Zsh is a shell designed for interactive use. It’s also a powerful scripting language.
Many of the useful features of bash, ksh, and tcsh were incorporated into zsh; many original features were added. It does not provide compatibility with POSIX or other shells
in its default operating mode:
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Tab completion.
- Smart history.
- Shared command history.
- Expand environment variables using tab.
- Killer tab completion.
- Globbing.
Website: www.zsh.org
Support: Manual, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: Paul Falstad, Richard Coleman, Zoltán Hidvégi, Andrew Main, Peter Stephenson, Sven Wischnowsky, and others
License: MIT License
zsh is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Shells | |
|---|---|
| zsh | Advanced and programmable command interpreter |
| Nushell | Adopts the Unix philosophy of shells where pipes connect command together |
| fish | Smart and user-friendly command line shell |
| Xonsh | Python-powered, cross-platform shell language and command prompt |
| bash | sh-compatible command language interpreter |
| Murex | Intuitive, typed and content aware shell |
| PowerShell | Cross-platform automation and configuration framework |
| Elvsh | Expressive programming language and a versatile interactive shell |
| Oils | Billed as an upgrade to bash. Written in Python. |
| DASH | POSIX-compliant implementation of sh that aims to be as small as possible |
| sh | Shell parser, formatter, and interpreter |
| tcsh | C shell with file name completion and command line editing |
| mksh | MirBSD Korn shell |
| ksh | Unix shell which was developed by David Korn at Bell Labs |
| brush | POSIX- and bash compatible shell |
| Rash | Language, library, and shell REPL for Racket. |
| ion | Modern system shell that features a simple, yet powerful, syntax |
| Yash | Yet another shell |
| oksh | Portable OpenBSD ks |
| es | Extensible shell with higher-order functio |
| dune | A shell by the beach |
| cosh | Concatenative command-line she |
| gsh | POSIX-compatible generative shell |
| arsh | Statically typed scripting language with shell-like features |
| Sushi shell | Bash clone shell implemented in Rust |
| fortsh | Shell written in Fortran |
| hsh | Slightly different take on your shell |
| ReShell | Modern shell |
| rash | Rudimentary shell |
| Dax | Custom Unix shell implementation |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
Explore our comprehensive directory of recommended free and open source software. Our carefully curated collection spans every major software category.This directory is part of our ongoing series of informative articles for Linux enthusiasts. It features hundreds of detailed reviews, along with open source alternatives to proprietary solutions from major corporations such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, IBM, Cisco, Oracle, and Autodesk. You’ll also find interesting projects to try, hardware coverage, free programming books and tutorials, and much more. Discovered a useful open source Linux program that we haven’t covered yet? Let us know by completing this form. |

