fish homepage.
\section syntax Syntax overview
Shells like fish are used by giving them commands. Every \c fish
command follows the same simple syntax.
A command is executed by writing the name of the command followed by
any arguments.
Example:
echo hello world
calls the \c echo command. \c echo is a command which will write its
arguments to the screen. In the example above, the output will be
'hello world'. Everything in fish is done with commands. There are
commands for performing a set of commands multiple times, commands for
assigning variables, commands for treating a group of commands as a
single command, etc.. And every single command follows the same simple
syntax.
If you wish to find out more about the echo command used above, read
the manual page for the echo command by writing:
man echo
\c man is a command for displaying a manual page on a given topic. The
man command takes the name of the manual page to display as an
argument. There are manual pages for almost every command on most
computers. There are also manual pages for many other things, such as
system libraries and important files.
Every program on your computer can be used as a command in \c fish. If
the program file is located in one of the directories in the PATH, it is sufficient to type the name
of the program to use it. Otherwise the whole filename, including the
directory (like \c /home/me/code/checkers/checkers or \c ../checkers)
has to be used.
Here is a list of some useful commands:
- \c cd, change the current directory
- \c ls, list files and directories
- \c man, display a manual page on the screen
- \c mv, move (rename) files
- \c cp, copy files
- \c open, open files with the default application associated with each filetype
- \c less, list the contents of files
Commands and parameters are separated by the space character
( ). Every command ends with either a newline (i.e. by pressing
the return key) or a semicolon (;). More than one command can be
written on the same line by separating them with semicolons.
A switch is a very common special type of argument. Switches almost
always start with one or more hyphens (-) and alter the way a command
operates. For example, the \c ls command usually lists all the files
and directories in the current working directory, but by using the \c
-l switch, the behaviour of ls is changed to not only display the
filename, but also the size, permissions, owner and modification time
of each file. Switches differ between commands and are documented in
the manual page for each command. Some switches are common to most
command though, for example '--help' will usually display a help text,
'-i' will often turn on interactive prompting before taking action,
while '-f' will turn it off.
\subsection quotes Quotes
Sometimes features such as parameter expansion
and character escapes get in the way. When that
happens, the user can write a parameter within quotes, either '
(single quote) or " (double quote). There is one important difference
between single quoted and double quoted strings: When using double
quoted string, variable expansion still
takes place. Other than that, a quoted parameter will not be parameter
expanded, may contain spaces, and escape sequences are ignored. The
only backslash escape accepted within single quotes is \\', which
escapes a single quote and \\\\, which escapes the backslash
symbol. The only backslash escapes accepted within double quotes are
\\", which escapes a double quote, \\$, which escapes a dollar
character, and \\\\, which escapes the backslash symbol. Single quotes
have no special meaning withing double quotes and vice versa.
Example:
rm "cumbersome filename.txt"
Will remove the file 'cumbersome filename.txt', while
rm cumbersome filename.txt
would remove the two files 'cumbersome' and 'filename.txt'.
\subsection escapes Escaping characters
Some characters can not be written directly on the command line. For
these characters, so called escape sequences are provided. These are:
- '\\a', escapes the alert character
- '\\b', escapes the backspace character
- '\\e', escapes the escape character
- '\\f', escapes the form feed character
- '\\n', escapes a newline character
- '\\r', escapes the carriage return character
- '\\t', escapes the tab character
- '\\v', escapes the vertical tab character
- '\\ ', escapes the space character
- '\\$', escapes the dollar character
- '\\\\', escapes the backslash character
- '\\*', escapes the star character
- '\\?', escapes the question mark character
- '\\~', escapes the tilde character
- '\\%', escapes the percent character
- '\\#', escapes the hash character
- '\\(', escapes the left parenthesis character
- '\\)', escapes the right parenthesis character
- '\\{', escapes the left curly bracket character
- '\\}', escapes the right curly bracket character
- '\\[', escapes the left bracket character
- '\\]', escapes the right bracket character
- '\\\<', escapes the less than character
- '\\\>', escapes the more than character
- '\\^', escapes the circumflex character
- '\\xxx', where xx is a hexadecimal number, escapes the ascii character with the specified value
- '\\Xxx', where xx is a hexadecimal number, escapes a byte of data with the specified value. If you are using a mutibyte encoding, this can be used to enter invalid strings. Only use this if you know what you are doing.
- '\\ooo', where ooo is an octal number, escapes the ascii character with the specified value
- '\\uxxxx', where xxxx is a hexadecimal number, escapes the 16-bit unicode character with the specified value
- '\\Uxxxxxxxx', where xxxxxxxx is a hexadecimal number, escapes the 32-bit unicode character with the specified value
\subsection redirects IO redirection
Most program use three types of input/output (IO), each represented by
a number called a file descriptor (FD). These are:
- Standard input, FD 0, for reading, defaults to reading from the keyboard.
- Standard output, FD 1, for writing, defaults to writing to the screen.
- Standard error, FD 2, for writing errors and warnings, defaults to writing to the screen.
The reason for providing for two output file descriptors is to allow
separation of errors and warnings from regular program output.
Any file descriptor can be directed to a different output than its
default through a simple mechanism called a redirection.
An example of a file redirection is echo hello \>output.txt,
which directs the output of the echo command to the file error.txt.
- To redirect standard input, write \
- To redirect standard output, write \>DESTINATION
- To redirect standard error, write ^DESTINATION
- To redirect standard output to a file which will be appended, write \>\>DESTINATION_FILE
- To redirect standard error to a file which will be appended, write ^^DESTINATION_FILE
DESTINATION can be one of the following:
- A filename. The output will be written to the specified file.
- An ampersand (\&) followed by the number of another file descriptor. The file descriptor will be a duplicate of the specified file descriptor.
- An ampersand followed by a minus sign (\&-). The file descriptor will be closed.
Example:
To redirect both standard output and standard error to the file
all_output.txt, you can write echo Hello \>all_output.txt
^\&1.
Any FD can be redirected in an arbitrary way by prefixing the
redirection with the number of the FD.
- To redirect input of FD number N, write N\
- To redirect output of FD number N, write N\>DESTINATION
- To redirect output of FD number N to a file which will be appended, write N\>\>DESTINATION_FILE
Example: echo Hello 2\>- and echo Hello ^- are
equivalent.
\subsection piping Piping
The user can string together multiple commands into a so called
pipeline. This means that the standard output of one command will be read
in as standard input into the next command. This is done by separating
the commands by the pipe character (|). For example
cat foo.txt | head
will call the 'cat' program with the parameter 'foo.txt', which will
print the contents of the file 'foo.txt'. The contents of foo.txt will
then be filtered through the program 'head', which will pass on the
first ten lines of the file to the screen. For more information on how
to combine commands through pipes, read the manual pages of the
commands you want to use using the 'man' command. If you want to find
out more about the 'cat' program, type man cat.
Pipes usually connect file descriptor 1 (standard output) of the first
process to file descriptor 0 (standard input) of the second
process. It is possible use a different output file descriptor by
prepending the desired FD number and then output redirect symbol to
the pipe. For example:
make fish 2>|less
will attempt to build the fish program, and any errors will be shown
using the less pager.
\subsection syntax-background Background jobs
When you start a job in \c fish, \c fish itself will pause, and give
control of the terminal to the program just started. Sometimes, you
want to continue using the commandline, and have the job run in the
background. To create a background job, append a \& (ampersand) to
your command. This will tell fish to run the job in the
background. Background jobs are very useful when running programs that
have a graphical user interface.
Example:
emacs \&
will start the emacs text editor in the background.
\subsection syntax-job-control Job control
Most programs allow you to suspend the programs execution and return
control to \c fish by Pressing ^Z (Press and hold the Control key and
press 'z'). Once back at the \c fish commandline, you can start other
programs and do anything you want. If you then want to go back to the
suspended command by using the fg
command.
If you instead want to put a suspended job into the background, use
the bg command.
To get a listing of all currently started jobs, use the jobs command.
\subsection syntax-function Shellscript functions
Functions are used to group together commands and arguments using a
single name. It can also be used to start a specific command with
additional arguments. For example, the following is a function
definition that calls the command 'ls -l' to print a detailed listing
of the contents of the current directory:
function ll
ls -l $argv
end
The first line tells fish that a function by the name of ll is to be
defined. To use it, simply write ll on the
commandline. The second line tells fish that the command ls -l
$argv should be called when ll is invoked. $argv is an array
variable, which always contains all arguments sent to the function. In
the example above, these are simply passed on to the ls command. For
more information on functions, see the documentation for the function builtin.
\subsubsection syntax-function-wrappers Defining wrapper functions
One of the most common used for functions is to slightly alter the
behaviour of an already existing command. For example, one might want
to redefine the \c ls command to display colors. The switch for
turning on colors on GNU systems is \c '--color=auto'. A wrapper
around \c ls might look like this:
function ls
ls --color=auto $argv
end
There are a few important things that need to be noted about wrapper
functions:
- Wrappers should always take care to add the $argv variable to the list of parameters to the wrapped command. This makes sure that if the user specifies any additional parameters to the function, they are passed on to the underlying command.
- If the wrapped command is not the first command to be called by the wrapper, it is necessary to prefix the call to the command with the word 'command' in order to tell fish that the function should not call itself, but rather a command with the same name. Failing to do so will cause infinite recursion bugs.
\subsubsection syntax-function-autoloading Autoloading functions
Functions can be defined on the commandline or in a configuration
file, but they can also be automatically loaded. This method of
defining functions has several advantages. An autoloaded function
becomes avaialble automatically to all running shells, if the function
definition is changed, all running shells will automatically reload
the altered version, startup time and memory usage is improved, etc.
Fish automatically searches through any directories in the array
variable \$fish_function_path, and any functions defined are
automatically loaded when needed. A function definition file must have
a filename consisting of the name of the function plus the suffix
'.fish'.
The default value for \$fish_function_path is \c ~/.config/fish/functions
\c /etc/fish/functions \c /usr/share/fish/functions. The exact path
to the last two of these may be slighly different depending on what
install path prefix was chosen at configuration time. The rationale
behind having three different directories is that the first one is for
user specific functions, the second one is for system-wide additional
functions and the last one is for default fish functions. The path
list is searched in order, meaning that by default, the system
administrator can override default fish functions, and the user can
override functions defined by the system administrator.
It is very important that function definition files only contain the
definition for the specified function and nothing else, otherwise it
is possible that autoloading a function files requires that the
function already be loaded, i.e. a circular dependency.
\subsection syntax-conditional Conditional execution of code
There are four fish builtins that let you execute commands only if a
specific criterion is met. These builtins are
if,
switch,
and and
or.
The \c switch command is used to execute one of possibly many blocks
of commands depending on the value of a string. See the documentation
for switch for more information.
The other conditionals use the exit
status of a command to decide if a command or a block of commands
should be executed. See the documentation for
if, and
and or for more information.
\subsection syntax-words Some common words
This is a short explanation of some of the commonly used words in fish.
- argument, a parameter given to a command
- builtin, a command that is implemented in the shell. Builtins are commands that are so closely tied to the shell that it is impossible to implement them as external commands.
- command, a program that the shell can run.
- function, a block of commands that can be called as if they where a single command. By using functions, it is possible to string together multiple smaller commands into one more advanced command.
- job, a running pipeline or command
- pipeline, a set of commands stringed together so that the output of one command is the input of the next command
- redirection, a operation that changes one of the input/output streams associated with a job
- switch, a special flag sent as an argument to a command that will alter the behavious of the command. A switch almost always begins with one or two hyphens.
\section help Help
\c fish has an extensive help system. Use the help command to obtain help on
a specific subject or command. For instance, writing help
syntax displays the syntax section of this
documentation.
Help on a specific builtin can also be obtained with the -h
parameter. For instance, to obtain help on the \c fg builtin, either
type fg -h or help fg.
\section completion Tab completion
Tab completion is one of the most time saving features of any modern
shell. By tapping the tab key, the user asks \c fish to guess the rest
of the command or parameter that the user is currently typing. If \c
fish can only find one possible completion, \c fish will write it
out. If there is more than one completion, \c fish will write out the
longest prefix that all completions have in common. If the completions
differ on the first character, a list of all possible completions is
printed. The list features descriptions of the completions and if the
list doesn't fit the screen, it is scrollable by using the arrow keys,
the page up/page down keys, the tab key or the space bar. Pressing any
other key will exit the list and insert the pressed key into the
command line.
These are the general purpose tab completions that \c fish provides:
- Completion of commands, both builtins, functions and regular programs.
- Completion of environment variable names.
- Completion of usernames for tilde expansion.
- Completion of filenames, even on strings with wildcards such as '*', '**' and '?'.
- Completion of job id, job name and process names for process expansion.
\c fish provides a large number of program specific completions. Most
of these completions are simple options like the \c -l option for \c
ls, but some are more advanced. The latter include:
- The programs 'man' and 'whatis' show all installed
manual pages as completions.
- The 'make' program uses all targets in the Makefile in
the current directory as completions.
- The 'mount' command uses all mount points specified in fstab as completions.
- The 'ssh' command uses all hosts that are stored
in the known_hosts file as completions. (see the ssh documentation for more information)
- The 'su' command uses all users on the system as completions.
- The \c apt-get, \c rpm and \c yum commands use all installed packages as completions.
\subsection completion-own Writing your own completions
Specifying your own completions is not difficult. To specify a
completion, use the \c complete command. \c complete takes
as a parameter the name of the command to specify a completion
for. For example, to add a completion for the program \c myprog, one
would start the completion command with complete -c myprog
.... To provide a list of possible completions for myprog, use
the \c -a switch. If \c myprog accepts the arguments start and stop,
this can be specified as complete -c myprog -a 'start
stop'. The argument to the \c -a switch is always a single
string. At completion time, it will be tokenized on spaces and tabs,
and variable expansion, command substitution and other forms of
parameter expansion will take place.
Fish has a special syntax to support specifying switches accepted by a
command. The switches \c -s, \c -l and \c -o are used to specify a
short switch (single character, such as -l), a gnu style long switch (such as
--color) and an old-style long switch (like -shuffle),
respectively. If the command 'myprog' has an option '-o' which can
also be written as '--output', and which can take an additional value
of either 'yes' or 'no', this can be specified by writing:
complete -c myprog -s o -l output -a "yes no"
There are also special switches for specifying that a switch requires
an argument, to disable filename completion, to create completions
that are only available in some combinations, etc.. For a complete
description of the various switches accepted by the \c complete
command, see the documentation for the complete builtin, or write 'complete
--help' inside the \c fish shell.
For examples of how to write your own complex completions, study the
completions in /usr/share/fish/completions. (The exact path depends on
your chosen installation prefix and may be slightly different)
\subsection completion-path Where to put completions
Completions can be defined on the commandline or in a configuration
file, but they can also be automatically loaded. Fish automatically
searches through any directories in the array variable
\$fish_complete_path, and any completions defined are automatically
loaded when needed. A completion file must have a filename consisting
of the name of the command to complete and the suffix '.fish'.
The default value for \$fish_complete_path is ~/.config/fish/completions,
/etc/fish/completions and /usr/share/fish/completions. The exact
path to the last two of these may be slighly different depending on
what install path prefix was chosen at configuration time. If a
suitable file is found in one of these directories, it will be
automatically loaded and the search will be stopped. The rationale
behind having three different directories is that the first one is for
user specific completions, the second one is for system-wide
completions and the last one is for default fish completions.
If you have written new completions for a common
Unix command, please consider sharing your work by sending it to the fish mailinglist.
\section expand Parameter expansion (Globbing)
When an argument for a program is given on the commandline, it
undergoes the process of parameter expansion before it is sent on to
the command. There are many ways in which the user can specify a
parameter to be expanded. These include:
\subsection expand-wildcard Wildcards
If a star (*) or a question mark (?) is present in the parameter, \c
fish attempts to match the given parameter to any files in such a
way that:
- '?' can match any single character except '/'.
- '*' can match any string of characters not containing '/'. This includes matching an empty string.
- '**' matches any string of characters. This includes matching an empty string. The string may include the '/' character but does not need to.
File names beginning with a dot are not considered when wildcarding
unless a dot is specifically given as the first character of the file
name.
Examples:
a* matches any files beginning with an 'a' in the current directory.
??? matches any file in the current directory whose name is exactly three characters long.
** matches any files and directories in the current directory and all of its subdirectories.
If no matches are found for a specific wildcard, it will expand into
zero arguments, i.e. to nothing. If none of the wildcarded arguments
sent to a command result in any matches, the command will not be
executed. If this happens when using the shell interactively, a
warning will also be printed.
\subsection expand-command-substitution Command substitution
If a parameter contains a set of parenthesis, the text enclosed by the
parenthesis will be interpreted as a list of commands. Om expansion,
this list is executed, and substituted by the output. If the output is
more than one line long, each line will be expanded to a new
parameter.
A command substitution will not change the value of the status variable outside of the command
substitution.
Example:
The command echo (basename image.jpg .jpg).png will
output 'image.png'.
The command for i in *.jpg; convert $i (basename $i .jpg).png;
end will convert all Jpeg files in the current directory to the
PNG format.
\subsection expand-brace Brace expansion
A comma separated list of characters enclosed in curly braces will be
expanded so each element of the list becomes a new parameter.
Example:
echo input.{c,h,txt} outputs 'input.c input.h input.txt'
The command mv *.{c,h} src/ moves all files with the suffix
'.c' or '.h' to the subdirectory src.
\subsection expand-variable Variable expansion
A dollar sign followed by a string of characters is expanded into the
value of the environment variable with the same name. For an
introduction to the concept of environment variables, read the Environment variables section.
Example:
echo \$HOME prints the home directory of the current
user.
If you wish to combine environment variables with text, you can
encase the variables within braces to embed a variable inside running
text like echo Konnichiwa {$USER}san, which will print a
personalized Japanese greeting.
The {$USER}san syntax might need a bit of an elaboration. Posix
shells allow you to specify a variable name using '$VARNAME' or
'${VARNAME}'. Fish supports the former, and has no support whatsoever
for the latter or anything like it. So what is '{$VARNAME}' then?
Well, '{WHATEVER}' is brace expansion, identical
to that supported by e.g. bash. 'a{b,c}d' -> 'abd acd' works
both in bash and on fish. So '{$VARNAME}' is a bracket-expansion with
only a single element, i.e. it becomes expanded to '$VARNAME', which
will be variable expanded to the value of the variable 'VARNAME'. So
you might think that the brackets don't actually do anything, and that
is nearly the truth. The snag is that there once along the way was a
'}' in there somewhere, and } is not a valid character in a variable
name. So anything after the otherwise pointless bracket expansion
becomes explicitly NOT a part of the variable name, even if it happens
to be a legal variable name character. That's why '{$USER}san' looks
for the variable '$USER' and not for the variable '$USERsan'. It's
simply a case of one syntax lending itself nicely to solving an
unrelated problem in its spare time.
Variable expansion is the only type of expansion performed on double
quoted strings. There is, however, an important difference in how
variables are expanded when quoted and when unquoted. An unquoted
variable expansion will result in a variable number of arguments. For
example, if the variable $foo has zero elements or is undefined, the
argument $foo will expand to zero elements. If the variable $foo is an
array of five elements, the argument $foo will expand to five
elements. When quoted, like "$foo", a variable expansion will always
result in exactly one argument. Undefined variables will expand to the
empty string, and array variables will be concatenated using the space
character.
There is one further notable feature of fish variable
expansion. Consider the following code snippet:
set foo a b c
set a 10; set b 20; set c 30
for i in (seq (count $$foo))
echo $$foo[$i]
end
# Output is:
# 10
# 20
# 30
The above code demonstrates how to use multiple '$' symbols to expand
the value of a variable as a variable name. One can simply think of
the $-symbol as a variable dereference operator. When using this
feature together with array brackets, the brackets will always match
the innermost $ dereference. Thus, $$foo[5] will always mean the fift
element of the foo variable should be dereferenced and never that the fift
element of the doubly dereferenced variable foo. The latter can
instead be expressed as $$foo[1][5].
\subsection expand-home Home directory expansion
The ~ (tilde) character at the beginning of a parameter, followed by a
username, is expanded into the home directory of the specified user. A
lone ~, or a ~ followed by a slash, is expanded into the home
directory of the process owner.
\subsection expand-process Process expansion
The \% (percent) character at the beginning of a parameter followed by
a string is expanded into a process id. The following expansions are
performed:
- If the string is the entire word \c self, the shells pid is the result
- Otherwise, if the string is the id of a job, the result is the process
group id of the job.
- Otherwise, if any child processes match the specified string, their
pids are the result of the expansion.
- Otherwise, if any processes owned by the user match the specified
string, their pids are the result of the expansion.
This form of expansion is useful for commands like kill and fg, which
take the process ids as an argument.
Example:
fg \%ema will search for a process whose command line begins
with the letters 'ema', such as emacs, and if found, put it in the
foreground.
kill -s SIGINT \%3 will send the SIGINT signal to the job
with job id 3.
\subsection combine Combining different expansions
All of the above expansions can be combined. If several expansions
result in more than one parameter, all possible combinations are
created.
Example:
If the current directory contains the files 'foo' and 'bar', the command
echo a(ls){1,2,3}
will output 'abar1 abar2 abar3 afoo1 afoo2 afoo3'.
\section variables Environment variables
The concept of environment variables are central to any
shell. Environment variables are variables, whose values can be set
and used by the user. For information on how to use the current value
of a variable, see the section on variable
expansion.
To set a variable value, use the \c set
command.
Example:
To set the variable \c smurf to the value \c blue, use the command
set smurf blue.
After a variable has been set, you can use the value of a variable in
the shell through variable expansion.
Example:
To use the value of a the variable \c smurf, write $ (dollar symbol)
followed by the name of the variable, like echo Smurfs are
$smurf, which would print the result 'Smurfs are blue'.
\subsection variables-scope Variable scope
There are three kinds of variables in fish, universal, global and
local variables. Universal variables are shared between all fish
sessions a user is running on one computer. Global variables are
specific to the current fish session, but are not associated with any
specific block scope, and will never be erased unless the user
explicitly requests it using set -e. Local variables are
specific to the current fish session, and associated with a specific
block of commands, and is automatically erased when a specific block
goes out of scope. A block of commands is a series of commands that
begins with one of the commands \c 'for, \c 'while' , \c 'if', \c
'function', \c 'begin' or \c 'switch', and ends with the command \c
'end'. The user can specify that a variable should have either global
or local scope using the \c -g/--global or \c -l/--local switches.
Variables can be explicitly set to be universal with the \c -U or \c
--universal switch, global with the \c -g or \c --global switch, or
local with the \c -l or \c --local switch. The scoping rules when
creating or updating a variable are:
-# If a variable is explicitly set to either universal, global or local, that setting will be honored. If a variable of the same name exists in a different scope, that variable will not be changed.
-# If a variable is not explicitly set to be either universal, global or local, but has been previously defined, the variable scope is not changed.
-# If a variable is not explicitly set to be either universal, global or local and has never before been defined, the variable will be local to the currently executing functions. If no function is executing, the variable will be global.
There may be many variables with the same name, but different scopes.
When using a variable, the variable scope will be searched from the
inside out, i.e. a local variable will be used rather than a global
variable with the same name, a global variable will be used rather
than a universal variable with the same name.
Example:
The following code will not output anything:
begin
# This is a nice local scope where all variables will die
set -l pirate 'There be treasure in them thar hills'
end
# This will not output anything, since the pirate was local
echo $pirate
\subsection variables-universal More on universal variables
Universal variables are variables that are shared between all the
users fish sessions on the computer. Fish stores many of its
configuration options as universal variables. This means that in order
to change fish settings, all you have to do is change the variable
value once, and it will be automatically updated for all sessions, and
preserved across computer reboots and login/logout.
To see universal variables in action, start two fish sessions side by
side, and issue the following command in one of them set
fish_color_cwd blue. Since \c fish_color_cwd is a universal
variable, the color of the current working directory listing in the
prompt will instantly change to blue on both terminals.
\subsection variables-functions Variable scope for functions
When calling a function, all non-global variables temporarily
disappear. This shadowing of the local scope is needed since the
variable namespace would become cluttered, making it very easy to
accidentally overwrite variables from another function.
For example, the following code will output 'Avast, mateys':
function shiver
set phrase 'Shiver me timbers'
end
function avast
set phrase 'Avast, mateys'
# Calling the shiver function here can not change any variables
# in the local scope
shiver
echo $phrase
end
avast
\subsection variables-export Exporting variables
Variables in fish can be exported. This means the variable will be
inherited by any commands started by fish. It is convention that
exported variables are in uppercase and unexported variables are in
lowercase.
Variables can be explicitly set to be exported with the \c -x or \c
--export switch, or not exported with the \c -u or \c --unexport
switch. The exporting rules when creating or updating a variable are
identical to the scoping rules for variables:
-# If a variable is explicitly set to either be exported or not exported, that setting will be honored.
-# If a variable is not explicitly set to be exported or not exported, but has been previously defined, the previous exporting rule for the variable is kept.
-# If a variable is not explicitly set to be either global or local and has never before been defined, the variable will not be exported.
\subsection variables-arrays Arrays
\c fish can store a list of multiple strings inside of a variable. To
access one element of an array, use the index of the element inside of
square brackets, like this:
echo $PATH[3]
Note that array indices start at 1 in fish, not 0, as is more common
in other languages. This is because many common unix tools like seq
are more suited to such use.
If you do not use any brackets, all the elements of the array will be
written as separate items. This means you can easily iterate over an
array using this syntax:
for i in $PATH; echo $i is in the path; end
To create a variable \c smurf, containing the items \c blue and \c
small, simply write:
set smurf blue small
It is also possible to set or erase individual elements of an array:
\#Set smurf to be an array with the elements 'blue' and 'small'
set smurf blue small
\#Change the second element of smurf to 'evil'
set smurf[2] evil
\#Erase the first element
set -e smurf[1]
\#Output 'evil'
echo $smurf
If you specify a negative index when expanding or assigning to an
array variable, the index will be calculated from the end of the
array. For example, the index -1 means the last index of an array.
\subsection variables-special Special variables
The user can change the settings of \c fish by changing the values of
certain environment variables.
- \c BROWSER, which is the users preferred web browser. If this variable is set, fish will use the specified browser instead of the system default browser to display the fish documentation.
- \c CDPATH, which is an array of directories in which to search for the new directory for the \c cd builtin.
- A large number of variable starting with the prefixes \c fish_color and \c fish_pager_color. See Variables for changing highlighting colors for more information.
- \c fish_greeting, which is the greeting message printed on startup.
- \c LANG, \c LC_ALL, \c LC_COLLATE, \c LC_CTYPE, \c LC_MESSAGES, \c LC_MONETARY, \c LC_NUMERIC and \c LC_TIME set the language option for the shell and subprograms. See the section Locale variables for more information.
- \c PATH, which is an array of directories in which to search for commands
- \c umask, which is the current file creation mask. The preferred way to change the umask variable is through the umask shellscript function. An attempt to set umask to an invalid value will always fail.
\c fish also sends additional information to the user through the
values of certain environment variables. The user can not change the
values of most of these variables.
- \c _, which is the name of the currently running command.
- \c argv, which is an array of arguments to the shell or function. \c argv is only defined when inside a function call, or if fish was invoked with a list of arguments, like 'fish myscript.fish foo bar'. This variable can be changed by the user.
- \c history, which is an array containing the last commands that where entered.
- \c HOME, which is the users home directory. This variable can only be changed by the root user.
- \c PWD, which is the current working directory.
- \c status, which is the exit status of the last foreground job to exit.
- \c USER, which is the username. This variable can only be changed by the root user.
Variables whose name are in uppercase are exported to the commands
started by fish, those in lowercase are not exported. This rule is not
enforced by fish, but it is good coding practice to use casing to
distinguish between exported and unexported variables. \c fish also
uses several variables internally. Such variables are prefixed with
the string __FISH or __fish. These should be ignored by the user.
\subsection variables-status The status variable
Whenever a process exits, an exit status is returned to the program
that started it (usually the shell). This exit status is an integer
number, which tells the calling application how the execution of the
command went. In general, a zero exit status means that the command
executed without problem, but a non-zero exit status means there was
some form of problem.
Fish stores the exit status of the last process in the last job to
exit in the \c status variable.
If fish encounters a problem while executing a command, the status
variable may also be set to a specific value:
- 1 is the generally the exit status from fish builtins if they where supplied with invalid arguments
- 125 means an unknown error occured while trying to execute the command
- 126 means that the command was not executed because none of the wildcards in the command produced any matches
- 127 means that no function, builtin or command with the given name could be located
\subsection variables-color Variables for changing highlighting colors
The colors used by fish for syntax highlighting can be configured by
changing the values of a various variables. The value of these
variables can be one of the colors accepted by the set_color command. The \c --bold
or \c -b switches accepted by \c set_color are also accepted.
The following variables are available to change the highligting colors
in fish:
- \c fish_color_normal, the default color
- \c fish_color_command, the color for commands
- \c fish_color_quote, the color for quoted blocks of text
- \c fish_color_redirection, the color for IO redirections
- \c fish_color_end, the color for process separators like ';' and '&'
- \c fish_color_error, the color used to highlight potential errors
- \c fish_color_param, the color for regular command parameters
- \c fish_color_comment, the color used for code comments
- \c fish_color_match, the color used to highlight matching parenthesis
- \c fish_color_search_match, the color used to highlight history search matches
- \c fish_color_operator, the color for parameter expansion operators like '*' and '~'
- \c fish_color_escape, the color used to highlight character escapes like '\\n' and '\\x70'
- \c fish_color_cwd, the color used for the current working directory in the default prompt
Additionally, the following variables are available to change the
highlighting in the completion pager:
- \c fish_pager_color_prefix, the color of the prefix string, i.e. the string that is to be completed
- \c fish_pager_color_completion, the color of the completion itself
- \c fish_pager_color_description, the color of the completion description
- \c fish_pager_color_progress, the color of the progress bar at the bottom left corner
Example:
To make errors highlighted and red, use:
set fish_color_error red --bold
\subsection variables-locale Locale variables
The most common way to set the locale to use a command like 'set -x
LANG en_GB.utf8', which sets the current locale to be the english
language, as used in Great Britain, using the UTF-8 character set. For
a list of available locales, use 'locale -a'.
\c LANG, \c LC_ALL, \c LC_COLLATE, \c LC_CTYPE, \c LC_MESSAGES, \c
LC_MONETARY, \c LC_NUMERIC and LC_TIME set the language option for the
shell and subprograms. These variables work as follows: \c LC_ALL
forces all the aspects of the locale to the specified value. If LC_ALL
is set, all other locale variables will be ignored. The other LC_
variables set the specified aspect of the locale information. LANG
is a fallback value, it will be used if none of the LC_ variables are
specified.
\section builtin-overview Builtins
Many other shells have a large library of builtin commands. Most of
these commands are also available as standalone commands, but have
been implemented in the shell anyway for whatever reason. To avoid
code duplication, and to avoid the confusion of subtly differing
versions of the same command, \c fish only implements builtins for
actions which cannot be performed by a regular command.
For a list of all builtins, functions and commands shipped with fish,
see the table of contents. The
documentation is also available by using the --help
switch of the command.
\section editor Command Line editor
The \c fish editor features copy and paste, a searchable history and
many editor functions that can be bound to special keyboard
shortcuts. The most important keybinding is probably the tab key, which is bound to the complete function.
Here are some of the commands available in the editor:
- Tab completes the current token
- Home or Ctrl-a moves to the beginning of the line
- End or Ctrl-e moves to the end of line
- Left and right moves one character left or right
- Alt-left and Alt-right moves one word left or right, or moves forward/backward in the directory history if the commandline is empty
- Up and down search the command history for the previous/next command containing the string that was specified on the commandline before the search was started. If the commandline was empty when the search started, all commands match. See the history section for more information on history searching.
- Alt-up and Alt-down search the command history for the previous/next token containing the token under the cursor before the search was started. If the commandline was not on a token when the search started, all tokens match. See the history section for more information on history searching.
- Delete and backspace removes one character forwards or backwards respecitvely
- Ctrl-c deletes entire line
- Ctrl-d delete one character to the right of the cursor, unless the buffer is empty, in which case the shell will exit
- Ctrl-k move contents from the cursor to the end of line to the killring
- Ctrl-u move contents from the beginning of line to the cursor to the killring
- Ctrl-l clear and repaint screen
- Ctrl-w move previous word to the killring
- Alt-d move next word to the killring
- Alt-w prints a short description of the command under the cursor
- Alt-l lists the contents of the current directory, unless the cursor is over a directory argument, in which case the contents of that directory will be listed
- Alt-p adds the string '| less;' to the end of the job under the cursor. The result is that the output of the command will be paged.
You can change these key bindings by making an inputrc file. To do
this, copy the file /etc/fish/fish_inputrc to your home directory and
rename it to '.config/fish/fish_inputrc'. Now you can edit the file
to change your key bindings. The fileformat of this file is described
in the manual page for readline. Use the command man readline
to read up on this syntax. Please note that the list of key binding
functions in fish is different to that offered by readline. Currently,
the following functions are available:
- \c backward-char, moves one character to the left
- \c backward-delete-char, deletes one character of input to the left of the cursor
- \c backward-kill-line, move everything from the beginning of the line to the cursor to the killring
- \c backward-kill-word, move the word to the left of the cursor to the killring
- \c backward-word, move one word to the left
- \c beginning-of-history, move to the beginning of the history
- \c beginning-of-line, move to the beginning of the line
- \c complete, guess the remainder of the current token
- \c delete-char, delete one character to the right of the cursor
- \c delete-line, delete the entire line
- \c dump-functions, print a list of all key-bindings
- \c end-of-history, move to the end of the history
- \c end-of-line, move to the end of the line
- \c explain, print a description of possible problems with the current command
- \c forward-char, move one character to the right
- \c forward-word, move one word to the right
- \c history-search-backward, search the history for the previous match
- \c history-search-forward, search the history for the next match
- \c kill-line, move everything from the cursor to the end of the line to the killring
- \c kill-whole-line, move the line to the killring
- \c kill-word, move the next word to the killring
- \c yank, insert the latest entry of the killring into the buffer
- \c yank-pop, rotate to the previous entry of the killring
You can also bind a pice of shellscript to a key using the same
syntax. For example, the Alt-p functionality described above is
implemented using the following keybinding.
"\M-p": if commandline -j|grep -v 'less *$' >/dev/null; commandline -aj "|less;"; end
\subsection killring Copy and paste (Kill Ring)
\c fish uses an Emacs style kill ring for copy and paste
functionality. Use Ctrl-K to cut from the current cursor position to
the end of the line. The string that is cut (a.k.a. killed) is
inserted into a linked list of kills, called the kill ring. To paste
the latest value from the kill ring use Ctrl-Y. After pasting, use
Meta-Y to rotate to the previous kill.
If the environment variable DISPLAY is set, \c fish will try to
connect to the X-windows server specified by this variable, and use
the clipboard on the X server for copying and pasting.
\subsection history Searchable history
After a command has been entered, it is inserted at the end of a
history list. Any duplicate history items are automatically
removed. By pressing the up and down keys, the user can search
forwards and backwards in the history. If the current command line is
not empty when starting a history search, only the commands containing
the string entered into the command line are shown.
By pressing Alt-up and Alt-down, a history search is also performed,
but instead of searching for a complete commandline, each commandline
is tokenized into separate elements just like it would be before
execution, and each such token is matched agains the token under the
cursor when the search began.
History searches can be aborted by pressing the escape key.
The history is stored in the file '~/.config/fish/fish_history'. It is automatically
read on startup and merged on program exit.
Example:
To search for previous entries containing the word 'make', type 'make'
in the console and press the up key.
\subsection multiline Multiline editing
The fish commandline editor can be used to work on commands that are
several lines long. There are three ways to make a command span more
than a single line:
- Pressing the enter key while a block of commands is unclosed, i.e. when one or more block commands such as 'for', 'begin' or 'if' do not have a corresponding 'end' command.
- Pressing Alt-enter instead of pressing the enter key.
- By backslash escaping a newline, i.e. by inserting a backslash (\\) character pefore pressing the enter key.
The fish commandline editor works exactly the same in single line mode
and in multiline mode. To move between lines use the left and right
arrow keys and other such keyboard shortcuts.
\section job-control Running multiple programs
Normally when \c fish starts a program, this program will be put in
the foreground, meaning it will take control of the terminal and \c
fish will be stopped until the program finishes. Sometimes this is not
desirable. For example, you may wish to start an application with a
graphical user interface from the terminal, and then be able to
continue using the shell. In such cases, there are several ways in
which the user can change fish's behaviour.
-# By ending a command with the \& (ampersand) symbol, the user tells \c fish to put the specified command into the background. A background process will be run simultaneous with \c fish. \c fish will retain control of the terminal, so the program will not be able to read from the keyboard.
-# By pressing ^Z, the user stops a currently running foreground program and returns control to \c fish. Some programs do not support this feature, or remap it to another key. Gnu emacs uses ^X z to stop running.
-# By using the fg and bg builtin commands, the user can send any currently running job into the foreground or background.
\section initialization Initialization files
On startup, \c fish evaluates the files /usr/share/fish/config.fish
(Or /usr/local/fish... if you installed fish in /usr/local),
/etc/fish/config.fish (Or ~/etc/fish/... if you installed fish in your
home directory) and ~/.config/fish/config.fish (Or any other directory
specified by the \$XDG_CONFIG_HOME variable), in that order. The first
file should not be directly edited, the second one is meant for
systemwide configuration and the last one is meant for user
configuration. If you want to run a command only on starting an
interactive shell, use the exit status of the command 'status
--is-interactive' to determine if the shell is interactive. If you
want to run a command only when using a login shell, use 'status
--is-login' instead.
Examples:
If you want to add the directory ~/linux/bin to your PATH variable
when using a login shell, add the following to your ~/.config/fish/config.fish file:
if status --is-login
set PATH $PATH ~/linux/bin
end
If you want to run a set of commands when \c fish exits, use an event handler that is triggered by the exit of the
shell:
function on_exit --on-process \%self
echo fish is now exiting
end
Universal variables are stored in
the file .config/fish/fishd.HOSTNAME, where HOSTNAME is the name of your
computer. Do not edit this file directly, edit them through fish
scripts or by using fish interactively instead.
\section other Other features
\subsection color Syntax highlighting
\c fish interprets the command line as it is typed and uses syntax
highlighting to provide feedback to the user. The most important
feedback is the detection of potential errors. By default, errors are
marked red.
Detected errors include:
- Non existing commands.
- Reading from or appending to a non existing file.
- Incorrect use of output redirects
- Mismatched parenthesis
When the cursor is over a parenthesis or a quote, \c fish also
highlights its matching quote or parenthesis.
To customize the syntax highlighting, you can set the environment
variables \c fish_color_normal, \c fish_color_command, \c
fish_color_substitution, \c fish_color_redirection, \c fish_color_end,
\c fish_color_error, \c fish_color_param, \c fish_color_comment, \c
fish_color_match, \c fish_color_search_match, \c fish_color_cwd, \c
fish_pager_color_prefix, \c fish_pager_color_completion, \c
fish_pager_color_description and \c
fish_pager_color_progress. Usually, the value of these variables will
be one of \c black, \c red, \c green, \c brown, \c yellow, \c blue, \c
magenta, \c purple, \c cyan, \c white or \c normal, but they can be an
array containing any color options for the set_color command.
Issuing set fish_color_error black --background=red
--bold will make all commandline errors be written in a black,
bold font, with a red background.
\subsection prompt Programmable prompt
By defining the \c fish_prompt function, the user can choose a custom
prompt. The \c fish_prompt function is executed and the output is used
as a prompt.
Example:
The default \c fish prompt is
function fish_prompt -d "Write out the prompt"
printf '\%s\@\%s\%s\%s\%s> ' (whoami) (hostname|cut -d . -f 1) (set_color \$fish_color_cwd) (prompt_pwd) (set_color normal)
end
where \c prompt_pwd is a shellscript function that displays a condensed version of the current working direcotry.
\subsection title Programmable title
When using most virtual terminals, it is possible to set the message
displayed in the titlebar of the terminal window. This can be done
automatically in fish by defining the \c fish_title function. The \c
fish_title function is executed before and after a new command is
executed or put into the foreground and the output is used as a
titlebar message. The $_ environment variable will always contain the
name of the job to be put into the foreground (Or 'fish' if control is
returning to the shell) when the fish_prompt function is called.
Example:
The default \c fish title is
function fish_title
echo $_ ' '
pwd
end
\subsection event Event handlers
When defining a new function in fish, it is possible to make it into an
event handler, i.e. a function that is automatically run when a
specific event takes place. Events that can trigger a handler currently are:
- When a signal is delivered
- When a process or job exits
- When the value of a variable is updated
Example:
To specify a signal handler for the WINCH signal, write:
function --on-signal WINCH my_signal_handler
echo Got WINCH signal!
end
For more information on how to define new event handlers, see the
documentation for the function
command.
\section issues Common issues with fish
If you install fish in your home directory, fish will not work
correctly for any other user than yourself. This is because fish needs
its initalization files to function properly. To solve this
problem, either copy the initialization files to each fish users home
directory, or install them in /etc.
\section i18n Translating fish to other languages
Fish uses the GNU gettext library to implement translation to multiple
languages. If fish is not available in your language, please consider
making a translation. Currently, only the shell itself can be
translated, a future version of fish should also include translated
manuals.
To make a translation of fish, you will first need the sourcecode,
available from the fish
homepage. Download the latest version, and then extract it using a
command like tar -zxf fish-VERSION.tar.gz.
Next, cd into the newly created fish directory using cd
fish-VERSION.
You will now need to configure the sourcecode using the command
./configure. This step might take a while.
Before you continue, you will need to know the ISO 639 language code
of the language you are translating to. These codes can be found here. For
example, the language code for Uighur is ug.
Now you have the sourcecode and it is properly configured. Lets start
translating. To do this, first create an empty translation table for
the language you wish to translate to by writing make
po/[LANGUAGE CODE].po in the fish terminal. For example, if you
are translating to Uighur, you should write make
po/ug.po. This should create the file po/ug.po, a template
translation table containing all the strings that need to be
translated.
Now you are all set up to translate fish to a new language. Open the
newly created .po file in your editor of choice, and start
translating. The .po file format is rather simple. It contains pairs
of string in a format like:
msgid "%ls: No suitable job\n"
msgstr ""
The first line is the english string to translate, the second line
should contain your translation. For example, in swedish the above
might become:
msgid "%ls: No suitable job\n"
msgstr "%ls: Inget passande jobb\n"
\%s, \%ls, \%d and other tokens beginning with a '\%' are
placeholders. These will be replaced by a value by fish at
runtime. You must always take care to use exactly the same
placeholders in the same order in your translation. (Actually, there
are ways to avoid this, but they are too complicated for this short
introduction. See the full manual for the printf C function for more
information.)
Once you have provided a translation for fish, please send it to fish-users@lists.sf.net.
\section todo Missing features and bugs
\subsection todo-features Missing features
- Complete vi-mode key bindings
- More completions (for example xterm, vim,
konsole, gnome-terminal, dcop, cron,
rlogin, rsync, arch, finger, nice, locate,
bibtex, aspell, xpdf,
compress, wine, xmms, dig, batch, cron,
g++, javac, java, gcj, lpr, doxygen, whois, find)
- Undo support
- Check keybinding commands for output - if nothing has happened, don't repaint to reduce flicker
- wait shellscript
- Support for the screen clipboard
- Files begining with '-' should not be colored red if a '--' argument has been given
\subsection todo-possible Possible features
- tab completion could use smart casing
- Completions could support options beginning with a plus (like xterm
+fbx) and options without dashes (like top p) Do we really want to
complicate the code additionally for such a small number of programs?
- mouse support like zsh has with http://stchaz.free.fr/mouse.zsh
installed would be awesome
- suggest a completion on unique matches by writing it out in an understated color
- With a bit of tweakage, quite a few of the readline key-binding functions could be implemented in shellscript.
- Highlight beginning/end of block when moving over a block command
- Inclusion guards for the init files to make them evaluate only once, even if the user has installed fish both in /etc and in $HOME
- command specific wildcarding (use case * instead of case '*', etc.)
- Map variables. (export only the values. When expanding with no key specified, expand to all values.)
- Descriptions for variables using 'set -d'.
- Parse errors should when possible honor IO redirections
- Support for writing strings like /u/l/b/foo and have them expand to /usr/local/bin/foo - perhaps through tab expansion
- Autoreload inputrc-file on updates
- Right-side prompt
- Selectable completions in the pager
- Per process output redirection
- Reduce the space of the pager by one line to allow the commandline to remain visible.
- down-arrow could be used to save the current command to the history. Or give the next command in-sequnce. Or both.
- A pretty-printer.
- Drop support for inputrc-files. Use shellscripts and the bind builtin. Also, redo the syntax for the bind builtin to something more sane.
- History could reload itself when the file is updated. This would need to be done in a clever way to avoid chain reactions
- The error function should probably be moved into it's own library, and be made mere general purpose.
- The code validation functions should be moved from the parser to parse_util.
- The parser_is_* functions should be moved to parse_util. Possibly, they should be made into a single function, i.e. parse_util_classify( "begin", BLOCK_COMMAND);
- Try to remove more malloc calls to reduce memory usage. The time_t arrays used by the autoloader sound like a good candidate.
- The code validator should warn about unknown commands.
- Auto-newlines
- A fault injector could be written to increase robustness and testing of error recovery paths
\subsection bugs Known bugs and issues
- Completion for gcc -\#\#\# option doesn't work.
- Suspending and then resuming pipelines containing a builtin is broken. How should this be handled?
- The completion pager doesn't work if stderr is redirected.
- Can't complete directories as commands unless there is a slash - maybe this is a symlink issue?
- ls should use dircolors
- delete-word is broken on the commandline 'sudo update-alternatives --config x-'
- Multiple backslashes at the end of a line is interpreted as not executing, this should only happen for an odd number of backslashes
If you think you have found a bug not described here, please send a
report to fish-users@lists.sf.net.
\subsection issues Known issues
Older versions of Doxygen has bugs in the man-page generation which
cause the builtin help to render incorrectly. Version 1.2.14 is known
to have this problem.
*/