Installing Homebrew (OSX only)

Homebrew is a package manager for OSX (much like apt-get on Ubuntu.)

With homebrew, installing new packages is as simple as

$ brew install vim # install a good text editor
$ brew install emacs # install a good operating system

Follow the simple directions at http://brew.sh to install it.

zsh

zsh is a replacement for bash, the terminal shell used by default on most operating systems (and the one you probably use on your Mac)

It has a ton of nifty features to make your life way easier(and you can make it look nice)

Installing zsh (cont.)

OSX already comes with a pretty new version of zsh It's good enough for now, though you'rewelcome to install the newest version from Homebrew

UPDATE: I recommend sticking with the OSX version of zsh for now–the new one has a few incompatibilities.

oh-my-zsh

oh-my-zsh is a configuration framework for zsh that bundles a bunch of useful plugins, themes, and aliases.

Or, as the author describes it:

oh-my-zsh Installation

To install oh-my-zsh, go to ohmyz.sh and run the single-line install script, which should guide you through the installation process.

curl -L http://install.ohmyz.sh | sh

zsh will automatically be set as your default shell.

Autojump

Autojump is a faster way to navigate your filesystem. It works by maintaining a database of the directories you use the most from the command line.

Autojump Installation

We can use homebrew here:

$ brew install autojump

No more dealing with ./configure or Makefiles!

Configuration

zsh stores its configuration in ~/.zshrc

Open this file with a text editor, and we'll make a few changes.

zsh Configuration

# ~/.zshrc
# I've skipped less relevant lines, and just included the ones of interest
# * * *
ZSH_THEME="robbyrussell" # used to set the theme. Check out http://zshthem.es for more
export CLICOLOR=1 # make sure every program we run knows we like color
# * * *
# now the important part: plugins
plugins=(brew gitfast osx sudo autojump colored-man-pages)
# these are just my recommendations--we'll see what these do soon
                        

Playing Around With zsh

I've made a small repository with a somewhat convoluted directory structure for our usage. Download it here: https://github.com/gautamg795/zsh_demo It has a directory structure as follows:

zsh_demo
├── data
│   ├── africa
│   │   ├── kenya
│   │   │   ├── literacy.txt
│   │   │   ├── income.txt
│   │   │   └── population.txt
│   │   └── ...
│   ├── asia
│   │   ├── ...
│   └── europe
│       ├── ...
└── data
    ├── africa
    │   ├── kenya
    │   │   ├── literacy_index.txt
    │   │   ├── median_income.txt
    │   │   └── population_by_province.txt
    │   └── ...
    ├── ...
                        

Globbing

A glob is a short expression (like a wildcard, in regex) used to select groups of files

Try the following examples:

ls zsh_demo/**/*.txt # <= this is a glob
# list every file directly below the zsh_demo folder
ls zsh_demo

# list every file in the folders directly below the zsh_demo folder
ls zsh_demo/*

# list every file in every folder two levels below the zsh_demo folder
ls zsh_demo/*/*

# list every file anywhere below the zsh_demo folder
ls zsh_demo/**/*

# list every file that ends in .txt in every folder at any level below the zsh_demo folder
ls zsh_demo/**/*.txt
                        

Pressing tab expands the glob in place, so you can preview it before running the command

Advanced Globbing

Globbing can expand a lot more than just asterisks:

# list text files that end in a number from 1 to 10
ls -l zsh_demo/**/*<1-10>.txt

# list text files that start with the letter a
ls -l zsh_demo/**/[a]*.txt

# list text files that start with either me or po
ls -l zsh_demo/**/(me|po)*.txt

# list text files that don't start with a l or p
ls -l zsh_demo/**/[^lp]*.txt
                        

zsh supports globbing far more advanced than this, but this will get us pretty far.

Magical Tab Completions

We've all used tab completion to help fill in long filenames... but zsh takes it to the next level.

Directory/Filename Completion

Maybe you wanted to navigate to ./zsh_demo/data/asia/laos

You can type an abbreviated path, then just hit tab ⇥:$ cd z/da/as/la ⇥ will expand to$ cd zsh_demo/data/asia/laos

You can even autocomplete in the middle of a filename, so $ cd demo ⇥ will still expand to $ cd zsh_demo(This is huge!)

More Directory Completion

zsh also keeps track of your directory stack--the order you changed directories.

Following your cd command with a dash, then pressing ⇥ will allow you to go back to previous directories, in order:

Command Flag Completion

Do you remember the flags for tar? grep? Me neither. And who wants to look at the man page every time?

zsh has you covered! Type the command and a '-' to start the flag, then press ⇥:

oh-my-zsh Plugins

oh-my-zsh has a massive repository of plugins (listed on the GitHub repo) Earlier, when editing the .zshrc file, we enabled a few:

brew

Adds autocompletion to Homebrew's command line utility. Nothing too fancy.

colored-man-pages

Adds some color to your man pages--it just looks nice

sudo

If you forgot to add sudo to your previous command, press the Esc key twice to bring back the previous command, with sudo prepended.

osx

Integrates your terminal with OSX with the following commands

gitfast

Adds useful info about git repositories to your terminal (and it's fast)

Adds completions and shortcuts for practically every git command

autojump

This is the cool one. Enables autojump, which allows for intelligent directory jumping. (See next slide for more details)

History

You've probably used the arrow keys to navigate your history.

It works but...what if the command was typed a long time ago? What if you can't remember the command, but you remember what file it ran on?

Contextual History

Maybe you want to re-run an ssh command you ran a while back— but running through your entire history will take too long.

Instead, you can start typing ssh, then press up ↑ as usual to scroll only through history starting with ssh

History Searching

You can press CTRL-R to start a search through your history. Start typing, then press enter to select the displayed command, or continue pressing CTRL-R to search further. If you accidentally skip your target, you can press CTRL-S to go back.

It's hard to get in the habit of using search as opposed to always pressing ↑, but you'll be able to work much faster.