Re: Zsh as default in Mac OS 15 / zsh "primer"?

[dana <dana@xxxxxxx>]

On 3 Jun 2019, at 16:07, TJ Luoma <luomat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> I've been told that zsh is the default shell in the new version of
> macOS "Catalina".

For reference: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208050

On 3 Jun 2019, at 16:07, TJ Luoma <luomat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Someone just asked me if I had a quick primer on why zsh is "better"
> than other shells.

Pretty broad and subjective topic, but off the top of my head i would suggest
the following major benefits:

* More advanced line-editing and tab-completion; completion scripts are
  updated regularly and shipped with the shell itself

* Saner and more powerful parameter expansion (white-space handling, nesting,
  splitting, filtering, quoting, &c.)

* More functionality built directly into the shell, which can make many
  scripting tasks faster to perform (likely at the expense of some start-up
  and memory over-head), as well as more portable across different systems (as
  long as you have zsh, obviously)

The FAQ covers much of this: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/FAQ/

There are also a guide (http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Guide/zshguide.html) and a
book, but none of them were really designed to 'pitch' zsh to users of other
shells AFAIK

dana