Why I love zsh (and hate being forced to use bash)
- Smarter completion. A few examples:
- context sensitive -- if you have file "name1" and directory "name2", "cd nam<TAB>" completes to "name2/"
- "tar xf <TAB>" completes to tarballs only. "unrar x <TAB>" completes to RARs only. etc.
- rsync / scp completion: "rsync host:anything/<TAB>" shows you files on host under anything/
- also works with rsync:// URLs
- SSH host completion from ~/.ssh/config & ~/.ssh/known_hosts
- lots of other smart completions: Rake tasks, git commands & SHAs, dpkg packages, dash-options for most commands, etc etc.
- bash can do some of the same things, but needs the bash-completion package, usually comes separately
- zsh always comes with completions -- it's a user-oriented shell
- Filename correction during completion
- if dir1/x exists and dir2 exists, then "dir/x<TAB>" completes to dir1/x
- if name1 is a file and name2 is a directory with files in it, "name/<TAB>" completes to "name2/"
- Better ctrl-R behaviour
- alerts you if your ctrl-R is failing
- completes it right on the prompt line while showing you what you're searching for below
- ctrl-R, enter a search term, ctrl-R repeatedly to see earlier matches, then hit backspace
- bash deletes characters in your search term
- zsh backtracks through the matches you rejected with ctrl-R, i.e. "backspaces" your ctrl-R's
- autopushd option -- every "cd" is implicitly a silent "pushd" so you can "popd" to go back any time
- better popd behaviour if a directory no longer exists
- zsh will still pop the stack, so subsequent popd's work
- bash refuses to popd
- incremental history saving option
- saves after every command
- my .zsh_history is chronological and always up-to-date, even with multiple shells running
- in any shell, I can "fc -R ~/.zsh_history" to reload in order to reuse the latest commands
- optional coloured completion (like "ls")
- autocd option -- "executing" a directory will "cd" to it instead
- e.g. if I start typing /some/dir/file and decide I want to switch to /some/dir instead, I just enter "/some/dir"
- `some-command`<TAB> -- expand output of some-command right in your shell line
- can automatically show exit status of last command
- always know when something failed, even if the output doesn't make it obvious
- can automatically show "time" output if a command takes more than <n> seconds
- usually has the latest UI improvements first
- most of bash's features originally came from zsh
- probably a lot more that I've forgotten
Missed a big one, SCP and SSH completion. But I guess you can lump that together with custom completions.