Z shell
| Z shell | |
|---|---|
Screenshot of a Zsh session | |
| Original author(s) | Paul Falstad |
| Developer(s) | Peter Stephenson, et al. |
| Initial release | 1990 |
| Stable release | 5.9
/ 14 May 2022 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Unix shell |
| License | MIT-Modern-Variant |
| Website | zsh.org |
The Z shell (Zsh) is a Unix shell that can be used as an interactive login shell and as a command interpreter for shell scripting. Zsh is an extended Bourne shell with many improvements, including some features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh.
Zsh was created by Paul Falstad in 1990 while he was a student at Princeton University. It combines features from both ksh and tcsh, offering functionality such as programmable command-line completion, extended file globbing, improved variable/array handling, and themeable prompts.
Zsh is available for Microsoft Windows as part of the UnxUtils collection and has been adopted as the default shell for macOS and Kali Linux. The "Oh My Zsh" user community website provides a platform for third-party plug-ins and themes, featuring a large and active contributor base.