Zsh (Z Shell) is a powerful shell that offers several features and enhancements over the traditional Bash shell. In this blog post, we will explore some useful Zsh shell commands that can help improve your productivity and efficiency in Linux.

1. Tab Completion

One of the standout features of Zsh is its advanced tab completion. It allows you to quickly and easily complete commands, paths, and even options by pressing the Tab key. This can save you a lot of time and reduce typing errors. To utilize tab completion, simply start typing a command or path and press Tab to see the available options.

For example, if you want to change to a directory named “documents”, you can type cd doc and press Tab to complete the command automatically to cd documents.

2. Command Autocorrection

Zsh also has a built-in feature called command autocorrection. It can automatically correct misspelled commands or suggest corrections for ambiguous commands. When you enter a command that doesn’t exist or has a typo, Zsh will offer suggestions or auto-correct it for you.

For example, if you accidentally type gihub, Zsh will suggest correcting it to github by displaying: zsh: correct 'gihub' to 'github' [nyae]?. You can then press y to accept the correction or provide your own command.

3. Directory Stack Navigation

Zsh provides convenient shortcuts for navigating the directory stack. You can use the cd - command to switch to the previous directory you were in. This is particularly useful when you need to switch between two directories frequently.

Additionally, the pushd and popd commands allow you to add directories to a stack, making it easy to navigate between multiple directories. The pushd command adds a directory to the stack and switches to it, while the popd command removes the top directory from the stack and switches to the next directory in the stack.

4. Extended Globbing

Zsh supports extended globbing patterns that offer more powerful and flexible file matching capabilities compared to standard globbing. With extended globbing, you can perform complex file matching operations based on patterns, file types, sizes, and more.

For example, to list all text files in a directory and its subdirectories, you can use the command ls **/*.txt. The double asterisk (**) matches any level of directory recursion.

5. History Substitution

Zsh provides a feature called history substitution, which allows you to recall and modify previous commands easily. You can use shortcuts and modifiers to reference previous command arguments or perform substitutions on command lines.

For example, to replace the last occurrence of a word in the previous command, you can use the ^old^new syntax. If you want to repeat a specific argument from a previous command, you can use !$ to reference the last argument, !^ for the first argument, and so on.

These are just a few of the powerful features that Zsh offers. With its advanced capabilities and customization options, Zsh can greatly enhance your command line experience in Linux.

Note: Zsh is not the default shell in most Linux distributions, so you may need to install it and set it as your default shell to take advantage of these features.

Give Zsh a try and see how it can improve your command line productivity!