Hi Justin, create work here!
As discussed on Twitter, here are some shortcuts I use regularly in zsh
that made my life easier. Note that not all of them apply (i.e. work) depending on the zsh binding mode, e.g. default, emacs/vi, etc. What I am describing here is out of the box UX with zsh (my env is oh-my-zsh on OSX).
search/replace a command from history
Say you executed the following command:
Using zsh's history search & replace functionality, one can easily change a string (or character, etc.):
This will change BASH
to ZSH
. Additional functionality:
- use
gs
instead of s
to replace multiple occurrences
!!
is the last command executed; but you can also use !-2
to get the second last (i.e. !-n n-last) command
- if you want to undo a replacement (or any substitution) use
CTRL+_
(underscore, that is SHIFT+ -
)
get --help
faster with zsh
Say you want to see all CLI flags for brew upgrade
. Instead of brew upgrade --debug
or searching man pages, it's as easy as:
Kill processes faster
Instead of killing a process by finding its PID first, why not use zsh?
# kill a Google Chrome process by just typing the first characters
$ kill Goo<TAB>
Edit that super long command in <your favorite editor>
Say you have this crazy long command and need to replace one character in the middle of the line. What you want is to open your favorite $EDITOR
and just do it. Well, zsh got you covered:
$ curl -s -i -k -d '{"texxt":"hello world"}' https://some.server.com
You want to fix this texxt
typo, so while you have this line in your terminal just press CTRL-X-E
(more precisely CTRL-X followed by CTRL-E
). This will open the line in your $EDITOR, where you can make the change, save it (eg :wq
in vi) and you will return to your terminal where you can then execute the command.
Stash the current command line
Say you would like to clear the screen before executing the command you already typed in your prompt. But you don't want to erase that long line. So instead of commenting out the line, copy & pasting it back and forth, why not use zsh to stash it :) ?
# this is the line we would like to stash
$ curl -s -i -k -d '{"texxt":"hello world"}' https://some.server.com
While you're in the prompt, just hit ESC-q
. Then type the intermediate command you want to execute, e.g. clear
(the screen). And after that, zsh will restore the stashed command.