Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Stephan Windmüller]

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Hello!

I am using zsh 4.3.2 from the debian backports and figured out some
strange behaviour when starting a zsh inside another zsh.

Line from .zshrc:

export PATH=$PATH:/home/user/path

Of course, at the first start all works fine. But when I start another
zsh and /home/user/path is listed twice in $PATH, my shell is acting
weird.

For example, pressing "Cursor up" calls the last history entry but
points the cursor at the first character (expected: after the last).
Pressing "<END>" then results in changing the first word to capital
letters.

What is going on here? And how do I fix it?

Regards
 Stephan

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Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Stephane Chazelas]

On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 11:19:20AM +0100, Stephan Windmüller wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> I am using zsh 4.3.2 from the debian backports and figured out some
> strange behaviour when starting a zsh inside another zsh.
> 
> Line from .zshrc:
> 
> export PATH=$PATH:/home/user/path
> 
> Of course, at the first start all works fine. But when I start another
> zsh and /home/user/path is listed twice in $PATH, my shell is acting
> weird.

PATH should be defined in your .profile as it's a setting for
your session, not for your shell only.

> For example, pressing "Cursor up" calls the last history entry but
> points the cursor at the first character (expected: after the last).
> Pressing "<END>" then results in changing the first word to capital
> letters.
> 
> What is going on here? And how do I fix it?
[...]

That indicates you are in vi mode. It shouldn't be related to
$PATH. What is possible is that you have a bindkey -e (for
switching to emacs mode) in .profile, .zprofile, .zlogin,
/etc/profile, /etc/zprofile or /etc/zlogin instead of .zshrc
(here, it's a shell setting).

Adding:

bindkey -e 

to your ~/.zshrc should force the emacs mode. zsh may have
chosen vi mode by default because you have the $VISUAL or
$EDITOR variable set to vi.

-- 
Stéphane

Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Stephan Windmüller]

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On Sun, 05. Nov 2006, Stephane Chazelas wrote:

> PATH should be defined in your .profile as it's a setting for your
> session, not for your shell only.

This file is not processed on my system. Do I have to source it
manually?

> That indicates you are in vi mode. It shouldn't be related to
> $PATH.

You are right, it is not related to $PATH. One line after setting it,
$EDITOR is set to vim. Sorry for confusing.

> Adding:
> bindkey -e 
> to your ~/.zshrc should force the emacs mode.

Thank you, that helped. But is there a "vim"-mode instead of vi? I did
not find it in the documentation.

Regards
 Stephan

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Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Frank Terbeck]

Stephan Windmüller <windy@white-hawk.de>:
> On Sun, 05. Nov 2006, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
> 
> > PATH should be defined in your .profile as it's a setting for your
> > session, not for your shell only.
> 
> This file is not processed on my system. Do I have to source it
> manually?

Stephane probably meant '.zprofile', see
<http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_4.html#SEC17>.
To wipe out duplicates from $PATH you could also issue this command:
% typeset -U path

[...]
> > Adding:
> > bindkey -e 
> > to your ~/.zshrc should force the emacs mode.
> 
> Thank you, that helped. But is there a "vim"-mode instead of vi? I did
> not find it in the documentation.

Nope, there is no 'vim' Mode.
See <http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_17.html#SEC92>.

Regards, Frank

Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Stephan Windmüller]

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On Sun, 05. Nov 2006, Frank Terbeck wrote:

> > This file is not processed on my system. Do I have to source it
> > manually?
> Stephane probably meant '.zprofile', see
> <http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_4.html#SEC17>.

Ah, but this is only sourced for login-shells.

> To wipe out duplicates from $PATH you could also issue this command:
> % typeset -U path

That does exactly what I expected. Thank you!

Regards
 Stephan

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Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2006-11-05 13:22:39 +0100, Stephan Windmüller wrote:
> On Sun, 05. Nov 2006, Frank Terbeck wrote:
> 
> > > This file is not processed on my system. Do I have to source it
> > > manually?
> > Stephane probably meant '.zprofile', see
> > <http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_4.html#SEC17>.
> 
> Ah, but this is only sourced for login-shells.

Yes, and it is sourced after ".zshenv", while one may need to set $PATH
before some commands in ".zshenv". For instance:

head -1 /dev/null 2>/dev/null || export _POSIX2_VERSION=199209

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)

Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Stephane Chazelas]

On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 01:22:39PM +0100, Stephan Windmüller wrote:
> On Sun, 05. Nov 2006, Frank Terbeck wrote:
> 
> > > This file is not processed on my system. Do I have to source it
> > > manually?
> > Stephane probably meant '.zprofile', see
> > <http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_4.html#SEC17>.
> 
> Ah, but this is only sourced for login-shells.

Yes, that's why/because it's a session configuration file.
There, you put the definition of the environment variables and
tty settings... that will affect your login session.

Environment variables and tty settings are inherited by all the
processes started during the session (whose common ancestors are
your login shell).

> > To wipe out duplicates from $PATH you could also issue this command:
> > % typeset -U path
> 
> That does exactly what I expected. Thank you!
[...]

It would make more sense not to introduce duplicates in the
first place, that is to define PATH only once.

-- 
Stéphane

Re: Weird behaviour with exporting PATH

[Stephane Chazelas]

On Sun, Nov 05, 2006 at 01:12:08PM +0100, Frank Terbeck wrote:
> Stephan Windmüller <windy@white-hawk.de>:
> > On Sun, 05. Nov 2006, Stephane Chazelas wrote:
> > 
> > > PATH should be defined in your .profile as it's a setting for your
> > > session, not for your shell only.
> > 
> > This file is not processed on my system. Do I have to source it
> > manually?
> 
> Stephane probably meant '.zprofile', see
> <http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_4.html#SEC17>.
> To wipe out duplicates from $PATH you could also issue this command:
> % typeset -U path

Actually, I thought .profile was read if .zprofile was not
there.

I would suggest to do a

ln -s .profile ~/.zprofile

and keep the syntax of .profile portable so that your session
settings are preserved ifever you decide to change your login
shell to another Bourne like shell.

> [...]
> > > Adding:
> > > bindkey -e 
> > > to your ~/.zshrc should force the emacs mode.
> > 
> > Thank you, that helped. But is there a "vim"-mode instead of vi? I did
> > not find it in the documentation.
> 
> Nope, there is no 'vim' Mode.
> See <http://zsh.dotsrc.org/Doc/Release/zsh_17.html#SEC92>.
[...]

It should be noted that zsh doesn't call vi nor any shared
library common to vi. The vi mode is a vi-like mode, it doesn't
implement the full vi interface only a subset of the insert and
command mode (no ex mode) with additions.

Given that vim is a superset of vi, zsh vi-mode could also be
called vim-mode, as it also implements a subset of the vim
interface.

And if there are features from vim you are missing in zsh vi
mode, it's quite easy to extend it.

For instance, if the <End> key doesn't work for you, you can
probably do something like:

bindkey $terminfo[kend]  end-of-line

(if it worked for you in emacs mode, it's probably that you have
that line (or similar) already in one of your startup files, but
that it was applied only to the emacs keymap).

-- 
Stéphane