A.5. zsh

zsh is a powerful interactive shell and scripting language with many features found in bash, ksh, and tcsh, as well as several unique features.

zsh was originally written by Paul Falsted in the early 1990s and is now maintained by various people.

It is freely available and should compile and run on just about any modern version of Unix. Ports for other operating systems are also available. The zsh home page is http://www.zsh.org. The current version is 4.2.1.

Some of the main differences between bash and zsh are:

• Extended globbing capabilities

• A slightly more advanced textual completion system

• A powerful multi-line command line editor

• Various visual bells and whistles, such as command prompt color and placement

zsh is a good alternative to bash, especially for "power users."