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New user questions



Hi.  I just joined.

For the past 10-15 years I have been using the original AT&T bourne
shell into which I have hacked various interactive editing functions. 
The time has come to dump this thing - the maintenance is too high.

I'd like to use zsh and I must say that I am _very_ impressed by the
quality and professionalism of the website, documentation, mailing list
and software.  Congratulations!

A few little problems I have observed:

1: When I printed zsh_a4.ps on an HP LaserJet 4 the last few columns
were truncated.

2: When I installed zsh-3.1.6dev20-1mdk (Mandrake's RPM) I notice that
'man zshall' produces 11 lines of the form:

<standard input>:291: can't open `man1/zshmisc.1': No such file or
directory
<standard input>:292: can't open `man1/zshexpn.1': No such file or
directory


And a few questions, please.

I am trying to emulate some functions of which I have become very fond
and there are just a few which for I have not been able to find the zsh
equivalents:

Impromptu directory listing
---------------------------

prompt> cd /usr/src/li^R
linux/                  linux-2.2.9/            linux-2.3.99-pre3/
linux-akpm/

So typing ^R in a command line produces a diectory listing of matching
files and allows you to continue typing.

insert-previous-line
--------------------

pwold011:~> /sbin/shutdown
shutdown: must be root.
pwold011:~> sudo ^W

Here, typing ^W will insert _all_ of the previous line at the prompt.
(I'd expected get-line to do this, but it just beeps...)


backward-search-word
--------------------

prompt> cp /foo/bar /zot/bop
prompt> ls /fo^C

Here, ^C will search back through the word history and insert
'/foo/bar'.  If I immediately hit ^C again, it will rub out the 'o/bar'
and search further back in history, so one can just keep hitting ^C.

^C
--

This normally generates interrupt.  Is there a way of making it
available to the interactive editor without globally sttying it? (The
shell would need to restore the intr char when it leaves editing mode).

Bidirectional directory history
-------------------------------

I'd like to be able to 'cd' back to somewhere where I used to be.  I
have this set up nicely using popd.  But once I've gone back a few
levels with multiple popd's I would like to go forward again.  A ring,
rather than a stack.

Possible?

insert-previous-word
--------------------

The insert-last-word widget will insert the last word of the previous
line.  Hitting it again inserts the last word of the line before that.

I would like to do something similar, but have it walk back through all
the previous words, not just the final ones on each line:

prompt> echo aaa bbb ccc ddd
prompt> echo ^O        # Expands to echo ddd
prompt> echo ^O^O      # Expands to echo ccc

etc

forward-kill-line
-----------------

Is there a widget which deletes from the cursor to the end of line?


Changing separators
-------------------

All the editor commands define a word separator as a space.  Is there a
way of changing zsh's idea of word separators?  I would prefer that it
consider '/' to be a separator as well.

redraw
------

If asynchronous output mucks up the editor output, how to redraw it? 
'clear-screen' will do the job, but I'd prefer it not clear the screen.

Thanks!



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