Re: New user questions

[Friedrich Dominicus <Friedrich.Dominicus@inka.de>]

Andrew Morton wrote:
> 

many questions. Let's see.
> 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.

Now you know Shells, so you should first spend some time reading zsh
docs

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

TAB and following options should do the job
setopt automenu autolist should help too

It's even better than just seeing what is there just type TAB again and
one after the other possible extension is used.

man zshopt

and you should check the compctl or the like for cd it might look like:
compctl -g '*(-/)' cd rmdir

which means that you want after a cd just directories as expansion.
> 
> 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

sudo !!$

> 
> 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

CTRL+R  (if you use emacs-bindings)




> 
> 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?

sure use s.th like
setopt pushdtohome pushdminus pushdsilent autopushd


check zshoptions
> 
> 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

echo !!(number)

in you example
echo !!1 TAB expands to echo echo aaa
> 
> forward-kill-line
> -----------------
> 
> Is there a widget which deletes from the cursor to the end of line?

CTRL+k
or kill-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.

guess zsh makes this automatically. But don't know
> 
> 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.

ctrl+l


Regards
Friedrich