. If a pattern
matches, vcs_info will be disabled. This style is checked in
the :vcs_info:-init-:*:-all- context.

Say, ~/.zsh is a directory under version control, in which you
do not want vcs_info to be active, do:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable-patterns "${(b)HOME}/.zsh(|/*)"

use-quilt
If enabled, the quilt support code is active in `addon' mode.
See Quilt Support for details.

quilt-standalone
If enabled, `standalone' mode detection is attempted if no VCS
is active in a given directory. See Quilt Support for details.

quilt-patch-dir
Overwrite the value of the $QUILT_PATCHES environment
variable. See Quilt Support for details.

quiltcommand
When quilt itself is called in quilt support, the value of
this style is used as the command name.

check-for-changes
If enabled, this style causes the %c and %u format escapes to
show when the working directory has uncommitted changes. The
strings displayed by these escapes can be controlled via the
stagedstr and unstagedstr styles. The only backends that
currently support this option are git, hg, and bzr (the latter
two only support unstaged).

For this style to be evaluated with the hg backend, the
get-revision style needs to be set and the use-simple style
needs to be unset. The latter is the default; the former is
not.

With the bzr backend, lightweight checkouts only honor this
style if the use-server style is set.

Note, the actions taken if this style is enabled are
potentially expensive (read: they may be slow, depending on
how big the current repository is). Therefore, it is disabled
by default.

check-for-staged-changes
This style is like check-for-changes, but it never checks the
worktree files, only the metadata in the .${vcs} dir.
Therefore, this style initializes only the %c escape (with
stagedstr) but not the %u escape. This style is faster than
check-for-changes.

In the git backend, this style checks for changes in the
index. Other backends do not currently implement this style.

This style is disabled by default.

stagedstr
This string will be used in the %c escape if there are staged
changes in the repository.

unstagedstr
This string will be used in the %u escape if there are
unstaged changes in the repository.

command
This style causes vcs_info to use the supplied string as the
command to use as the VCS's binary. Note, that setting this in
':vcs_info:*' is not a good idea.

If the value of this style is empty (which is the default),
the used binary name is the name of the backend in use (e.g.
svn is used in an svn repository).

The repo-root-name part in the context is always the default
-all- when this style is looked up.

For example, this style can be used to use binaries from
non-default installation directories. Assume, git is installed
in /usr/bin but your sysadmin installed a newer version in
/usr/local/bin. Instead of changing the order of your $PATH
parameter, you can do this:
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*:-all-' command /usr/local/bin/git

use-server
This is used by the Perforce backend (p4) to decide if it
should contact the Perforce server to find out if a directory
is managed by Perforce. This is the only reliable way of
doing this, but runs the risk of a delay if the server name
cannot be found. If the server (more specifically, the
host:port pair describing the server) cannot be contacted, its
name is put into the associative array
vcs_info_p4_dead_servers and is not contacted again during the
session until it is removed by hand. If you do not set this
style, the p4 backend is only usable if you have set the
environment variable P4CONFIG to a file name and have
corresponding files in the root directories of each Perforce
client. See comments in the function VCS_INFO_detect_p4 for
more detail.

The Bazaar backend (bzr) uses this to permit contacting the
server about lightweight checkouts, see the check-for-changes
style.

use-simple
If there are two different ways of gathering information, you
can select the simpler one by setting this style to true; the
default is to use the not-that-simple code, which is
potentially a lot slower but might be more accurate in all
possible cases. This style is used by the bzr, hg, and git
backends. In the case of hg it will invoke the external
hexdump program to parse the binary dirstate cache file; this
method will not return the local revision number.

get-revision
If set to true, vcs_info goes the extra mile to figure out the
revision of a repository's work tree (currently for the git
and hg backends, where this kind of information is not always
vital). For git, the hash value of the currently checked out
commit is available via the %i expansion. With hg, the local
revision number and the corresponding global hash are
available via %i.

get-mq If set to true, the hg backend will look for a Mercurial Queue
(mq) patch directory. Information will be available via the
`%m' replacement.

get-bookmarks
If set to true, the hg backend will try to get a list of
current bookmarks. They will be available via the `%m'
replacement.

The default is to generate a comma-separated list of all
bookmark names that refer to the currently checked out
revision. If a bookmark is active, its name is suffixed an
asterisk and placed first in the list.

use-prompt-escapes
Determines if we assume that the assembled string from
vcs_info includes prompt escapes. (Used by vcs_info_lastmsg.)

debug Enable debugging output to track possible problems. Currently
this style is only used by vcs_info's hooks system.

hooks A list style that defines hook-function names. See Hooks in
vcs_info below for details.

patch-format
nopatch-format
This pair of styles format the patch information used by the
%m expando in formats and actionformats for the git and hg
backends. The value is subject to certain %-expansions
described below. The expanded value is made available in the
global backend_misc array as ${backend_misc[patches]} (also if
a set-patch-format hook is used).

get-unapplied
This boolean style controls whether a backend should attempt
to gather a list of unapplied patches (for example with
Mercurial Queue patches).

Used by the quilt, hg, and git backends.

The default values for these styles in all contexts are:

formats
" (%s)-[%b]%u%c-"
actionformats
" (%s)-[%b|%a]%u%c-"
branchformat
"%b:%r" (for bzr, svn, svk and hg)
nvcsformats
""
hgrevformat
"%r:%h"
max-exports
2
enable ALL
disable
(empty list)
disable-patterns
(empty list)
check-for-changes
false
check-for-staged-changes
false
stagedstr
(string: "S")
unstagedstr
(string: "U")
command
(empty string)
use-server
false
use-simple
false
get-revision
false
get-mq true
get-bookmarks
false
use-prompt-escapes
true
debug false
hooks (empty list)
use-quilt
false
quilt-standalone
false
quilt-patch-dir
empty - use $QUILT_PATCHES
quiltcommand
quilt
patch-format
backend dependent
nopatch-format
backend dependent
get-unapplied
false

In normal formats and actionformats the following replacements are
done:

%s The VCS in use (git, hg, svn, etc.).
%b Information about the current branch.
%a An identifier that describes the action. Only makes sense in
actionformats.
%i The current revision number or identifier. For hg the
hgrevformat style may be used to customize the output.
%c The string from the stagedstr style if there are staged
changes in the repository.
%u The string from the unstagedstr style if there are unstaged
changes in the repository.
%R The base directory of the repository.
%r The repository name. If %R is /foo/bar/repoXY, %r is repoXY.
%S A subdirectory within a repository. If $PWD is
/foo/bar/repoXY/beer/tasty, %S is beer/tasty.
%m A "misc" replacement. It is at the discretion of the backend
to decide what this replacement expands to.

The hg and git backends use this expando to display patch
information. hg sources patch information from the mq
extensions; git from in-progress rebase and cherry-pick
operations and from the stgit extension. The patch-format and
nopatch-format styles control the generated string. The
former is used when at least one patch from the patch queue
has been applied, and the latter otherwise.

The hg backend displays bookmark information in this expando
(in addition to mq information). See the get-mq and
get-bookmarks styles. Both of these styles may be enabled at
the same time. If both are enabled, both resulting strings
will be shown separated by a semicolon (that cannot currently
be customized).

The quilt `standalone' backend sets this expando to the same
value as the %Q expando.

%Q Quilt series information. When quilt is used (either in
`addon' mode or as a `standalone' backend), this expando is
set to the quilt series' patch-format string. The
set-patch-format hook and nopatch-format style are honoured.

See Quilt Support below for details.

In branchformat these replacements are done:

%b The branch name. For hg, the branch name can include a topic
name.
%r The current revision number or the hgrevformat style for hg.

In hgrevformat these replacements are done:

%r The current local revision number.
%h The current global revision identifier.

In patch-format and nopatch-format these replacements are done:

%p The name of the top-most applied patch; may be overridden by
the applied-string hook.
%u The number of unapplied patches; may be overridden by the
unapplied-string hook.
%n The number of applied patches.
%c The number of unapplied patches.
%a The number of all patches (%a = %n + %c).
%g The names of active mq guards (hg backend).
%G The number of active mq guards (hg backend).

Not all VCS backends have to support all replacements. For
nvcsformats no replacements are performed at all, it is just a
string.

Oddities

If you want to use the %b (bold off) prompt expansion in formats,
which expands %b itself, use %%b. That will cause the vcs_info
expansion to replace %%b with %b, so that zsh's prompt expansion
mechanism can handle it. Similarly, to hand down %b from
branchformat, use %%%%b. Sorry for this inconvenience, but it cannot
be easily avoided. Luckily we do not clash with a lot of prompt
expansions and this only needs to be done for those.

When one of the gen-applied-string, gen-unapplied-string, and
set-patch-format hooks is defined, applying %-escaping
(`foo=${foo//'%'/%%}') to the interpolated values for use in the
prompt is the responsibility of those hooks (jointly); when neither
of those hooks is defined, vcs_info handles escaping by itself. We
regret this coupling, but it was required for backwards
compatibility.

Quilt Support

Quilt is not a version control system, therefore this is not
implemented as a backend. It can help keeping track of a series of
patches. People use it to keep a set of changes they want to use on
top of software packages (which is tightly integrated into the
package build process - the Debian project does this for a large
number of packages). Quilt can also help individual developers keep
track of their own patches on top of real version control systems.

The vcs_info integration tries to support both ways of using quilt by
having two slightly different modes of operation: `addon' mode and
`standalone' mode).

Quilt integration is off by default; to enable it, set the use-quilt
style, and add %Q to your formats or actionformats style:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' use-quilt true

Styles looked up from the Quilt support code include
`.quilt-quilt-mode' in the vcs-string part of the context, where
quilt-mode is either addon or standalone. Example:
:vcs_info:git.quilt-addon:default:repo-root-name.

For `addon' mode to become active vcs_info must have already detected
a real version control system controlling the directory. If that is
the case, a directory that holds quilt's patches needs to be found.
That directory is configurable via the `QUILT_PATCHES' environment
variable. If that variable exists its value is used, otherwise the
value `patches' is assumed. The value from $QUILT_PATCHES can be
overwritten using the `quilt-patch-dir' style. (Note: you can use
vcs_info to keep the value of $QUILT_PATCHES correct all the time via
the post-quilt hook).

When the directory in question is found, quilt is assumed to be
active. To gather more information, vcs_info looks for a directory
called `.pc'; Quilt uses that directory to track its current state.
If this directory does not exist we know that quilt has not done
anything to the working directory (read: no patches have been applied
yet).

If patches are applied, vcs_info will try to find out which. If you
want to know which patches of a series are not yet applied, you need
to activate the get-unapplied style in the appropriate context.

vcs_info allows for very detailed control over how the gathered
information is presented (see the Configuration and Hooks in vcs_info
sections), all of which are documented below. Note there are a number
of other patch tracking systems that work on top of a certain version
control system (like stgit for git, or mq for hg); the configuration
for systems like that are generally configured the same way as the
quilt support.

If the quilt support is working in `addon' mode, the produced string
is available as a simple format replacement (%Q to be precise), which
can be used in formats and actionformats; see below for details).

If, on the other hand, the support code is working in `standalone'
mode, vcs_info will pretend as if quilt were an actual version
control system. That means that the version control system identifier
(which otherwise would be something like `svn' or `cvs') will be set
to `-quilt-'. This has implications on the used style context where
this identifier is the second element. vcs_info will have filled in a
proper value for the "repository's" root directory and the string
containing the information about quilt's state will be available as
the `misc' replacement (and %Q for compatibility with `addon' mode).

What is left to discuss is how `standalone' mode is detected. The
detection itself is a series of searches for directories. You can
have this detection enabled all the time in every directory that is
not otherwise under version control. If you know there is only a
limited set of trees where you would like vcs_info to try and look
for Quilt in `standalone' mode to minimise the amount of searching on
every call to vcs_info, there are a number of ways to do that:

Essentially, `standalone' mode detection is controlled by a style
called `quilt-standalone'. It is a string style and its value can
have different effects. The simplest values are: `always' to run
detection every time vcs_info is run, and `never' to turn the
detection off entirely.

If the value of quilt-standalone is something else, it is interpreted
differently. If the value is the name of a scalar variable the value
of that variable is checked and that value is used in the same
`always'/`never' way as described above.

If the value of quilt-standalone is an array, the elements of that
array are used as directory names under which you want the detection
to be active.

If quilt-standalone is an associative array, the keys are taken as
directory names under which you want the detection to be active, but
only if the corresponding value is the string `true'.

Last, but not least, if the value of quilt-standalone is the name of
a function, the function is called without arguments and the return
value decides whether detection should be active. A `0' return value
is true; a non-zero return value is interpreted as false.

Note, if there is both a function and a variable by the name of
quilt-standalone, the function will take precedence.

Function Descriptions (Public API)
vcs_info [user-context]
The main function, that runs all backends and assembles all
data into ${vcs_info_msg_*_}. This is the function you want to
call from precmd if you want to include up-to-date information
in your prompt (see Variable Description below). If an
argument is given, that string will be used instead of default
in the user-context field of the style context.

vcs_info_hookadd
Statically registers a number of functions to a given hook.
The hook needs to be given as the first argument; what follows
is a list of hook-function names to register to the hook. The
`+vi-' prefix needs to be left out here. See Hooks in vcs_info
below for details.

vcs_info_hookdel
Remove hook-functions from a given hook. The hook needs to be
given as the first non-option argument; what follows is a list
of hook-function names to un-register from the hook. If `-a'
is used as the first argument, all occurrences of the
functions are unregistered. Otherwise only the last occurrence
is removed (if a function was registered to a hook more than
once). The `+vi-' prefix needs to be left out here. See Hooks
in vcs_info below for details.

vcs_info_lastmsg
Outputs the current values of ${vcs_info_msg_*_}. Takes into
account the value of the use-prompt-escapes style in
':vcs_info:formats:command:-all-'. It also only prints
max-exports values.

vcs_info_printsys [user-context]
Prints a list of all supported version control systems. Useful
to find out possible contexts (and which of them are enabled)
or values for the disable style.

vcs_info_setsys
Initializes vcs_info's internal list of available backends.
With this function, you can add support for new VCSs without
restarting the shell.

All functions named VCS_INFO_* are for internal use only.

Variable Description

${vcs_info_msg_N_} (Note the trailing underscore)
Where N is an integer, e.g., vcs_info_msg_0_. These variables
are the storage for the informational message the last
vcs_info call has assembled. These are strongly connected to
the formats, actionformats and nvcsformats styles described
above. Those styles are lists. The first member of that list
gets expanded into ${vcs_info_msg_0_}, the second into
${vcs_info_msg_1_} and the Nth into ${vcs_info_msg_N-1_}. (See
the max-exports style above.)

All variables named VCS_INFO_* are for internal use only.

Hooks in vcs_info
Hooks are places in vcs_info where you can run your own code. That
code can communicate with the code that called it and through that,
change the system's behaviour.

For configuration, hooks change the style context:
:vcs_info:vcs-string+hook-name:user-context:repo-root-name

To register functions to a hook, you need to list them in the hooks
style in the appropriate context.

Example:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+foo:*' hooks bar baz

This registers functions to the hook `foo' for all backends. In order
to avoid namespace problems, all registered function names are
prepended by a `+vi-', so the actual functions called for the `foo'
hook are `+vi-bar' and `+vi-baz'.

If you would like to register a function to a hook regardless of the
current context, you may use the vcs_info_hookadd function. To remove
a function that was added like that, the vcs_info_hookdel function
can be used.

If something seems weird, you can enable the `debug' boolean style in
the proper context and the hook-calling code will print what it tried
to execute and whether the function in question existed.

When you register more than one function to a hook, all functions are
executed one after another until one function returns non-zero or
until all functions have been called. Context-sensitive hook
functions are executed before statically registered ones (the ones
added by vcs_info_hookadd).

You may pass data between functions via an associative array,
user_data. For example:

+vi-git-myfirsthook(){
user_data[myval]=$myval
}
+vi-git-mysecondhook(){
# do something with ${user_data[myval]}
}

There are a number of variables that are special in hook contexts:

ret The return value that the hooks system will return to the
caller. The default is an integer `zero'. If and how a changed
ret value changes the execution of the caller depends on the
specific hook. See the hook documentation below for details.

hook_com
An associated array which is used for bidirectional
communication from the caller to hook functions. The used keys
depend on the specific hook.

context
The active context of the hook. Functions that wish to change
this variable should make it local scope first.

vcs The current VCS after it was detected. The same values as in
the enable/disable style are used. Available in all hooks
except start-up.

Finally, the full list of currently available hooks:

start-up
Called after starting vcs_info but before the VCS in this
directory is determined. It can be used to deactivate vcs_info
temporarily if necessary. When ret is set to 1, vcs_info
aborts and does nothing; when set to 2, vcs_info sets up
everything as if no version control were active and exits.

pre-get-data
Same as start-up but after the VCS was detected.

gen-hg-bookmark-string
Called in the Mercurial backend when a bookmark string is
generated; the get-revision and get-bookmarks styles must be
true.

This hook gets the names of the Mercurial bookmarks that
vcs_info collected from `hg'.

If a bookmark is active, the key
${hook_com[hg-active-bookmark]} is set to its name. The key
is otherwise unset.

When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[hg-bookmark-string]} will be used in the %m escape
in formats and actionformats and will be available in the
global backend_misc array as ${backend_misc[bookmarks]}.

gen-applied-string
Called in the git (with stgit or during rebase or merge), and
hg (with mq) backends and in quilt support when the
applied-string is generated; the use-quilt zstyle must be true
for quilt (the mq and stgit backends are active by default).

The arguments to this hook describe applied patches in the
opposite order, which means that the first argument is the
top-most patch and so forth.

When the patches' log messages can be extracted, those are
embedded within each argument after a space, so each argument
is of the form `patch-name first line of the log message',
where patch-name contains no whitespace. The mq backend passes
arguments of the form `patch name', with possible embedded
spaces, but without extracting the patch's log message.

When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[applied-string]} will be available as %p in the
patch-format and nopatch-format styles. This hook is, in
concert with set-patch-format, responsible for %-escaping that
value for use in the prompt. (See the Oddities section.)

The quilt backend passes to this hook the inputs
${hook_com[quilt-patches-dir]} and, if it has been determined,
${hook_com[quilt-pc-dir]}.

gen-unapplied-string
Called in the git (with stgit or during rebase), and hg (with
mq) backend and in quilt support when the unapplied-string is
generated; the get-unapplied style must be true.

This hook gets the names of all unapplied patches which
vcs_info in order, which means that the first argument is the
patch next-in-line to be applied and so forth.

The format of each argument is as for gen-applied-string,
above.

When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[unapplied-string]} will be available as %u in the
patch-format and nopatch-format styles. This hook is, in
concert with set-patch-format, responsible for %-escaping that
value for use in the prompt. (See the Oddities section.)

The quilt backend passes to this hook the inputs
${hook_com[quilt-patches-dir]} and, if it has been determined,
${hook_com[quilt-pc-dir]}.

gen-mqguards-string
Called in the hg backend when guards-string is generated; the
get-mq style must be true (default).

This hook gets the names of any active mq guards.

When setting ret to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[guards-string]} will be used in the %g escape in
the patch-format and nopatch-format styles.

no-vcs This hooks is called when no version control system was
detected.

The `hook_com' parameter is not used.

post-backend
Called as soon as the backend has finished collecting
information.

The `hook_com' keys available are as for the set-message hook.

post-quilt
Called after the quilt support is done. The following
information is passed as arguments to the hook: 1. the
quilt-support mode (`addon' or `standalone'); 2. the directory
that contains the patch series; 3. the directory that holds
quilt's status information (the `.pc' directory) or the string
"-nopc-" if that directory wasn't found.

The `hook_com' parameter is not used.

set-branch-format
Called before `branchformat' is set. The only argument to the
hook is the format that is configured at this point.

The `hook_com' keys considered are `branch' and `revision'.
They are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and
any change will be used directly when the actual replacement
is done.

If ret is set to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[branch-replace]} will be used unchanged as the `%b'
replacement in the variables set by vcs_info.

set-hgrev-format
Called before a `hgrevformat' is set. The only argument to the
hook is the format that is configured at this point.

The `hook_com' keys considered are `hash' and `localrev'.
They are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and
any change will be used directly when the actual replacement
is done.

If ret is set to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[rev-replace]} will be used unchanged as the `%i'
replacement in the variables set by vcs_info.

pre-addon-quilt
This hook is used when vcs_info's quilt functionality is
active in "addon" mode (quilt used on top of a real version
control system). It is activated right before any quilt
specific action is taken.

Setting the `ret' variable in this hook to a non-zero value
avoids any quilt specific actions from being run at all.

set-patch-format
This hook is used to control some of the possible expansions
in patch-format and nopatch-format styles with patch queue
systems such as quilt, mqueue and the like.

This hook is used in the git, hg and quilt backends.

The hook allows the control of the %p (${hook_com[applied]})
and %u (${hook_com[unapplied]}) expansion in all backends that
use the hook. With the mercurial backend, the %g
(${hook_com[guards]}) expansion is controllable in addition to
that.

If ret is set to non-zero, the string in
${hook_com[patch-replace]} will be used unchanged instead of
an expanded format from patch-format or nopatch-format.

This hook is, in concert with the gen-applied-string or
gen-unapplied-string hooks if they are defined, responsible
for %-escaping the final patch-format value for use in the
prompt. (See the Oddities section.)

The quilt backend passes to this hook the inputs
${hook_com[quilt-patches-dir]} and, if it has been determined,
${hook_com[quilt-pc-dir]}.

set-message
Called each time before a `vcs_info_msg_N_' message is set.
It takes two arguments; the first being the `N' in the message
variable name, the second is the currently configured formats
or actionformats.

There are a number of `hook_com' keys, that are used here:
`action', `branch', `base', `base-name', `subdir', `staged',
`unstaged', `revision', `misc', `vcs' and one `miscN' entry
for each backend-specific data field (N starting at zero).
They are set to the values figured out so far by vcs_info and
any change will be used directly when the actual replacement
is done.

Since this hook is triggered multiple times (once for each
configured formats or actionformats), each of the `hook_com'
keys mentioned above (except for the miscN entries) has an
`_orig' counterpart, so even if you changed a value to your
liking you can still get the original value in the next run.
Changing the `_orig' values is probably not a good idea.

If ret is set to non-zero, the string in ${hook_com[message]}
will be used unchanged as the message by vcs_info.

If all of this sounds rather confusing, take a look at the Examples
section below and also in the Misc/vcs_info-examples file in the Zsh
source. They contain some explanatory code.

Examples

Don't use vcs_info at all (even though it's in your prompt):
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable NONE

Disable the backends for bzr and svk:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' disable bzr svk

Disable everything but bzr and svk:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*' enable bzr svk

Provide a special formats for git:
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' formats ' GIT, BABY! [%b]'
zstyle ':vcs_info:git:*' actionformats ' GIT ACTION! [%b|%a]'

All %x expansion in all sorts of formats (formats, actionformats,
branchformat, you name it) are done using the `zformat' builtin from
the `zsh/zutil' module. That means you can do everything with these
%x items what zformat supports. In particular, if you want something
that is really long to have a fixed width, like a hash in a mercurial
branchformat, you can do this: %12.12i. That'll shrink the 40
character hash to its 12 leading characters. The form is actually
`%min.maxx'. More is possible. See the section `The zsh/zutil
Module' in zshmodules(1) for details.

Use the quicker bzr backend
zstyle ':vcs_info:bzr:*' use-simple true

If you do use use-simple, please report if it does
`the-right-thing[tm]'.

Display the revision number in yellow for bzr and svn:
zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%%F{yellow}:%r'

The doubled percent sign is explained in the Oddities section.

Alternatively, one can use the raw colour codes directly:

zstyle ':vcs_info:(svn|bzr):*' \
branchformat '%b%{'${fg[yellow]}'%}:%r'

Normally when a variable is interpolated into a format string, the
variable needs to be %-escaped. In this example we skipped that
because we assume the value of ${fg[yellow]} doesn't contain any %
signs.

Make sure you enclose the color codes in %{...%} if you want to use
the string provided by vcs_info in prompts.

Here is how to print the VCS information as a command (not in a
prompt):
vcsi() { vcs_info interactive; vcs_info_lastmsg }

This way, you can even define different formats for output via
vcs_info_lastmsg in the ':vcs_info:*:interactive:*' namespace.

Now as promised, some code that uses hooks: say, you'd like to
replace the string `svn' by `subversion' in vcs_info's %s formats
replacement.

First, we will tell vcs_info to call a function when populating the
message variables with the gathered information:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion

Nothing happens. Which is reasonable, since we didn't define the
actual function yet. To see what the hooks subsystem is trying to do,
enable the `debug' style:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug true

That should give you an idea what is going on. Specifically, the
function that we are looking for is `+vi-svn2subversion'. Note, the
`+vi-' prefix. So, everything is in order, just as documented. When
you are done checking out the debugging output, disable it again:
zstyle ':vcs_info:*+*:*' debug false

Now, let's define the function:

function +vi-svn2subversion() {
[[ ${hook_com[vcs_orig]} == svn ]] && hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}

Simple enough. And it could have even been simpler, if only we had
registered our function in a less generic context. If we do it only
in the `svn' backend's context, we don't need to test which the
active backend is:
zstyle ':vcs_info:svn+set-message:*' hooks svn2subversion

function +vi-svn2subversion() {
hook_com[vcs]=subversion
}

And finally a little more elaborate example, that uses a hook to
create a customised bookmark string for the hg backend.

Again, we start off by registering a function:
zstyle ':vcs_info:hg+gen-hg-bookmark-string:*' hooks hgbookmarks

And then we define the `+vi-hgbookmarks' function:

function +vi-hgbookmarks() {
# The default is to connect all bookmark names by
# commas. This mixes things up a little.
# Imagine, there's one type of bookmarks that is
# special to you. Say, because it's *your* work.
# Those bookmarks look always like this: "sh/*"
# (because your initials are sh, for example).
# This makes the bookmarks string use only those
# bookmarks. If there's more than one, it
# concatenates them using commas.
# The bookmarks returned by `hg' are available in
# the function's positional parameters.
local s="${(Mj:,:)@:#sh/*}"
# Now, the communication with the code that calls
# the hook functions is done via the hook_com[]
# hash. The key at which the `gen-hg-bookmark-string'
# hook looks is `hg-bookmark-string'. So:
hook_com[hg-bookmark-string]=$s
# And to signal that we want to use the string we
# just generated, set the special variable `ret' to
# something other than the default zero:
ret=1
return 0
}

Some longer examples and code snippets which might be useful are
available in the examples file located at Misc/vcs_info-examples in
the Zsh source directory.

This concludes our guided tour through zsh's vcs_info.

PROMPT THEMES

Installation

You should make sure all the functions from the Functions/Prompts
directory of the source distribution are available; they all begin
with the string `prompt_' except for the special function
`promptinit'. You also need the `colors' and `add-zsh-hook'
functions from Functions/Misc. All these functions may already be
installed on your system; if not, you will need to find them and copy
them. The directory should appear as one of the elements of the
fpath array (this should already be the case if they were installed),
and at least the function promptinit should be autoloaded; it will
autoload the rest. Finally, to initialize the use of the system you
need to call the promptinit function. The following code in your
.zshrc will arrange for this; assume the functions are stored in the
directory ~/myfns:

fpath=(~/myfns $fpath)
autoload -U promptinit
promptinit

Theme Selection

Use the prompt command to select your preferred theme. This command
may be added to your .zshrc following the call to promptinit in order
to start zsh with a theme already selected.

prompt [ -c | -l ]
prompt [ -p | -h ] [ theme ... ]
prompt [ -s ] theme [ arg ... ]
Set or examine the prompt theme. With no options and a theme
argument, the theme with that name is set as the current
theme. The available themes are determined at run time; use
the -l option to see a list. The special theme `random'
selects at random one of the available themes and sets your
prompt to that.

In some cases the theme may be modified by one or more
arguments, which should be given after the theme name. See
the help for each theme for descriptions of these arguments.

Options are:

-c Show the currently selected theme and its parameters,
if any.
-l List all available prompt themes.
-p Preview the theme named by theme, or all themes if no
theme is given.
-h Show help for the theme named by theme, or for the
prompt function if no theme is given.
-s Set theme as the current theme and save state.

prompt_theme_setup
Each available theme has a setup function which is called by
the prompt function to install that theme. This function may
define other functions as necessary to maintain the prompt,
including functions used to preview the prompt or provide help
for its use. You should not normally call a theme's setup
function directly.

Utility Themes

prompt off
The theme `off' sets all the prompt variables to minimal
values with no special effects.

prompt default
The theme `default' sets all prompt variables to the same
state as if an interactive zsh was started with no
initialization files.

prompt restore
The special theme `restore' erases all theme settings and sets
prompt variables to their state before the first time the
`prompt' function was run, provided each theme has properly
defined its cleanup (see below).

Note that you can undo `prompt off' and `prompt default' with
`prompt restore', but a second restore does not undo the
first.

Writing Themes

The first step for adding your own theme is to choose a name for it,
and create a file `prompt_name_setup' in a directory in your fpath,
such as ~/myfns in the example above. The file should at minimum
contain assignments for the prompt variables that your theme wishes
to modify. By convention, themes use PS1, PS2, RPS1, etc., rather
than the longer PROMPT and RPROMPT.

The file is autoloaded as a function in the current shell context, so
it may contain any necessary commands to customize your theme,
including defining additional functions. To make some complex tasks
easier, your setup function may also do any of the following:

Assign prompt_opts
The array prompt_opts may be assigned any of "bang", "cr",
"percent", "sp", and/or "subst" as values. The corresponding
setopts (promptbang, etc.) are turned on, all other
prompt-related options are turned off. The prompt_opts array
preserves setopts even beyond the scope of localoptions,
should your function need that.

Modify hooks
Use of add-zsh-hook and add-zle-hook-widget is recommended
(see the Manipulating Hook Functions section above). All
hooks that follow the naming pattern prompt_theme_hook are
automatically removed when the prompt theme changes or is
disabled.

Declare cleanup
If your function makes any other changes that should be undone
when the theme is disabled, your setup function may call

prompt_cleanup command

where command should be suitably quoted. If your theme is
ever disabled or replaced by another, command is executed with
eval. You may declare more than one such cleanup hook.

Define preview
Define or autoload a function prompt_name_preview to display a
simulated version of your prompt. A simple default previewer
is defined by promptinit for themes that do not define their
own. This preview function is called by `prompt -p'.

Provide help
Define or autoload a function prompt_name_help to display
documentation or help text for your theme. This help function
is called by `prompt -h'.

ZLE FUNCTIONS

Widgets

These functions all implement user-defined ZLE widgets (see
zshzle(1)) which can be bound to keystrokes in interactive shells.
To use them, your .zshrc should contain lines of the form

autoload function
zle -N function

followed by an appropriate bindkey command to associate the function
with a key sequence. Suggested bindings are described below.

bash-style word functions
If you are looking for functions to implement moving over and
editing words in the manner of bash, where only alphanumeric
characters are considered word characters, you can use the
functions described in the next section. The following is
sufficient:

autoload -U select-word-style
select-word-style bash

forward-word-match, backward-word-match
kill-word-match, backward-kill-word-match
transpose-words-match, capitalize-word-match
up-case-word-match, down-case-word-match
delete-whole-word-match, select-word-match
select-word-style, match-word-context, match-words-by-style
The first eight `-match' functions are drop-in replacements
for the builtin widgets without the suffix. By default they
behave in a similar way. However, by the use of styles and
the function select-word-style, the way words are matched can
be altered. select-word-match is intended to be used as a text
object in vi mode but with custom word styles. For comparison,
the widgets described in zshzle(1) under Text Objects use
fixed definitions of words, compatible with the vim editor.

The simplest way of configuring the functions is to use
select-word-style, which can either be called as a normal
function with the appropriate argument, or invoked as a
user-defined widget that will prompt for the first character
of the word style to be used. The first time it is invoked,
the first eight -match functions will automatically replace
the builtin versions, so they do not need to be loaded
explicitly.

The word styles available are as follows. Only the first
character is examined.

bash Word characters are alphanumeric characters only.

normal As in normal shell operation: word characters are
alphanumeric characters plus any characters present in
the string given by the parameter $WORDCHARS.

shell Words are complete shell command arguments, possibly
including complete quoted strings, or any tokens
special to the shell.

whitespace
Words are any set of characters delimited by
whitespace.

default
Restore the default settings; this is usually the same
as `normal'.

All but `default' can be input as an upper case character,
which has the same effect but with subword matching turned on.
In this case, words with upper case characters are treated
specially: each separate run of upper case characters, or an
upper case character followed by any number of other
characters, is considered a word. The style subword-range can
supply an alternative character range to the default
`[:upper:]'; the value of the style is treated as the contents
of a `[...]' pattern (note that the outer brackets should not
be supplied, only those surrounding named ranges).

More control can be obtained using the zstyle command, as
described in zshmodules(1). Each style is looked up in the
context :zle:widget where widget is the name of the
user-defined widget, not the name of the function implementing
it, so in the case of the definitions supplied by
select-word-style the appropriate contexts are
:zle:forward-word, and so on. The function select-word-style
itself always defines styles for the context `:zle:*' which
can be overridden by more specific (longer) patterns as well
as explicit contexts.

The style word-style specifies the rules to use. This may
have the following values.

normal Use the standard shell rules, i.e. alphanumerics and
$WORDCHARS, unless overridden by the styles word-chars
or word-class.

specified
Similar to normal, but only the specified characters,
and not also alphanumerics, are considered word
characters.

unspecified
The negation of specified. The given characters are
those which will not be considered part of a word.

shell Words are obtained by using the syntactic rules for
generating shell command arguments. In addition,
special tokens which are never command arguments such
as `()' are also treated as words.

whitespace
Words are whitespace-delimited strings of characters.

The first three of those rules usually use $WORDCHARS, but the
value in the parameter can be overridden by the style
word-chars, which works in exactly the same way as $WORDCHARS.
In addition, the style word-class uses character class syntax
to group characters and takes precedence over word-chars if
both are set. The word-class style does not include the
surrounding brackets of the character class; for example,
`-:[:alnum:]' is a valid word-class to include all
alphanumerics plus the characters `-' and `:'. Be careful
including `]', `^' and `-' as these are special inside
character classes.

word-style may also have `-subword' appended to its value to
turn on subword matching, as described above.

The style skip-chars is mostly useful for transpose-words and
similar functions. If set, it gives a count of characters
starting at the cursor position which will not be considered
part of the word and are treated as space, regardless of what
they actually are. For example, if

zstyle ':zle:transpose-words' skip-chars 1

has been set, and transpose-words-match is called with the
cursor on the X of fooXbar, where X can be any character, then
the resulting expression is barXfoo.

Finer grained control can be obtained by setting the style
word-context to an array of pairs of entries. Each pair of
entries consists of a pattern and a subcontext. The shell
argument the cursor is on is matched against each pattern in
turn until one matches; if it does, the context is extended by
a colon and the corresponding subcontext. Note that the test
is made against the original word on the line, with no
stripping of quotes. Special handling is done between words:
the current context is examined and if it contains the string
between the word is set to a single space; else if it is
contains the string back, the word before the cursor is
considered, else the word after cursor is considered. Some
examples are given below.

The style skip-whitespace-first is only used with the
forward-word widget. If it is set to true, then forward-word
skips any non-word-characters, followed by any
non-word-characters: this is similar to the behaviour of other
word-orientated widgets, and also that used by other editors,
however it differs from the standard zsh behaviour. When
using select-word-style the widget is set in the context
:zle:* to true if the word style is bash and false otherwise.
It may be overridden by setting it in the more specific
context :zle:forward-word*.

It is possible to create widgets with specific behaviour by
defining a new widget implemented by the appropriate generic
function, then setting a style for the context of the specific
widget. For example, the following defines a widget
backward-kill-space-word using backward-kill-word-match, the
generic widget implementing backward-kill-word behaviour, and
ensures that the new widget always implements space-delimited
behaviour.

zle -N backward-kill-space-word backward-kill-word-match
zstyle :zle:backward-kill-space-word word-style space

The widget backward-kill-space-word can now be bound to a key.

Here are some further examples of use of the styles, actually
taken from the simplified interface in select-word-style:

zstyle ':zle:*' word-style standard
zstyle ':zle:*' word-chars ''

Implements bash-style word handling for all widgets, i.e. only
alphanumerics are word characters; equivalent to setting the
parameter WORDCHARS empty for the given context.

style ':zle:*kill*' word-style space

Uses space-delimited words for widgets with the word `kill' in
the name. Neither of the styles word-chars nor word-class is
used in this case.

Here are some examples of use of the word-context style to
extend the context.

zstyle ':zle:*' word-context \
"*/*" filename "[[:space:]]" whitespace
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:whitespace' word-style shell
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:filename' word-style normal
zstyle ':zle:transpose-words:filename' word-chars ''

This provides two different ways of using transpose-words
depending on whether the cursor is on whitespace between words
or on a filename, here any word containing a /. On
whitespace, complete arguments as defined by standard shell
rules will be transposed. In a filename, only alphanumerics
will be transposed. Elsewhere, words will be transposed using
the default style for :zle:transpose-words.

The word matching and all the handling of zstyle settings is
actually implemented by the function match-words-by-style.
This can be used to create new user-defined widgets. The
calling function should set the local parameter curcontext to
:zle:widget, create the local parameter matched_words and call
match-words-by-style with no arguments. On return,
matched_words will be set to an array with the elements: (1)
the start of the line (2) the word before the cursor (3) any
non-word characters between that word and the cursor (4) any
non-word character at the cursor position plus any remaining
non-word characters before the next word, including all
characters specified by the skip-chars style, (5) the word at
or following the cursor (6) any non-word characters following
that word (7) the remainder of the line. Any of the elements
may be an empty string; the calling function should test for
this to decide whether it can perform its function.

If the variable matched_words is defined by the caller to
match-words-by-style as an associative array (local -A
matched_words), then the seven values given above should be
retrieved from it as elements named start, word-before-cursor,
ws-before-cursor, ws-after-cursor, word-after-cursor,
ws-after-word, and end. In addition the element is-word-start
is 1 if the cursor is on the start of a word or subword, or on
white space before it (the cases can be distinguished by
testing the ws-after-cursor element) and 0 otherwise. This
form is recommended for future compatibility.

It is possible to pass options with arguments to
match-words-by-style to override the use of styles. The
options are:
-w word-style
-s skip-chars
-c word-class
-C word-chars
-r subword-range

For example, match-words-by-style -w shell -c 0 may be used to
extract the command argument around the cursor.

The word-context style is implemented by the function
match-word-context. This should not usually need to be called
directly.

bracketed-paste-magic
The bracketed-paste widget (see the subsection `Miscellaneous'
in zshzle(1)) inserts pasted text literally into the editor
buffer rather than interpret it as keystrokes. This disables
some common usages where the self-insert widget is replaced in
order to accomplish some extra processing. An example is the
contributed url-quote-magic widget described below.

The bracketed-paste-magic widget is meant to replace
bracketed-paste with a wrapper that re-enables these
self-insert actions, and other actions as selected by zstyles.
Therefore this widget is installed with

autoload -Uz bracketed-paste-magic
zle -N bracketed-paste bracketed-paste-magic

Other than enabling some widget processing,
bracketed-paste-magic attempts to replicate bracketed-paste as
faithfully as possible.

The following zstyles may be set to control processing of
pasted text. All are looked up in the context
`:bracketed-paste-magic'.

active-widgets
A list of patterns matching widget names that should be
activated during the paste. All other key sequences
are processed as self-insert-unmeta. The default is
`self-*' so any user-defined widgets named with that
prefix are active along with the builtin self-insert.

If this style is not set (explicitly deleted) or set to
an empty value, no widgets are active and the pasted
text is inserted literally. If the value includes
`undefined-key', any unknown sequences are discarded
from the pasted text.

inactive-keys
The inverse of active-widgets, a list of key sequences
that always use self-insert-unmeta even when bound to
an active widget. Note that this is a list of literal
key sequences, not patterns.

paste-init
A list of function names, called in widget context (but
not as widgets). The functions are called in order
until one of them returns a non-zero status. The
parameter `PASTED' contains the initial state of the
pasted text. All other ZLE parameters such as `BUFFER'
have their normal values and side-effects, and full
history is available, so for example paste-init
functions may move words from BUFFER into PASTED to
make those words visible to the active-widgets.

A non-zero return from a paste-init function does not
prevent the paste itself from proceeding.

Loading bracketed-paste-magic defines
backward-extend-paste, a helper function for use in
paste-init.

zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic paste-init \
backward-extend-paste

When a paste would insert into the middle of a word or
append text to a word already on the line,
backward-extend-paste moves the prefix from LBUFFER
into PASTED so that the active-widgets see the full
word so far. This may be useful with url-quote-magic.

paste-finish
Another list of function names called in order until
one returns non-zero. These functions are called after
the pasted text has been processed by the
active-widgets, but before it is inserted into
`BUFFER'. ZLE parameters have their normal values and
side-effects.

A non-zero return from a paste-finish function does not
prevent the paste itself from proceeding.

Loading bracketed-paste-magic also defines quote-paste,
a helper function for use in paste-finish.

zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic paste-finish \
quote-paste
zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic:finish quote-style \
qqq

When the pasted text is inserted into BUFFER, it is
quoted per the quote-style value. To forcibly turn off
the built-in numeric prefix quoting of bracketed-paste,
use:

zstyle :bracketed-paste-magic:finish quote-style \
none

Important: During active-widgets processing of the paste
(after paste-init and before paste-finish), BUFFER starts
empty and history is restricted, so cursor motions, etc., may
not pass outside of the pasted content. Text assigned to
BUFFER by the active widgets is copied back into PASTED before
paste-finish.

copy-earlier-word
This widget works like a combination of insert-last-word and
copy-prev-shell-word. Repeated invocations of the widget
retrieve earlier words on the relevant history line. With a
numeric argument N, insert the Nth word from the history line;
N may be negative to count from the end of the line.

If insert-last-word has been used to retrieve the last word on
a previous history line, repeated invocations will replace
that word with earlier words from the same line.

Otherwise, the widget applies to words on the line currently
being edited. The widget style can be set to the name of
another widget that should be called to retrieve words. This
widget must accept the same three arguments as
insert-last-word.

cycle-completion-positions
After inserting an unambiguous string into the command line,
the new function based completion system may know about
multiple places in this string where characters are missing or
differ from at least one of the possible matches. It will
then place the cursor on the position it considers to be the
most interesting one, i.e. the one where one can disambiguate
between as many matches as possible with as little typing as
possible.

This widget allows the cursor to be easily moved to the other
interesting spots. It can be invoked repeatedly to cycle
between all positions reported by the completion system.

delete-whole-word-match
This is another function which works like the -match functions
described immediately above, i.e. using styles to decide the
word boundaries. However, it is not a replacement for any
existing function.

The basic behaviour is to delete the word around the cursor.
There is no numeric argument handling; only the single word
around the cursor is considered. If the widget contains the
string kill, the removed text will be placed in the cutbuffer
for future yanking. This can be obtained by defining
kill-whole-word-match as follows:

zle -N kill-whole-word-match delete-whole-word-match

and then binding the widget kill-whole-word-match.

up-line-or-beginning-search, down-line-or-beginning-search
These widgets are similar to the builtin functions
up-line-or-search and down-line-or-search: if in a multiline
buffer they move up or down within the buffer, otherwise they
search for a history line matching the start of the current
line. In this case, however, they search for a line which
matches the current line up to the current cursor position, in
the manner of history-beginning-search-backward and -forward,
rather than the first word on the line.

edit-command-line
Edit the command line using your visual editor, as in ksh.

bindkey -M vicmd v edit-command-line

The editor to be used can also be specified using the editor
style in the context of the widget. It is specified as an
array of command and arguments:

zstyle :zle:edit-command-line editor gvim -f

expand-absolute-path
Expand the file name under the cursor to an absolute path,
resolving symbolic links. Where possible, the initial path
segment is turned into a named directory or reference to a
user's home directory.

history-search-end
This function implements the widgets
history-beginning-search-backward-end and
history-beginning-search-forward-end. These commands work by
first calling the corresponding builtin widget (see `History
Control' in zshzle(1)) and then moving the cursor to the end
of the line. The original cursor position is remembered and
restored before calling the builtin widget a second time, so
that the same search is repeated to look farther through the
history.

Although you autoload only one function, the commands to use
it are slightly different because it implements two widgets.

zle -N history-beginning-search-backward-end \
history-search-end
zle -N history-beginning-search-forward-end \
history-search-end
bindkey '\e^P' history-beginning-search-backward-end
bindkey '\e^N' history-beginning-search-forward-end

history-beginning-search-menu
This function implements yet another form of history
searching. The text before the cursor is used to select lines
from the history, as for history-beginning-search-backward
except that all matches are shown in a numbered menu. Typing
the appropriate digits inserts the full history line. Note
that leading zeroes must be typed (they are only shown when
necessary for removing ambiguity). The entire history is
searched; there is no distinction between forwards and
backwards.

With a numeric argument, the search is not anchored to the
start of the line; the string typed by the use may appear
anywhere in the line in the history.

If the widget name contains `-end' the cursor is moved to the
end of the line inserted. If the widget name contains
`-space' any space in the text typed is treated as a wildcard
and can match anything (hence a leading space is equivalent to
giving a numeric argument). Both forms can be combined, for
example:

zle -N history-beginning-search-menu-space-end \
history-beginning-search-menu

history-pattern-search
The function history-pattern-search implements widgets which
prompt for a pattern with which to search the history
backwards or forwards. The pattern is in the usual zsh
format, however the first character may be ^ to anchor the
search to the start of the line, and the last character may be
$ to anchor the search to the end of the line. If the search
was not anchored to the end of the line the cursor is
positioned just after the pattern found.

The commands to create bindable widgets are similar to those
in the example immediately above:

autoload -U history-pattern-search
zle -N history-pattern-search-backward history-pattern-search
zle -N history-pattern-search-forward history-pattern-search

incarg Typing the keystrokes for this widget with the cursor placed
on or to the left of an integer causes that integer to be
incremented by one. With a numeric argument, the number is
incremented by the amount of the argument (decremented if the
numeric argument is negative). The shell parameter incarg may
be set to change the default increment to something other than
one.

bindkey '^X+' incarg

incremental-complete-word
This allows incremental completion of a word. After starting
this command, a list of completion choices can be shown after
every character you type, which you can delete with ^H or DEL.
Pressing return accepts the completion so far and returns you
to normal editing (that is, the command line is not
immediately executed). You can hit TAB to do normal
completion, ^G to abort back to the state when you started,
and ^D to list the matches.

This works only with the new function based completion system.

bindkey '^Xi' incremental-complete-word

insert-composed-char
This function allows you to compose characters that don't
appear on the keyboard to be inserted into the command line.
The command is followed by two keys corresponding to ASCII
characters (there is no prompt). For accented characters, the
two keys are a base character followed by a code for the
accent, while for other special characters the two characters
together form a mnemonic for the character to be inserted.
The two-character codes are a subset of those given by RFC
1345 (see for example http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1345.html).

The function may optionally be followed by up to two
characters which replace one or both of the characters read
from the keyboard; if both characters are supplied, no input
is read. For example, insert-composed-char a: can be used
within a widget to insert an a with umlaut into the command
line. This has the advantages over use of a literal character
that it is more portable.

For best results zsh should have been built with support for
multibyte characters (configured with --enable-multibyte);
however, the function works for the limited range of
characters available in single-byte character sets such as
ISO-8859-1.

The character is converted into the local representation and
inserted into the command line at the cursor position. (The
conversion is done within the shell, using whatever facilities
the C library provides.) With a numeric argument, the
character and its code are previewed in the status line

The function may be run outside zle in which case it prints
the character (together with a newline) to standard output.
Input is still read from keystrokes.

See insert-unicode-char for an alternative way of inserting
Unicode characters using their hexadecimal character number.

The set of accented characters is reasonably complete up to
Unicode character U+0180, the set of special characters less
so. However, it is very sporadic from that point. Adding new
characters is easy, however; see the function
define-composed-chars. Please send any additions to
zsh-workers@zsh.org.

The codes for the second character when used to accent the
first are as follows. Note that not every character can take
every accent.
! Grave.
' Acute.
> Circumflex.
? Tilde. (This is not ~ as RFC 1345 does not assume that
character is present on the keyboard.)
- Macron. (A horizontal bar over the base character.)
( Breve. (A shallow dish shape over the base character.)
. Dot above the base character, or in the case of i no
dot, or in the case of L and l a centered dot.
: Diaeresis (Umlaut).
c Cedilla.
_ Underline, however there are currently no underlined
characters.
/ Stroke through the base character.
" Double acute (only supported on a few letters).
; Ogonek. (A little forward facing hook at the bottom
right of the character.)
< Caron. (A little v over the letter.)
0 Circle over the base character.
2 Hook over the base character.
9 Horn over the base character.

The most common characters from the Arabic, Cyrillic, Greek
and Hebrew alphabets are available; consult RFC 1345 for the
appropriate sequences. In addition, a set of two letter codes
not in RFC 1345 are available for the double-width characters
corresponding to ASCII characters from ! to ~ (0x21 to 0x7e)
by preceding the character with ^, for example ^A for a
double-width A.

The following other two-character sequences are understood.

ASCII characters
These are already present on most keyboards:
<( Left square bracket
// Backslash (solidus)
)> Right square bracket
(! Left brace (curly bracket)
!! Vertical bar (pipe symbol)
!) Right brace (curly bracket)
'? Tilde

Special letters
Characters found in various variants of the Latin
alphabet:
ss Eszett (scharfes S)
D-, d- Eth
TH, th Thorn
kk Kra
'n 'n
NG, ng Ng
OI, oi Oi
yr yr
ED ezh

Currency symbols
Ct Cent
Pd Pound sterling (also lira and others)
Cu Currency
Ye Yen
Eu Euro (N.B. not in RFC 1345)

Punctuation characters
References to "right" quotes indicate the shape (like a
9 rather than 6) rather than their grammatical use.
(For example, a "right" low double quote is used to
open quotations in German.)
!I Inverted exclamation mark
BB Broken vertical bar
SE Section
Co Copyright
-a Spanish feminine ordinal indicator
<< Left guillemet
-- Soft hyphen
Rg Registered trade mark
PI Pilcrow (paragraph)
-o Spanish masculine ordinal indicator
>> Right guillemet
?I Inverted question mark
-1 Hyphen
-N En dash
-M Em dash
-3 Horizontal bar
:3 Vertical ellipsis
.3 Horizontal midline ellipsis
!2 Double vertical line
=2 Double low line
'6 Left single quote
'9 Right single quote
.9 "Right" low quote
9' Reversed "right" quote
"6 Left double quote
"9 Right double quote
:9 "Right" low double quote
9" Reversed "right" double quote
/- Dagger
/= Double dagger

Mathematical symbols
DG Degree
-2, +-, -+
- sign, +/- sign, -/+ sign
2S Superscript 2
3S Superscript 3
1S Superscript 1
My Micro
.M Middle dot
14 Quarter
12 Half
34 Three quarters
*X Multiplication
-: Division
%0 Per mille
FA, TE, /0
For all, there exists, empty set
dP, DE, NB
Partial derivative, delta (increment), del (nabla)
(-, -) Element of, contains
*P, +Z Product, sum
*-, Ob, Sb
Asterisk, ring, bullet
RT, 0(, 00
Root sign, proportional to, infinity

Other symbols
cS, cH, cD, cC
Card suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs
Md, M8, M2, Mb, Mx, MX
Musical notation: crotchet (quarter note), quaver
(eighth note), semiquavers (sixteenth notes), flag
sign, natural sign, sharp sign
Fm, Ml Female, male

Accents on their own
'> Circumflex (same as caret, ^)
'! Grave (same as backtick, `)
', Cedilla
': Diaeresis (Umlaut)
'm Macron
'' Acute

insert-files
This function allows you type a file pattern, and see the
results of the expansion at each step. When you hit return,
all expansions are inserted into the command line.

bindkey '^Xf' insert-files

insert-unicode-char
When first executed, the user inputs a set of hexadecimal
digits. This is terminated with another call to
insert-unicode-char. The digits are then turned into the
corresponding Unicode character. For example, if the widget
is bound to ^XU, the character sequence `^XU 4 c ^XU' inserts
L (Unicode U+004c).

See insert-composed-char for a way of inserting characters
using a two-character mnemonic.


narrow-to-region [ -p pre ] [ -P post ]
[ -S statepm | -R statepm | [ -l lbufvar ] [ -r
rbufvar ] ]
[ -n ] [ start end ]
narrow-to-region-invisible
Narrow the editable portion of the buffer to the region
between the cursor and the mark, which may be in either order.
The region may not be empty.

narrow-to-region may be used as a widget or called as a
function from a user-defined widget; by default, the text
outside the editable area remains visible. A recursive-edit
is performed and the original widening status is then
restored. Various options and arguments are available when it
is called as a function.

The options -p pretext and -P posttext may be used to replace
the text before and after the display for the duration of the
function; either or both may be an empty string.

If the option -n is also given, pretext or posttext will only
be inserted if there is text before or after the region
respectively which will be made invisible.

Two numeric arguments may be given which will be used instead
of the cursor and mark positions.

The option -S statepm is used to narrow according to the other
options while saving the original state in the parameter with
name statepm, while the option -R statepm is used to restore
the state from the parameter; note in both cases the name of
the parameter is required. In the second case, other options
and arguments are irrelevant. When this method is used, no
recursive-edit is performed; the calling widget should call
this function with the option -S, perform its own editing on
the command line or pass control to the user via `zle
recursive-edit', then call this function with the option -R.
The argument statepm must be a suitable name for an ordinary
parameter, except that parameters beginning with the prefix
_ntr_ are reserved for use within narrow-to-region. Typically
the parameter will be local to the calling function.

The options -l lbufvar and -r rbufvar may be used to specify
parameters where the widget will store the resulting text from
the operation. The parameter lbufvar will contain LBUFFER and
rbufvar will contain RBUFFER. Neither of these two options
may be used with -S or -R.

narrow-to-region-invisible is a simple widget which calls
narrow-to-region with arguments which replace any text outside
the region with `...'. It does not take any arguments.

The display is restored (and the widget returns) upon any zle
command which would usually cause the line to be accepted or
aborted. Hence an additional such command is required to
accept or abort the current line.

The return status of both widgets is zero if the line was
accepted, else non-zero.

Here is a trivial example of a widget using this feature.
local state
narrow-to-region -p $'Editing restricted region\n' \
-P '' -S state
zle recursive-edit
narrow-to-region -R state

predict-on
This set of functions implements predictive typing using
history search. After predict-on, typing characters causes
the editor to look backward in the history for the first line
beginning with what you have typed so far. After predict-off,
editing returns to normal for the line found. In fact, you
often don't even need to use predict-off, because if the line
doesn't match something in the history, adding a key performs
standard completion, and then inserts itself if no completions
were found. However, editing in the middle of a line is
liable to confuse prediction; see the toggle style below.

With the function based completion system (which is needed for
this), you should be able to type TAB at almost any point to
advance the cursor to the next ``interesting'' character
position (usually the end of the current word, but sometimes
somewhere in the middle of the word). And of course as soon
as the entire line is what you want, you can accept with
return, without needing to move the cursor to the end first.

The first time predict-on is used, it creates several
additional widget functions:

delete-backward-and-predict
Replaces the backward-delete-char widget. You do not
need to bind this yourself.
insert-and-predict
Implements predictive typing by replacing the
self-insert widget. You do not need to bind this
yourself.
predict-off
Turns off predictive typing.

Although you autoload only the predict-on function, it is
necessary to create a keybinding for predict-off as well.

zle -N predict-on
zle -N predict-off
bindkey '^X^Z' predict-on
bindkey '^Z' predict-off

read-from-minibuffer
This is most useful when called as a function from inside a
widget, but will work correctly as a widget in its own right.
It prompts for a value below the current command line; a value
may be input using all of the standard zle operations (and not
merely the restricted set available when executing, for
example, execute-named-cmd). The value is then returned to
the calling function in the parameter $REPLY and the editing
buffer restored to its previous state. If the read was
aborted by a keyboard break (typically ^G), the function
returns status 1 and $REPLY is not set.

If one argument is supplied to the function it is taken as a
prompt, otherwise `? ' is used. If two arguments are
supplied, they are the prompt and the initial value of
$LBUFFER, and if a third argument is given it is the initial
value of $RBUFFER. This provides a default value and starting
cursor placement. Upon return the entire buffer is the value
of $REPLY.

One option is available: `-k num' specifies that num
characters are to be read instead of a whole line. The line
editor is not invoked recursively in this case, so depending
on the terminal settings the input may not be visible, and
only the input keys are placed in $REPLY, not the entire
buffer. Note that unlike the read builtin num must be given;
there is no default.

The name is a slight misnomer, as in fact the shell's own
minibuffer is not used. Hence it is still possible to call
executed-named-cmd and similar functions while reading a
value.

replace-argument, replace-argument-edit
The function replace-argument can be used to replace a command
line argument in the current command line or, if the current
command line is empty, in the last command line executed (the
new command line is not executed). Arguments are as delimited
by standard shell syntax,

If a numeric argument is given, that specifies the argument to
be replaced. 0 means the command name, as in history
expansion. A negative numeric argument counts backward from
the last word.

If no numeric argument is given, the current argument is
replaced; this is the last argument if the previous history
line is being used.

The function prompts for a replacement argument.

If the widget contains the string edit, for example is defined
as

zle -N replace-argument-edit replace-argument

then the function presents the current value of the argument
for editing, otherwise the editing buffer for the replacement
is initially empty.

replace-string, replace-pattern
replace-string-again, replace-pattern-again
The function replace-string implements three widgets. If
defined under the same name as the function, it prompts for
two strings; the first (source) string will be replaced by the
second everywhere it occurs in the line editing buffer.

If the widget name contains the word `pattern', for example by
defining the widget using the command `zle -N replace-pattern
replace-string', then the matching is performed using zsh
patterns. All zsh extended globbing patterns can be used in
the source string; note that unlike filename generation the
pattern does not need to match an entire word, nor do glob
qualifiers have any effect. In addition, the replacement
string can contain parameter or command substitutions.
Furthermore, a `&' in the replacement string will be replaced
with the matched source string, and a backquoted digit `\N'
will be replaced by the Nth parenthesised expression matched.
The form `\{N}' may be used to protect the digit from
following digits.

If the widget instead contains the word `regex' (or `regexp'),
then the matching is performed using regular expressions,
respecting the setting of the option RE_MATCH_PCRE (see the
description of the function regexp-replace below). The
special replacement facilities described above for pattern
matching are available.

By default the previous source or replacement string will not
be offered for editing. However, this feature can be
activated by setting the style edit-previous in the context
:zle:widget (for example, :zle:replace-string) to true. In
addition, a positive numeric argument forces the previous
values to be offered, a negative or zero argument forces them
not to be.

The function replace-string-again can be used to repeat the
previous replacement; no prompting is done. As with
replace-string, if the name of the widget contains the word
`pattern' or `regex', pattern or regular expression matching
is performed, else a literal string replacement. Note that
the previous source and replacement text are the same whether
pattern, regular expression or string matching is used.

In addition, replace-string shows the previous replacement
above the prompt, so long as there was one during the current
session; if the source string is empty, that replacement will
be repeated without the widget prompting for a replacement
string.

For example, starting from the line:

print This line contains fan and fond

and invoking replace-pattern with the source string `f(?)n'
and the replacement string `c\1r' produces the not very useful
line:

print This line contains car and cord

The range of the replacement string can be limited by using
the narrow-to-region-invisible widget. One limitation of the
current version is that undo will cycle through changes to the
replacement and source strings before undoing the replacement
itself.

send-invisible
This is similar to read-from-minibuffer in that it may be
called as a function from a widget or as a widget of its own,
and interactively reads input from the keyboard. However, the
input being typed is concealed and a string of asterisks (`*')
is shown instead. The value is saved in the parameter
$INVISIBLE to which a reference is inserted into the editing
buffer at the restored cursor position. If the read was
aborted by a keyboard break (typically ^G) or another escape
from editing such as push-line, $INVISIBLE is set to empty and
the original buffer is restored unchanged.

If one argument is supplied to the function it is taken as a
prompt, otherwise `Non-echoed text: ' is used (as in emacs).
If a second and third argument are supplied they are used to
begin and end the reference to $INVISIBLE that is inserted
into the buffer. The default is to open with ${, then
INVISIBLE, and close with }, but many other effects are
possible.

smart-insert-last-word
This function may replace the insert-last-word widget, like
so:

zle -N insert-last-word smart-insert-last-word

With a numeric argument, or when passed command line arguments
in a call from another widget, it behaves like
insert-last-word, except that words in comments are ignored
when INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS is set.

Otherwise, the rightmost ``interesting'' word from the
previous command is found and inserted. The default
definition of ``interesting'' is that the word contains at
least one alphabetic character, slash, or backslash. This
definition may be overridden by use of the match style. The
context used to look up the style is the widget name, so
usually the context is :insert-last-word. However, you can
bind this function to different widgets to use different
patterns:

zle -N insert-last-assignment smart-insert-last-word
zstyle :insert-last-assignment match '[[:alpha:]][][[:alnum:]]#=*'
bindkey '\e=' insert-last-assignment

If no interesting word is found and the auto-previous style is
set to a true value, the search continues upward through the
history. When auto-previous is unset or false (the default),
the widget must be invoked repeatedly in order to search
earlier history lines.

transpose-lines
Only useful with a multi-line editing buffer; the lines here
are lines within the current on-screen buffer, not history
lines. The effect is similar to the function of the same name
in Emacs.

Transpose the current line with the previous line and move the
cursor to the start of the next line. Repeating this (which
can be done by providing a positive numeric argument) has the
effect of moving the line above the cursor down by a number of
lines.

With a negative numeric argument, requires two lines above the
cursor. These two lines are transposed and the cursor moved
to the start of the previous line. Using a numeric argument
less than -1 has the effect of moving the line above the
cursor up by minus that number of lines.

url-quote-magic
This widget replaces the built-in self-insert to make it
easier to type URLs as command line arguments. As you type,
the input character is analyzed and, if it may need quoting,
the current word is checked for a URI scheme. If one is found
and the current word is not already in quotes, a backslash is
inserted before the input character.

Styles to control quoting behavior:

url-metas
This style is looked up in the context
`:url-quote-magic:scheme' (where scheme is that of the
current URL, e.g. "ftp"). The value is a string
listing the characters to be treated as globbing
metacharacters when appearing in a URL using that
scheme. The default is to quote all zsh extended
globbing characters, excluding '<' and '>' but
including braces (as in brace expansion). See also
url-seps.

url-seps
Like url-metas, but lists characters that should be
considered command separators, redirections, history
references, etc. The default is to quote the standard
set of shell separators, excluding those that overlap
with the extended globbing characters, but including
'<' and '>' and the first character of $histchars.

url-globbers
This style is looked up in the context
`:url-quote-magic'. The values form a list of command
names that are expected to do their own globbing on the
URL string. This implies that they are aliased to use
the `noglob' modifier. When the first word on the line
matches one of the values and the URL refers to a local
file (see url-local-schema), only the url-seps
characters are quoted; the url-metas are left alone,
allowing them to affect command-line parsing,
completion, etc. The default values are a literal
`noglob' plus (when the zsh/parameter module is
available) any commands aliased to the helper function
`urlglobber' or its alias `globurl'.

url-local-schema
This style is always looked up in the context
`:urlglobber', even though it is used by both
url-quote-magic and urlglobber. The values form a list
of URI schema that should be treated as referring to
local files by their real local path names, as opposed
to files which are specified relative to a
web-server-defined document root. The defaults are
"ftp" and "file".

url-other-schema
Like url-local-schema, but lists all other URI schema
upon which urlglobber and url-quote-magic should act.
If the URI on the command line does not have a scheme
appearing either in this list or in url-local-schema,
it is not magically quoted. The default values are
"http", "https", and "ftp". When a scheme appears both
here and in url-local-schema, it is quoted differently
depending on whether the command name appears in
url-globbers.

Loading url-quote-magic also defines a helper function
`urlglobber' and aliases `globurl' to `noglob urlglobber'.
This function takes a local URL apart, attempts to
pattern-match the local file portion of the URL path, and then
puts the results back into URL format again.

vi-pipe
This function reads a movement command from the keyboard and
then prompts for an external command. The part of the buffer
covered by the movement is piped to the external command and
then replaced by the command's output. If the movement command
is bound to vi-pipe, the current line is used.

The function serves as an example for reading a vi movement
command from within a user-defined widget.

which-command
This function is a drop-in replacement for the builtin widget
which-command. It has enhanced behaviour, in that it
correctly detects whether or not the command word needs to be
expanded as an alias; if so, it continues tracing the command
word from the expanded alias until it reaches the command that
will be executed.

The style whence is available in the context :zle:$WIDGET;
this may be set to an array to give the command and options
that will be used to investigate the command word found. The
default is whence -c.

zcalc-auto-insert
This function is useful together with the zcalc function
described in the section `Mathematical Functions'. It should
be bound to a key representing a binary operator such as `+',
`-', `*' or `/'. When running in zcalc, if the key occurs at
the start of the line or immediately following an open
parenthesis, the text "ans " is inserted before the
representation of the key itself. This allows easy use of the
answer from the previous calculation in the current line. The
text to be inserted before the symbol typed can be modified by
setting the variable ZCALC_AUTO_INSERT_PREFIX.

Hence, for example, typing `+12' followed by return adds 12 to
the previous result.

If zcalc is in RPN mode (-r option) the effect of this binding
is automatically suppressed as operators alone on a line are
meaningful.

When not in zcalc, the key simply inserts the symbol itself.

Utility Functions

These functions are useful in constructing widgets. They should be
loaded with `autoload -U function' and called as indicated from
user-defined widgets.

split-shell-arguments
This function splits the line currently being edited into
shell arguments and whitespace. The result is stored in the
array reply. The array contains all the parts of the line in
order, starting with any whitespace before the first argument,
and finishing with any whitespace after the last argument.
Hence (so long as the option KSH_ARRAYS is not set) whitespace
is given by odd indices in the array and arguments by even
indices. Note that no stripping of quotes is done; joining
together all the elements of reply in order is guaranteed to
produce the original line.

The parameter REPLY is set to the index of the word in reply
which contains the character after the cursor, where the first
element has index 1. The parameter REPLY2 is set to the index
of the character under the cursor in that word, where the
first character has index 1.

Hence reply, REPLY and REPLY2 should all be made local to the
enclosing function.

See the function modify-current-argument, described below, for
an example of how to call this function.

modify-current-argument [ expr-using-$ARG | func ]
This function provides a simple method of allowing
user-defined widgets to modify the command line argument under
the cursor (or immediately to the left of the cursor if the
cursor is between arguments).

The argument can be an expression which when evaluated
operates on the shell parameter ARG, which will have been set
to the command line argument under the cursor. The expression
should be suitably quoted to prevent it being evaluated too
early.

Alternatively, if the argument does not contain the string
ARG, it is assumed to be a shell function, to which the
current command line argument is passed as the only argument.
The function should set the variable REPLY to the new value
for the command line argument. If the function returns
non-zero status, so does the calling function.

For example, a user-defined widget containing the following
code converts the characters in the argument under the cursor
into all upper case:

modify-current-argument '${(U)ARG}'

The following strips any quoting from the current word
(whether backslashes or one of the styles of quotes), and
replaces it with single quoting throughout:

modify-current-argument '${(qq)${(Q)ARG}}'

The following performs directory expansion on the command line
argument and replaces it by the absolute path:

expand-dir() {
REPLY=${~1}
REPLY=${REPLY:a}
}
modify-current-argument expand-dir

In practice the function expand-dir would probably not be
defined within the widget where modify-current-argument is
called.

Styles

The behavior of several of the above widgets can be controlled by the
use of the zstyle mechanism. In particular, widgets that interact
with the completion system pass along their context to any
completions that they invoke.

break-keys
This style is used by the incremental-complete-word widget.
Its value should be a pattern, and all keys matching this
pattern will cause the widget to stop incremental completion
without the key having any further effect. Like all styles
used directly by incremental-complete-word, this style is
looked up using the context `:incremental'.

completer
The incremental-complete-word and insert-and-predict widgets
set up their top-level context name before calling completion.
This allows one to define different sets of completer
functions for normal completion and for these widgets. For
example, to use completion, approximation and correction for
normal completion, completion and correction for incremental
completion and only completion for prediction one could use:

zstyle ':completion:*' completer \
_complete _correct _approximate
zstyle ':completion:incremental:*' completer \
_complete _correct
zstyle ':completion:predict:*' completer \
_complete

It is a good idea to restrict the completers used in
prediction, because they may be automatically invoked as you
type. The _list and _menu completers should never be used
with prediction. The _approximate, _correct, _expand, and
_match completers may be used, but be aware that they may
change characters anywhere in the word behind the cursor, so
you need to watch carefully that the result is what you
intended.

cursor The insert-and-predict widget uses this style, in the context
`:predict', to decide where to place the cursor after
completion has been tried. Values are:

complete
The cursor is left where it was when completion
finished, but only if it is after a character equal to
the one just inserted by the user. If it is after
another character, this value is the same as `key'.

key The cursor is left after the nth occurrence of the
character just inserted, where n is the number of times
that character appeared in the word before completion
was attempted. In short, this has the effect of
leaving the cursor after the character just typed even
if the completion code found out that no other
characters need to be inserted at that position.

Any other value for this style unconditionally leaves the
cursor at the position where the completion code left it.

list When using the incremental-complete-word widget, this style
says if the matches should be listed on every key press (if
they fit on the screen). Use the context prefix
`:completion:incremental'.

The insert-and-predict widget uses this style to decide if the
completion should be shown even if there is only one possible
completion. This is done if the value of this style is the
string always. In this case the context is `:predict' (not
`:completion:predict').

match This style is used by smart-insert-last-word to provide a
pattern (using full EXTENDED_GLOB syntax) that matches an
interesting word. The context is the name of the widget to
which smart-insert-last-word is bound (see above). The
default behavior of smart-insert-last-word is equivalent to:

zstyle :insert-last-word match '*[[:alpha:]/\\]*'

However, you might want to include words that contain spaces:

zstyle :insert-last-word match '*[[:alpha:][:space:]/\\]*'

Or include numbers as long as the word is at least two
characters long:

zstyle :insert-last-word match '*([[:digit:]]?|[[:alpha:]/\\])*'

The above example causes redirections like "2>" to be
included.

prompt The incremental-complete-word widget shows the value of this
style in the status line during incremental completion. The
string value may contain any of the following substrings in
the manner of the PS1 and other prompt parameters:

%c Replaced by the name of the completer function that
generated the matches (without the leading underscore).

%l When the list style is set, replaced by `...' if the
list of matches is too long to fit on the screen and
with an empty string otherwise. If the list style is
`false' or not set, `%l' is always removed.

%n Replaced by the number of matches generated.

%s Replaced by `-no match-', `-no prefix-', or an empty
string if there is no completion matching the word on
the line, if the matches have no common prefix
different from the word on the line, or if there is
such a common prefix, respectively.

%u Replaced by the unambiguous part of all matches, if
there is any, and if it is different from the word on
the line.

Like `break-keys', this uses the `:incremental' context.

stop-keys
This style is used by the incremental-complete-word widget.
Its value is treated similarly to the one for the break-keys
style (and uses the same context: `:incremental'). However,
in this case all keys matching the pattern given as its value
will stop incremental completion and will then execute their
usual function.

toggle This boolean style is used by predict-on and its related
widgets in the context `:predict'. If set to one of the
standard `true' values, predictive typing is automatically
toggled off in situations where it is unlikely to be useful,
such as when editing a multi-line buffer or after moving into
the middle of a line and then deleting a character. The
default is to leave prediction turned on until an explicit
call to predict-off.

verbose
This boolean style is used by predict-on and its related
widgets in the context `:predict'. If set to one of the
standard `true' values, these widgets display a message below
the prompt when the predictive state is toggled. This is most
useful in combination with the toggle style. The default does
not display these messages.

widget This style is similar to the command style: For widget
functions that use zle to call other widgets, this style can
sometimes be used to override the widget which is called. The
context for this style is the name of the calling widget (not
the name of the calling function, because one function may be
bound to multiple widget names).

zstyle :copy-earlier-word widget smart-insert-last-word

Check the documentation for the calling widget or function to
determine whether the widget style is used.

EXCEPTION HANDLING

Two functions are provided to enable zsh to provide exception
handling in a form that should be familiar from other languages.

throw exception
The function throw throws the named exception. The name is an
arbitrary string and is only used by the throw and catch
functions. An exception is for the most part treated the same
as a shell error, i.e. an unhandled exception will cause the
shell to abort all processing in a function or script and to
return to the top level in an interactive shell.

catch exception-pattern
The function catch returns status zero if an exception was
thrown and the pattern exception-pattern matches its name.
Otherwise it returns status 1. exception-pattern is a
standard shell pattern, respecting the current setting of the
EXTENDED_GLOB option. An alias catch is also defined to
prevent the argument to the function from matching filenames,
so patterns may be used unquoted. Note that as exceptions are
not fundamentally different from other shell errors it is
possible to catch shell errors by using an empty string as the
exception name. The shell variable CAUGHT is set by catch to
the name of the exception caught. It is possible to rethrow
an exception by calling the throw function again once an
exception has been caught.

The functions are designed to be used together with the always
construct described in zshmisc(1). This is important as only this
construct provides the required support for exceptions. A typical
example is as follows.

{
# "try" block
# ... nested code here calls "throw MyExcept"
} always {
# "always" block
if catch MyExcept; then
print "Caught exception MyExcept"
elif catch ''; then
print "Caught a shell error. Propagating..."
throw ''
fi
# Other exceptions are not handled but may be caught further
# up the call stack.
}

If all exceptions should be caught, the following idiom might be
preferable.

{
# ... nested code here throws an exception
} always {
if catch *; then
case $CAUGHT in
(MyExcept)
print "Caught my own exception"
;;
(*)
print "Caught some other exception"
;;
esac
fi
}

In common with exception handling in other languages, the exception
may be thrown by code deeply nested inside the `try' block. However,
note that it must be thrown inside the current shell, not in a
subshell forked for a pipeline, parenthesised current-shell
construct, or some form of command or process substitution.

The system internally uses the shell variable EXCEPTION to record the
name of the exception between throwing and catching. One drawback of
this scheme is that if the exception is not handled the variable
EXCEPTION remains set and may be incorrectly recognised as the name
of an exception if a shell error subsequently occurs. Adding unset
EXCEPTION at the start of the outermost layer of any code that uses
exception handling will eliminate this problem.

MIME FUNCTIONS

Three functions are available to provide handling of files recognised
by extension, for example to dispatch a file text.ps when executed as
a command to an appropriate viewer.

zsh-mime-setup [ -fv ] [ -l [ suffix ... ] ]
zsh-mime-handler [ -l ] command argument ...
These two functions use the files ~/.mime.types and
/etc/mime.types, which associate types and extensions, as well
as ~/.mailcap and /etc/mailcap files, which associate types
and the programs that handle them. These are provided on many
systems with the Multimedia Internet Mail Extensions.

To enable the system, the function zsh-mime-setup should be
autoloaded and run. This allows files with extensions to be
treated as executable; such files be completed by the function
completion system. The function zsh-mime-handler should not
need to be called by the user.

The system works by setting up suffix aliases with `alias -s'.
Suffix aliases already installed by the user will not be
overwritten.

For suffixes defined in lower case, upper case variants will
also automatically be handled (e.g. PDF is automatically
handled if handling for the suffix pdf is defined), but not
vice versa.

Repeated calls to zsh-mime-setup do not override the existing
mapping between suffixes and executable files unless the
option -f is given. Note, however, that this does not
override existing suffix aliases assigned to handlers other
than zsh-mime-handler.

Calling zsh-mime-setup with the option -l lists the existing
mappings without altering them. Suffixes to list (which may
contain pattern characters that should be quoted from
immediate interpretation on the command line) may be given as
additional arguments, otherwise all suffixes are listed.

Calling zsh-mime-setup with the option -v causes verbose
output to be shown during the setup operation.

The system respects the mailcap flags needsterminal and
copiousoutput; see mailcap(4) or mailcap(5) (the man page's
name varies across platforms).

The functions use the following styles, which are defined with
the zstyle builtin command (see zshmodules(1)). They should
be defined before zsh-mime-setup is run. The contexts used
all start with :mime:, with additional components in some
cases. It is recommended that a trailing * (suitably quoted)
be appended to style patterns in case the system is extended
in future. Some examples are given below.

For files that have multiple suffixes, e.g. .pdf.gz, where the
context includes the suffix it will be looked up starting with
the longest possible suffix until a match for the style is
found. For example, if .pdf.gz produces a match for the
handler, that will be used; otherwise the handler for .gz will
be used. Note that, owing to the way suffix aliases work, it
is always required that there be a handler for the shortest
possible suffix, so in this example .pdf.gz can only be
handled if .gz is also handled (though not necessarily in the
same way). Alternatively, if no handling for .gz on its own
is needed, simply adding the command

alias -s gz=zsh-mime-handler

to the initialisation code is sufficient; .gz will not be
handled on its own, but may be in combination with other
suffixes.

current-shell
If this boolean style is true, the mailcap handler for
the context in question is run using the eval builtin
instead of by starting a new sh process. This is more
efficient, but may not work in the occasional cases
where the mailcap handler uses strict POSIX syntax.

disown If this boolean style is true, mailcap handlers started
in the background will be disowned, i.e. not subject to
job control within the parent shell. Such handlers
nearly always produce their own windows, so the only
likely harmful side effect of setting the style is that
it becomes harder to kill jobs from within the shell.

execute-as-is
This style gives a list of patterns to be matched
against files passed for execution with a handler
program. If the file matches the pattern, the entire
command line is executed in its current form, with no
handler. This is useful for files which might have
suffixes but nonetheless be executable in their own
right. If the style is not set, the pattern *(*) *(/)
is used; hence executable files are executed directly
and not passed to a handler, and the option AUTO_CD may
be used to change to directories that happen to have
MIME suffixes.

execute-never
This style is useful in combination with execute-as-is.
It is set to an array of patterns corresponding to full
paths to files that should never be treated as
executable, even if the file passed to the MIME handler
matches execute-as-is. This is useful for file systems
that don't handle execute permission or that contain
executables from another operating system. For
example, if /mnt/windows is a Windows mount, then

zstyle ':mime:*' execute-never '/mnt/windows/*'

will ensure that any files found in that area will be
executed as MIME types even if they are executable. As
this example shows, the complete file name is matched
against the pattern, regardless of how the file was
passed to the handler. The file is resolved to a full
path using the :P modifier described in the subsection
`Modifiers' in zshexpn(1); this means that symbolic
links are resolved where possible, so that links into
other file systems behave in the correct fashion.

file-path
Used if the style find-file-in-path is true for the
same context. Set to an array of directories that are
used for searching for the file to be handled; the
default is the command path given by the special
parameter path. The shell option PATH_DIRS is
respected; if that is set, the appropriate path will be
searched even if the name of the file to be handled as
it appears on the command line contains a `/'. The
full context is :mime:.suffix:, as described for the
style handler.

find-file-in-path
If set, allows files whose names do not contain
absolute paths to be searched for in the command path
or the path specified by the file-path style. If the
file is not found in the path, it is looked for locally
(whether or not the current directory is in the path);
if it is not found locally, the handler will abort
unless the handle-nonexistent style is set. Files
found in the path are tested as described for the style
execute-as-is. The full context is :mime:.suffix:, as
described for the style handler.

flags Defines flags to go with a handler; the context is as
for the handler style, and the format is as for the
flags in mailcap.

handle-nonexistent
By default, arguments that don't correspond to files
are not passed to the MIME handler in order to prevent
it from intercepting commands found in the path that
happen to have suffixes. This style may be set to an
array of extended glob patterns for arguments that will
be passed to the handler even if they don't exist. If
it is not explicitly set it defaults to [[:alpha:]]#:/*
which allows URLs to be passed to the MIME handler even
though they don't exist in that format in the file
system. The full context is :mime:.suffix:, as
described for the style handler.

handler
Specifies a handler for a suffix; the suffix is given
by the context as :mime:.suffix:, and the format of the
handler is exactly that in mailcap. Note in particular
the `.' and trailing colon to distinguish this use of
the context. This overrides any handler specified by
the mailcap files. If the handler requires a terminal,
the flags style should be set to include the word
needsterminal, or if the output is to be displayed
through a pager (but not if the handler is itself a
pager), it should include copiousoutput.

mailcap
A list of files in the format of ~/.mailcap and
/etc/mailcap to be read during setup, replacing the
default list which consists of those two files. The
context is :mime:. A + in the list will be replaced by
the default files.

mailcap-priorities
This style is used to resolve multiple mailcap entries
for the same MIME type. It consists of an array of the
following elements, in descending order of priority;
later entries will be used if earlier entries are
unable to resolve the entries being compared. If none
of the tests resolve the entries, the first entry
encountered is retained.

files The order of files (entries in the mailcap
style) read. Earlier files are preferred.
(Note this does not resolve entries in the same
file.)

priority
The priority flag from the mailcap entry. The
priority is an integer from 0 to 9 with the
default value being 5.

flags The test given by the mailcap-prio-flags option
is used to resolve entries.

place Later entries are preferred; as the entries are
strictly ordered, this test always succeeds.

Note that as this style is handled during
initialisation, the context is always :mime:, with no
discrimination by suffix.

mailcap-prio-flags
This style is used when the keyword flags is
encountered in the list of tests specified by the
mailcap-priorities style. It should be set to a list
of patterns, each of which is tested against the flags
specified in the mailcap entry (in other words, the
sets of assignments found with some entries in the
mailcap file). Earlier patterns in the list are
preferred to later ones, and matched patterns are
preferred to unmatched ones.

mime-types
A list of files in the format of ~/.mime.types and
/etc/mime.types to be read during setup, replacing the
default list which consists of those two files. The
context is :mime:. A + in the list will be replaced by
the default files.

never-background
If this boolean style is set, the handler for the given
context is always run in the foreground, even if the
flags provided in the mailcap entry suggest it need not
be (for example, it doesn't require a terminal).

pager If set, will be used instead of $PAGER or more to
handle suffixes where the copiousoutput flag is set.
The context is as for handler, i.e. :mime:.suffix: for
handling a file with the given suffix.

Examples:

zstyle ':mime:*' mailcap ~/.mailcap /usr/local/etc/mailcap
zstyle ':mime:.txt:' handler less %s
zstyle ':mime:.txt:' flags needsterminal

When zsh-mime-setup is subsequently run, it will look for
mailcap entries in the two files given. Files of suffix .txt
will be handled by running `less file.txt'. The flag
needsterminal is set to show that this program must run
attached to a terminal.

As there are several steps to dispatching a command, the
following should be checked if attempting to execute a file by
extension .ext does not have the expected effect.

The command `alias -s ext' should show `ps=zsh-mime-handler'.
If it shows something else, another suffix alias was already
installed and was not overwritten. If it shows nothing, no
handler was installed: this is most likely because no handler
was found in the .mime.types and mailcap combination for .ext
files. In that case, appropriate handling should be added to
~/.mime.types and mailcap.

If the extension is handled by zsh-mime-handler but the file
is not opened correctly, either the handler defined for the
type is incorrect, or the flags associated with it are in
appropriate. Running zsh-mime-setup -l will show the handler
and, if there are any, the flags. A %s in the handler is
replaced by the file (suitably quoted if necessary). Check
that the handler program listed lists and can be run in the
way shown. Also check that the flags needsterminal or
copiousoutput are set if the handler needs to be run under a
terminal; the second flag is used if the output should be sent
to a pager. An example of a suitable mailcap entry for such a
program is:

text/html; /usr/bin/lynx '%s'; needsterminal

Running `zsh-mime-handler -l command line' prints the command
line that would be executed, simplified to remove the effect
of any flags, and quoted so that the output can be run as a
complete zsh command line. This is used by the completion
system to decide how to complete after a file handled by
zsh-mime-setup.

pick-web-browser
This function is separate from the two MIME functions
described above and can be assigned directly to a suffix:

autoload -U pick-web-browser
alias -s html=pick-web-browser

It is provided as an intelligent front end to dispatch a web
browser. It may be run as either a function or a shell
script. The status 255 is returned if no browser could be
started.

Various styles are available to customize the choice of
browsers:

browser-style
The value of the style is an array giving preferences
in decreasing order for the type of browser to use.
The values of elements may be

running
Use a GUI browser that is already running when
an X Window display is available. The browsers
listed in the x-browsers style are tried in
order until one is found; if it is, the file
will be displayed in that browser, so the user
may need to check whether it has appeared. If
no running browser is found, one is not started.
Browsers other than Firefox, Opera and Konqueror
are assumed to understand the Mozilla syntax for
opening a URL remotely.

x Start a new GUI browser when an X Window display
is available. Search for the availability of
one of the browsers listed in the x-browsers
style and start the first one that is found. No
check is made for an already running browser.

tty Start a terminal-based browser. Search for the
availability of one of the browsers listed in
the tty-browsers style and start the first one
that is found.

If the style is not set the default running x tty is
used.

x-browsers
An array in decreasing order of preference of browsers
to use when running under the X Window System. The
array consists of the command name under which to start
the browser. They are looked up in the context :mime:
(which may be extended in future, so appending `*' is
recommended). For example,

zstyle ':mime:*' x-browsers opera konqueror firefox

specifies that pick-web-browser should first look for a
running instance of Opera, Konqueror or Firefox, in
that order, and if it fails to find any should attempt
to start Opera. The default is firefox mozilla
netscape opera konqueror.

tty-browsers
An array similar to x-browsers, except that it gives
browsers to use when no X Window display is available.
The default is elinks links lynx.

command
If it is set this style is used to pick the command
used to open a page for a browser. The context is
:mime:browser:new:$browser: to start a new browser or
:mime:browser:running:$browser: to open a URL in a
browser already running on the current X display, where
$browser is the value matched in the x-browsers or
tty-browsers style. The escape sequence %b in the
style's value will be replaced by the browser, while %u
will be replaced by the URL. If the style is not set,
the default for all new instances is equivalent to %b
%u and the defaults for using running browsers are
equivalent to the values kfmclient openURL %u for
Konqueror, firefox -new-tab %u for Firefox, opera
-newpage %u for Opera, and %b -remote "openUrl(%u)" for
all others.

MATHEMATICAL FUNCTIONS

zcalc [ -erf ] [ expression ... ]
A reasonably powerful calculator based on zsh's arithmetic
evaluation facility. The syntax is similar to that of
formulae in most programming languages; see the section
`Arithmetic Evaluation' in zshmisc(1) for details.

Non-programmers should note that, as in many other programming
languages, expressions involving only integers (whether
constants without a `.', variables containing such constants
as strings, or variables declared to be integers) are by
default evaluated using integer arithmetic, which is not how
an ordinary desk calculator operates. To force floating point
operation, pass the option -f; see further notes below.

If the file ~/.zcalcrc exists it will be sourced inside the
function once it is set up and about to process the command
line. This can be used, for example, to set shell options;
emulate -L zsh and setopt extendedglob are in effect at this
point. Any failure to source the file if it exists is treated
as fatal. As with other initialisation files, the directory
$ZDOTDIR is used instead of $HOME if it is set.

The mathematical library zsh/mathfunc will be loaded if it is
available; see the section `The zsh/mathfunc Module' in
zshmodules(1). The mathematical functions correspond to the
raw system libraries, so trigonometric functions are evaluated
using radians, and so on.

Each line typed is evaluated as an expression. The prompt
shows a number, which corresponds to a positional parameter
where the result of that calculation is stored. For example,
the result of the calculation on the line preceded by `4> ' is
available as $4. The last value calculated is available as
ans. Full command line editing, including the history of
previous calculations, is available; the history is saved in
the file ~/.zcalc_history. To exit, enter a blank line or
type `:q' on its own (`q' is allowed for historical
compatibility).

A line ending with a single backslash is treated in the same
fashion as it is in command line editing: the backslash is
removed, the function prompts for more input (the prompt is
preceded by `...' to indicate this), and the lines are
combined into one to get the final result. In addition, if
the input so far contains more open than close parentheses
zcalc will prompt for more input.

If arguments are given to zcalc on start up, they are used to
prime the first few positional parameters. A visual
indication of this is given when the calculator starts.

The constants PI (3.14159...) and E (2.71828...) are provided.
Parameter assignment is possible, but note that all parameters
will be put into the global namespace unless the :local
special command is used. The function creates local variables
whose names start with _, so users should avoid doing so. The
variables ans (the last answer) and stack (the stack in RPN
mode) may be referred to directly; stack is an array but
elements of it are numeric. Various other special variables
are used locally with their standard meaning, for example
compcontext, match, mbegin, mend, psvar.

The output base can be initialised by passing the option
`-#base', for example `zcalc -#16' (the `#' may have to be
quoted, depending on the globbing options set).

If the option `-e' is set, the function runs
non-interactively: the arguments are treated as expressions to
be evaluated as if entered interactively line by line.

If the option `-f' is set, all numbers are treated as floating
point, hence for example the expression `3/4' evaluates to
0.75 rather than 0. Options must appear in separate words.

If the option `-r' is set, RPN (Reverse Polish Notation) mode
is entered. This has various additional properties:
Stack Evaluated values are maintained in a stack; this is
contained in an array named stack with the most recent
value in ${stack[1]}.

Operators and functions
If the line entered matches an operator (+, -, *, /,
**, ^, | or &) or a function supplied by the
zsh/mathfunc library, the bottom element or elements of
the stack are popped to use as the argument or
arguments. The higher elements of stack (least recent)
are used as earlier arguments. The result is then
pushed into ${stack[1]}.

Expressions
Other expressions are evaluated normally, printed, and
added to the stack as numeric values. The syntax
within expressions on a single line is normal shell
arithmetic (not RPN).

Stack listing
If an integer follows the option -r with no space, then
on every evaluation that many elements of the stack,
where available, are printed instead of just the most
recent result. Hence, for example, zcalc -r4 shows
$stack[4] to $stack[1] each time results are printed.

Duplication: =
The pseudo-operator = causes the most recent element of
the stack to be duplicated onto the stack.

pop The pseudo-function pop causes the most recent element
of the stack to be popped. A `>' on its own has the
same effect.

>ident The expression > followed (with no space) by a shell
identifier causes the most recent element of the stack
to be popped and assigned to the variable with that
name. The variable is local to the zcalc function.

<ident The expression < followed (with no space) by a shell
identifier causes the value of the variable with that
name to be pushed onto the stack. ident may be an
integer, in which case the previous result with that
number (as shown before the > in the standard zcalc
prompt) is put on the stack.

Exchange: xy
The pseudo-function xy causes the most recent two
elements of the stack to be exchanged. `<>' has the
same effect.

The prompt is configurable via the parameter ZCALCPROMPT,
which undergoes standard prompt expansion. The index of the
current entry is stored locally in the first element of the
array psvar, which can be referred to in ZCALCPROMPT as `%1v'.
The default prompt is `%1v> '.

The variable ZCALC_ACTIVE is set within the function and can
be tested by nested functions; it has the value rpn if RPN
mode is active, else 1.

A few special commands are available; these are introduced by
a colon. For backward compatibility, the colon may be omitted
for certain commands. Completion is available if compinit has
been run.

The output precision may be specified within zcalc by special
commands familiar from many calculators.
:norm The default output format. It corresponds to the
printf %g specification. Typically this shows six
decimal digits.

:sci digits
Scientific notation, corresponding to the printf %g
output format with the precision given by digits. This
produces either fixed point or exponential notation
depending on the value output.

:fix digits
Fixed point notation, corresponding to the printf %f
output format with the precision given by digits.

:eng digits
Exponential notation, corresponding to the printf %E
output format with the precision given by digits.

:raw Raw output: this is the default form of the output
from a math evaluation. This may show more precision
than the number actually possesses.

Other special commands:
:!line...
Execute line... as a normal shell command line. Note
that it is executed in the context of the function,
i.e. with local variables. Space is optional after :!.

:local arg ...
Declare variables local to the function. Other
variables may be used, too, but they will be taken from
or put into the global scope.

:function name [ body ]
Define a mathematical function or (with no body) delete
it. :function may be abbreviated to :func or simply
:f. The name may contain the same characters as a
shell function name. The function is defined using
zmathfuncdef, see below.

Note that zcalc takes care of all quoting. Hence for
example:

:f cube $1 * $1 * $1

defines a function to cube the sole argument.
Functions so defined, or indeed any functions defined
directly or indirectly using functions -M, are
available to execute by typing only the name on the
line in RPN mode; this pops the appropriate number of
arguments off the stack to pass to the function, i.e. 1
in the case of the example cube function. If there are
optional arguments only the mandatory arguments are
supplied by this means.

[#base]
This is not a special command, rather part of normal
arithmetic syntax; however, when this form appears on a
line by itself the default output radix is set to base.
Use, for example, `[#16]' to display hexadecimal output
preceded by an indication of the base, or `[##16]' just
to display the raw number in the given base. Bases
themselves are always specified in decimal. `[#]'
restores the normal output format. Note that setting
an output base suppresses floating point output; use
`[#]' to return to normal operation.

$var Print out the value of var literally; does not affect
the calculation. To use the value of var, omit the
leading `$'.

See the comments in the function for a few extra tips.

min(arg, ...)
max(arg, ...)
sum(arg, ...)
zmathfunc
The function zmathfunc defines the three mathematical
functions min, max, and sum. The functions min and max take
one or more arguments. The function sum takes zero or more
arguments. Arguments can be of different types (ints and
floats).

Not to be confused with the zsh/mathfunc module, described in
the section `The zsh/mathfunc Module' in zshmodules(1).

zmathfuncdef [ mathfunc [ body ] ]
A convenient front end to functions -M.

With two arguments, define a mathematical function named
mathfunc which can be used in any form of arithmetic
evaluation. body is a mathematical expression to implement
the function. It may contain references to position
parameters $1, $2, ... to refer to mandatory parameters and
${1:-defvalue} ... to refer to optional parameters. Note
that the forms must be strictly adhered to for the function to
calculate the correct number of arguments. The implementation
is held in a shell function named zsh_math_func_mathfunc;
usually the user will not need to refer to the shell function
directly. Any existing function of the same name is silently
replaced.

With one argument, remove the mathematical function mathfunc
as well as the shell function implementation.

With no arguments, list all mathfunc functions in a form
suitable for restoring the definition. The functions have not
necessarily been defined by zmathfuncdef.

USER CONFIGURATION FUNCTIONS

The zsh/newuser module comes with a function to aid in configuring
shell options for new users. If the module is installed, this
function can also be run by hand. It is available even if the
module's default behaviour, namely running the function for a new
user logging in without startup files, is inhibited.

zsh-newuser-install [ -f ]
The function presents the user with various options for
customizing their initialization scripts. Currently only
~/.zshrc is handled. $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc is used instead if the
parameter ZDOTDIR is set; this provides a way for the user to
configure a file without altering an existing .zshrc.

By default the function exits immediately if it finds any of
the files .zshenv, .zprofile, .zshrc, or .zlogin in the
appropriate directory. The option -f is required in order to
force the function to continue. Note this may happen even if
.zshrc itself does not exist.

As currently configured, the function will exit immediately if
the user has root privileges; this behaviour cannot be
overridden.

Once activated, the function's behaviour is supposed to be
self-explanatory. Menus are present allowing the user to
alter the value of options and parameters. Suggestions for
improvements are always welcome.

When the script exits, the user is given the opportunity to
save the new file or not; changes are not irreversible until
this point. However, the script is careful to restrict
changes to the file only to a group marked by the lines `#
Lines configured by zsh-newuser-install' and `# End of lines
configured by zsh-newuser-install'. In addition, the old
version of .zshrc is saved to a file with the suffix .zni
appended.

If the function edits an existing .zshrc, it is up to the user
to ensure that the changes made will take effect. For
example, if control usually returns early from the existing
.zshrc the lines will not be executed; or a later
initialization file may override options or parameters, and so
on. The function itself does not attempt to detect any such
conflicts.

OTHER FUNCTIONS

There are a large number of helpful functions in the Functions/Misc
directory of the zsh distribution. Most are very simple and do not
require documentation here, but a few are worthy of special mention.

Descriptions

colors This function initializes several associative arrays to map
color names to (and from) the ANSI standard eight-color
terminal codes. These are used by the prompt theme system
(see above). You seldom should need to run colors more than
once.

The eight base colors are: black, red, green, yellow, blue,
magenta, cyan, and white. Each of these has codes for
foreground and background. In addition there are seven
intensity attributes: bold, faint, standout, underline, blink,
reverse, and conceal. Finally, there are seven codes used to
negate attributes: none (reset all attributes to the
defaults), normal (neither bold nor faint), no-standout,
no-underline, no-blink, no-reverse, and no-conceal.

Some terminals do not support all combinations of colors and
intensities.

The associative arrays are:

color
colour Map all the color names to their integer codes, and
integer codes to the color names. The eight base names
map to the foreground color codes, as do names prefixed
with `fg-', such as `fg-red'. Names prefixed with
`bg-', such as `bg-blue', refer to the background
codes. The reverse mapping from code to color yields
base name for foreground codes and the bg- form for
backgrounds.

Although it is a misnomer to call them `colors', these
arrays also map the other fourteen attributes from
names to codes and codes to names.

fg
fg_bold
fg_no_bold
Map the eight basic color names to ANSI terminal escape
sequences that set the corresponding foreground text
properties. The fg sequences change the color without
changing the eight intensity attributes.

bg
bg_bold
bg_no_bold
Map the eight basic color names to ANSI terminal escape
sequences that set the corresponding background
properties. The bg sequences change the color without
changing the eight intensity attributes.

In addition, the scalar parameters reset_color and bold_color
are set to the ANSI terminal escapes that turn off all
attributes and turn on bold intensity, respectively.

fned [ -x num ] name
Same as zed -f. This function does not appear in the zsh
distribution, but can be created by linking zed to the name
fned in some directory in your fpath.

histed [ [ name ] size ]
Same as zed -h. This function does not appear in the zsh
distribution, but can be created by linking zed to the name
histed in some directory in your fpath.

is-at-least needed [ present ]
Perform a greater-than-or-equal-to comparison of two strings
having the format of a zsh version number; that is, a string
of numbers and text with segments separated by dots or dashes.
If the present string is not provided, $ZSH_VERSION is used.
Segments are paired left-to-right in the two strings with
leading non-number parts ignored. If one string has fewer
segments than the other, the missing segments are considered
zero.

This is useful in startup files to set options and other state
that are not available in all versions of zsh.

is-at-least 3.1.6-15 && setopt NO_GLOBAL_RCS
is-at-least 3.1.0 && setopt HIST_REDUCE_BLANKS
is-at-least 2.6-17 || print "You can't use is-at-least here."

nslookup [ arg ... ]
This wrapper function for the nslookup command requires the
zsh/zpty module (see zshmodules(1)). It behaves exactly like
the standard nslookup except that it provides customizable
prompts (including a right-side prompt) and completion of
nslookup commands, host names, etc. (if you use the
function-based completion system). Completion styles may be
set with the context prefix `:completion:nslookup'.

See also the pager, prompt and rprompt styles below.

regexp-replace var regexp replace
Use regular expressions to perform a global search and replace
operation on a variable. POSIX extended regular expressions
(ERE) are used, unless the option RE_MATCH_PCRE has been set,
in which case Perl-compatible regular expressions are used
(this requires the shell to be linked against the pcre
library).

var is the name of the variable containing the string to be
matched. The variable will be modified directly by the
function. The variables MATCH, MBEGIN, MEND, match, mbegin,
mend should be avoided as these are used by the regular
expression code.

regexp is the regular expression to match against the string.

replace is the replacement text. This can contain parameter,
command and arithmetic expressions which will be replaced: in
particular, a reference to $MATCH will be replaced by the text
matched by the pattern.

The return status is 0 if at least one match was performed,
else 1.

Note that if using POSIX EREs, the ^ or word boundary
operators (where available) may not work properly.

run-help cmd
This function is designed to be invoked by the run-help ZLE
widget, in place of the default alias. See `Accessing On-Line
Help' above for setup instructions.

In the discussion which follows, if cmd is a file system path,
it is first reduced to its rightmost component (the file
name).

Help is first sought by looking for a file named cmd in the
directory named by the HELPDIR parameter. If no file is
found, an assistant function, alias, or command named
run-help-cmd is sought. If found, the assistant is executed
with the rest of the current command line (everything after
the command name cmd) as its arguments. When neither file nor
assistant is found, the external command `man cmd' is run.

An example assistant for the "ssh" command:

run-help-ssh() {
emulate -LR zsh
local -a args
# Delete the "-l username" option
zparseopts -D -E -a args l:
# Delete other options, leaving: host command
args=(${@:#-*})
if [[ ${#args} -lt 2 ]]; then
man ssh
else
run-help $args[2]
fi
}

Several of these assistants are provided in the Functions/Misc
directory. These must be autoloaded, or placed as executable
scripts in your search path, in order to be found and used by
run-help.

run-help-btrfs
run-help-git
run-help-ip
run-help-openssl
run-help-p4
run-help-sudo
run-help-svk
run-help-svn
Assistant functions for the btrfs, git, ip, openssl,
p4, sudo, svk, and svn, commands.

tetris Zsh was once accused of not being as complete as Emacs,
because it lacked a Tetris game. This function was written to
refute this vicious slander.

This function must be used as a ZLE widget:

autoload -U tetris
zle -N tetris
bindkey keys tetris

To start a game, execute the widget by typing the keys.
Whatever command line you were editing disappears temporarily,
and your keymap is also temporarily replaced by the Tetris
control keys. The previous editor state is restored when you
quit the game (by pressing `q') or when you lose.

If you quit in the middle of a game, the next invocation of
the tetris widget will continue where you left off. If you
lost, it will start a new game.

tetriscurses
This is a port of the above to zcurses. The input handling is
improved a bit so that moving a block sideways doesn't
automatically advance a timestep, and the graphics use unicode
block graphics.

This version does not save the game state between invocations,
and is not invoked as a widget, but rather as:

autoload -U tetriscurses
tetriscurses

zargs [ option ... -- ] [ input ... ] [ -- command [ arg ... ] ]
This function has a similar purpose to GNU xargs. Instead of
reading lines of arguments from the standard input, it takes
them from the command line. This is useful because zsh,
especially with recursive glob operators, often can construct
a command line for a shell function that is longer than can be
accepted by an external command.

The option list represents options of the zargs command
itself, which are the same as those of xargs. The input list
is the collection of strings (often file names) that become
the arguments of the command, analogous to the standard input
of xargs. Finally, the arg list consists of those arguments
(usually options) that are passed to the command each time it
runs. The arg list precedes the elements from the input list
in each run. If no command is provided, then no arg list may
be provided, and in that event the default command is `print'
with arguments `-r --'.

For example, to get a long ls listing of all non-hidden plain
files in the current directory or its subdirectories:

autoload -U zargs
zargs -- **/*(.) -- ls -ld --

The first and third occurrences of `--' are used to mark the
end of options for zargs and ls respectively to guard against
filenames starting with `-', while the second is used to
separate the list of files from the command to run (`ls -ld
--').

The first `--' would also be needed if there was a chance the
list might be empty as in:

zargs -r -- ./*.back(#qN) -- rm -f

In the event that the string `--' is or may be an input, the
-e option may be used to change the end-of-inputs marker.
Note that this does not change the end-of-options marker. For
example, to use `..' as the marker:

zargs -e.. -- **/*(.) .. ls -ld --

This is a good choice in that example because no plain file
can be named `..', but the best end-marker depends on the
circumstances.

The options -i, -I, -l, -L, and -n differ slightly from their
usage in xargs. There are no input lines for zargs to count,
so -l and -L count through the input list, and -n counts the
number of arguments passed to each execution of command,
including any arg list. Also, any time -i or -I is used, each
input is processed separately as if by `-L 1'.

For details of the other zargs options, see the xargs(1) man
page (but note the difference in function between zargs and
xargs) or run zargs with the --help option.

zed [ -f [ -x num ] ] name
zed [ -h [ name ] size ]
zed -b This function uses the ZLE editor to edit a file or function.

Only one name argument is allowed. If the -f option is given,
the name is taken to be that of a function; if the function is
marked for autoloading, zed searches for it in the fpath and
loads it. Note that functions edited this way are installed
into the current shell, but not written back to the autoload
file. In this case the -x option specifies that leading tabs
indenting the function according to syntax should be converted
into the given number of spaces; `-x 2' is consistent with the
layout of functions distributed with the shell.

Without -f, name is the path name of the file to edit, which
need not exist; it is created on write, if necessary. With
-h, the file is presumed to contain history events.

When no file name is provided for -h the current shell history
is edited in place. The history is renumbered when zed exits
successfully.

When editing history, multi-line events must have a trailing
backslash on every line before the last.

While editing, the function sets the main keymap to zed and
the vi command keymap to zed-vicmd. These will be copied from
the existing main and vicmd keymaps if they do not exist the
first time zed is run. They can be used to provide special
key bindings used only in zed.

If it creates the keymap, zed rebinds the return key to insert
a line break and `^X^W' to accept the edit in the zed keymap,
and binds `ZZ' to accept the edit in the zed-vicmd keymap.

The bindings alone can be installed by running `zed -b'. This
is suitable for putting into a startup file. Note that, if
rerun, this will overwrite the existing zed and zed-vicmd
keymaps.

Completion is available, and styles may be set with the
context prefix `:completion:zed:'.

A zle widget zed-set-file-name is available. This can be
called by name from within zed using `\ex zed-set-file-name'
or can be bound to a key in either of the zed or zed-vicmd
keymaps after `zed -b' has been run. When the widget is
called, it prompts for a new name for the file being edited.
When zed exits the file will be written under that name and
the original file will be left alone. The widget has no
effect when invoked from `zed -f'. The completion context is
changed to `:completion:zed-set-file-name:'. When editing the
current history with `zed -h', the history is first updated
and then the file is written, but the global setting of
HISTFILE is not altered.

While zed-set-file-name is running, zed uses the keymap
zed-normal-keymap, which is linked from the main keymap in
effect at the time zed initialised its bindings. (This is to
make the return key operate normally.) The result is that if
the main keymap has been changed, the widget won't notice.
This is not a concern for most users.

zcp [ -finqQvwW ] srcpat dest
zln [ -finqQsvwW ] srcpat dest
Same as zmv -C and zmv -L, respectively. These functions do
not appear in the zsh distribution, but can be created by
linking zmv to the names zcp and zln in some directory in your
fpath.

zkbd See `Keyboard Definition' above.


zmv [ -finqQsvwW ] [ -C | -L | -M | -{p|P} program ] [ -o optstring ]
srcpat dest
Move (usually, rename) files matching the pattern srcpat to
corresponding files having names of the form given by dest,
where srcpat contains parentheses surrounding patterns which
will be replaced in turn by $1, $2, ... in dest. For example,

zmv '(*).lis' '$1.txt'

renames `foo.lis' to `foo.txt', `my.old.stuff.lis' to
`my.old.stuff.txt', and so on.

The pattern is always treated as an EXTENDED_GLOB pattern.
Any file whose name is not changed by the substitution is
simply ignored. Any error (a substitution resulted in an
empty string, two substitutions gave the same result, the
destination was an existing regular file and -f was not given)
causes the entire function to abort without doing anything.

In addition to pattern replacement, the variable $f can be
referred to in the second (replacement) argument. This makes
it possible to use variable substitution to alter the
argument; see examples below.

Options:

-f Force overwriting of destination files. Not currently
passed down to the mv/cp/ln command due to vagaries of
implementations (but you can use -o-f to do that).
-i Interactive: show each line to be executed and ask the
user whether to execute it. `Y' or `y' will execute
it, anything else will skip it. Note that you just
need to type one character.
-n No execution: print what would happen, but don't do it.
-q Turn bare glob qualifiers off: now assumed by default,
so this has no effect.
-Q Force bare glob qualifiers on. Don't turn this on
unless you are actually using glob qualifiers in a
pattern.
-s Symbolic, passed down to ln; only works with -L.
-v Verbose: print each command as it's being executed.
-w Pick out wildcard parts of the pattern, as described
above, and implicitly add parentheses for referring to
them.
-W Just like -w, with the addition of turning wildcards in
the replacement pattern into sequential ${1} .. ${N}
references.
-C
-L
-M Force cp, ln or mv, respectively, regardless of the
name of the function.
-p program
Call program instead of cp, ln or mv. Whatever it
does, it should at least understand the form `program
-- oldname newname' where oldname and newname are
filenames generated by zmv. program will be split into
words, so might be e.g. the name of an archive tool
plus a copy or rename subcommand.
-P program
As -p program, except that program does not accept a
following -- to indicate the end of options. In this
case filenames must already be in a sane form for the
program in question.
-o optstring
The optstring is split into words and passed down
verbatim to the cp, ln or mv command called to perform
the work. It should probably begin with a `-'.

Further examples:

zmv -v '(* *)' '${1// /_}'

For any file in the current directory with at least one space
in the name, replace every space by an underscore and display
the commands executed.

zmv -v '* *' '${f// /_}'

This does exactly the same by referring to the file name
stored in $f.

For more complete examples and other implementation details,
see the zmv source file, usually located in one of the
directories named in your fpath, or in Functions/Misc/zmv in
the zsh distribution.

zrecompile
See `Recompiling Functions' above.

zstyle+ context style value [ + subcontext style value ... ]
This makes defining styles a bit simpler by using a single `+'
as a special token that allows you to append a context name to
the previously used context name. Like this:

zstyle+ ':foo:bar' style1 value1 \
+':baz' style2 value2 \
+':frob' style3 value3

This defines style1 with value1 for the context :foo:bar as
usual, but it also defines style2 with value2 for the context
:foo:bar:baz and style3 with value3 for :foo:bar:frob. Any
subcontext may be the empty string to re-use the first context
unchanged.

Styles

insert-tab
The zed function sets this style in context
`:completion:zed:*' to turn off completion when TAB is typed
at the beginning of a line. You may override this by setting
your own value for this context and style.

pager The nslookup function looks up this style in the context
`:nslookup' to determine the program used to display output
that does not fit on a single screen.

prompt
rprompt
The nslookup function looks up this style in the context
`:nslookup' to set the prompt and the right-side prompt,
respectively. The usual expansions for the PS1 and RPS1
parameters may be used (see EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES in
zshmisc(1)).

zsh 5.9 May 14, 2022 ZSHCONTRIB(1)