Provided by: fish-common_4.0.2-1_all 
WHERE TO GO?
If this is your first time using fish, see the tutorial.
If you are already familiar with other shells like bash and want to see the scripting differences, see
Fish For Bash Users.
For an overview of fish's scripting language, see The Fish Language. If it would be useful in a script
file, it's here.
For information on using fish interactively, see Interactive use. If it's about key presses, syntax
highlighting or anything else that needs an interactive terminal session, look here.
If you need to install fish first, read on, the rest of this document will tell you how to get, install
and configure fish.
INSTALLATION
This section describes how to install, uninstall, start, and exit fish. It also explains how to make fish
the default shell.
Installation
Up-to-date instructions for installing the latest version of fish are on the fish homepage
<https://fishshell.com/>.
To install the development version of fish, see the instructions on the project's GitHub page
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell>.
Starting and Exiting
Once fish has been installed, open a terminal. If fish is not the default shell:
• Type fish to start a shell:
> fish
• Type exit to end the session:
> exit
Default Shell
There are multiple ways to switch to fish (or any other shell) as your default.
The simplest method is to set your terminal emulator (eg GNOME Terminal, Apple's Terminal.app, or
Konsole) to start fish directly. See its configuration and set the program to start to
/usr/local/bin/fish (if that's where fish is installed - substitute another location as appropriate).
Alternatively, you can set fish as your login shell so that it will be started by all terminal logins,
including SSH.
WARNING:
Setting fish as your login shell may cause issues, such as an incorrect PATH. Some operating systems,
including a number of Linux distributions, require the login shell to be Bourne-compatible and to read
configuration from /etc/profile. fish may not be suitable as a login shell on these systems.
To change your login shell to fish:
1. Add the shell to /etc/shells with:
> echo /usr/local/bin/fish | sudo tee -a /etc/shells
2. Change your default shell with:
> chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish
Again, substitute the path to fish for /usr/local/bin/fish - see command -s fish inside fish. To change
it back to another shell, just substitute /usr/local/bin/fish with /bin/bash, /bin/tcsh or /bin/zsh as
appropriate in the steps above.
Uninstalling
For uninstalling fish: see FAQ: Uninstalling fish.
Shebang Line
Because shell scripts are written in many different languages, they need to carry information about which
interpreter should be used to execute them. For this, they are expected to have a first line, the shebang
line, which names the interpreter executable.
A script written in bash would need a first line like this:
#!/bin/bash
When the shell tells the kernel to execute the file, it will use the interpreter /bin/bash.
For a script written in another language, just replace /bin/bash with the interpreter for that language.
For example: /usr/bin/python for a python script, or /usr/local/bin/fish for a fish script, if that is
where you have them installed.
If you want to share your script with others, you might want to use env to allow for the interpreter to
be installed in other locations. For example:
#!/usr/bin/env fish
echo Hello from fish $version
This will call env, which then goes through PATH to find a program called "fish". This makes it work,
whether fish is installed in (for example) /usr/local/bin/fish, /usr/bin/fish, or ~/.local/bin/fish, as
long as that directory is in PATH.
The shebang line is only used when scripts are executed without specifying the interpreter. For functions
inside fish or when executing a script with fish /path/to/script, a shebang is not required (but it
doesn't hurt!).
When executing files without an interpreter, fish, like other shells, tries your system shell, typically
/bin/sh. This is needed because some scripts are shipped without a shebang line.
CONFIGURATION
To store configuration write it to a file called ~/.config/fish/config.fish.
.fish scripts in ~/.config/fish/conf.d/ are also automatically executed before config.fish.
These files are read on the startup of every shell, whether interactive and/or if they're login shells.
Use status --is-interactive and status --is-login to do things only in interactive/login shells,
respectively.
This is the short version; for a full explanation, like for sysadmins or integration for developers of
other software, see Configuration files.
If you want to see what you changed over fish's defaults, see fish_delta.
Examples:
To add ~/linux/bin to PATH variable when using a login shell, add this to ~/.config/fish/config.fish
file:
if status --is-login
set -gx PATH $PATH ~/linux/bin
end
This is just an example; using fish_add_path e.g. fish_add_path ~/linux/bin which only adds the path if
it isn't included yet is easier.
To run commands on exit, use an event handler that is triggered by the exit of the shell:
function on_exit --on-event fish_exit
echo fish is now exiting
end
RESOURCES
• The GitHub page <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/>
• The official Gitter channel <https://gitter.im/fish-shell/fish-shell>
• The official mailing list at fish-users@lists.sourceforge.net
<https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fish-users>
If you have an improvement for fish, you can submit it via the GitHub page.
OTHER HELP PAGES
Frequently asked questions
What is the equivalent to this thing from bash (or other shells)?
See Fish for bash users
How do I set or clear an environment variable?
Use the set command:
set -x key value # typically set -gx key value
set -e key
Since fish 3.1 you can set an environment variable for just one command using the key=value some command
syntax, like in other shells. The two lines below behave identically - unlike other shells, fish will
output value both times:
key=value echo $key
begin; set -lx key value; echo $key; end
Note that "exported" is not a scope, but an additional bit of state. A variable can be global and
exported or local and exported or even universal and exported. Typically it makes sense to make an
exported variable global.
How do I check whether a variable is defined?
Use set -q var. For example, if set -q var; echo variable defined; end. To check multiple variables you
can combine with and and or like so:
if set -q var1; or set -q var2
echo either variable defined
end
Keep in mind that a defined variable could also be empty, either by having no elements (if set like set
var) or only empty elements (if set like set var ""). Read on for how to deal with those.
How do I check whether a variable is not empty?
Use string length -q -- $var. For example, if string length -q -- $var; echo not empty; end. Note that
string length will interpret a list of multiple variables as a disjunction (meaning any/or):
if string length -q -- $var1 $var2 $var3
echo at least one of these variables is not empty
end
Alternatively, use test -n "$var", but remember that the variable must be double-quoted. For example, if
test -n "$var"; echo not empty; end. The test command provides its own and (-a) and or (-o):
if test -n "$var1" -o -n "$var2" -o -n "$var3"
echo at least one of these variables is not empty
end
If you want to know if a variable has no elements, use set -q var[1].
Why doesn't set -Ux (exported universal variables) seem to work?
A global variable of the same name already exists.
Environment variables such as EDITOR or TZ can be set universally using set -Ux. However, if there is an
environment variable already set before fish starts (such as by login scripts or system administrators),
it is imported into fish as a global variable. The variable scopes are searched from the "inside out",
which means that local variables are checked first, followed by global variables, and finally universal
variables.
This means that the global value takes precedence over the universal value.
To avoid this problem, consider changing the setting which fish inherits. If this is not possible, add a
statement to your configuration file (usually ~/.config/fish/config.fish):
set -gx EDITOR vim
How do I run a command every login? What's fish's equivalent to .bashrc or .profile?
Edit the file ~/.config/fish/config.fish [1], creating it if it does not exist (Note the leading period).
Unlike .bashrc and .profile, this file is always read, even in non-interactive or login shells.
To do something only in interactive shells, check status is-interactive like:
if status is-interactive
# use the coolbeans theme
fish_config theme choose coolbeans
end
[1] The "~/.config" part of this can be set via $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, that's just the default.
How do I set my prompt?
The prompt is the output of the fish_prompt function. Put it in
~/.config/fish/functions/fish_prompt.fish. For example, a simple prompt is:
function fish_prompt
set_color $fish_color_cwd
echo -n (prompt_pwd)
set_color normal
echo -n ' > '
end
You can also use the Web configuration tool, fish_config, to preview and choose from a gallery of sample
prompts.
Or you can use fish_config from the commandline:
> fish_config prompt show
# displays all the prompts fish ships with
> fish_config prompt choose disco
# loads the disco prompt in the current shell
> fish_config prompt save
# makes the change permanent
If you want to modify your existing prompt, you can use funced and funcsave like:
>_ funced fish_prompt
# This opens up your editor (set in $EDITOR).
# Modify the function,
# save the file and repeat to your liking.
# Once you are happy with it:
>_ funcsave fish_prompt
This also applies to fish_right_prompt and fish_mode_prompt.
Why does my prompt show a [I]?
That's the fish_mode_prompt. It is displayed by default when you've activated vi mode using
fish_vi_key_bindings.
If you haven't activated vi mode on purpose, you might have installed a third-party theme or plugin that
does it.
If you want to change or disable this display, modify the fish_mode_prompt function, for instance via
funced.
How do I customize my syntax highlighting colors?
Use the web configuration tool, fish_config, or alter the fish_color family of environment variables.
You can also use fish_config on the commandline, like:
> fish_config theme show
# to demonstrate all the colorschemes
> fish_config theme choose coolbeans
# to load the "coolbeans" theme
> fish_config theme save
# to make the change permanent
How do I change the greeting message?
Change the value of the variable fish_greeting or create a fish_greeting function. For example, to remove
the greeting use:
set -U fish_greeting
Or if you prefer not to use a universal variable, use:
set -g fish_greeting
in config.fish.
How do I run a command from history?
Type some part of the command, and then hit the up (↑) or down (↓) arrow keys to navigate through history
matches, or press ctrl-r to open the history in a searchable pager. In this pager you can press ctrl-r or
ctrl-s to move to older or younger history respectively.
Additional default key bindings include ctrl-p (up) and ctrl-n (down). See Searchable command history for
more information.
Why doesn't history substitution ("!$" etc.) work?
Because history substitution is an awkward interface that was invented before interactive line editing
was even possible. Instead of adding this pseudo-syntax, fish opts for nice history searching and recall
features. Switching requires a small change of habits: if you want to modify an old line/word, first
recall it, then edit.
As a special case, most of the time history substitution is used as sudo !!. In that case just press
alt-s, and it will recall your last commandline with sudo prefixed (or toggle a sudo prefix on the
current commandline if there is anything).
In general, fish's history recall works like this:
• Like other shells, the Up arrow, up recalls whole lines, starting from the last executed line. So
instead of typing !!, you would just hit the up-arrow.
• If the line you want is far back in the history, type any part of the line and then press Up one or
more times. This will filter the recalled lines to ones that include this text, and you will get to
the line you want much faster. This replaces "!vi", "!?bar.c" and the like. If you want to see more
context, you can press ctrl-r to open the history in the pager.
• alt-up recalls individual arguments, starting from the last argument in the last executed line. This
can be used instead of "!$".
See documentation for more details about line editing in fish.
That being said, you can use Abbreviations to implement history substitution. Here's just !!:
function last_history_item; echo $history[1]; end
abbr -a !! --position anywhere --function last_history_item
Run this and !! will be replaced with the last history entry, anywhere on the commandline. Put it into
config.fish to keep it.
How do I run a subcommand? The backtick doesn't work!
fish uses parentheses for subcommands. For example:
for i in (ls)
echo $i
end
It also supports the familiar $() syntax, even in quotes. Backticks are not supported because they are
discouraged even in POSIX shells. They nest poorly and are hard to tell from single quotes ('').
My command (pkg-config) gives its output as a single long string?
Unlike other shells, fish splits command substitutions only on newlines, not spaces or tabs or the
characters in $IFS.
That means if you run
count (printf '%s ' a b c)
It will print 1, because the "a b c " is used in one piece. But if you do
count (printf '%s\n' a b c)
it will print 3, because it gave count the arguments "a", "b" and "c" separately.
In the overwhelming majority of cases, splitting on spaces is unwanted, so this is an improvement. This
is why you hear about problems with filenames with spaces, after all.
However sometimes, especially with pkg-config and related tools, splitting on spaces is needed.
In these cases use string split -n " " like:
g++ example_01.cpp (pkg-config --cflags --libs gtk+-2.0 | string split -n " ")
The -n is so empty elements are removed like POSIX shells would do.
How do I get the exit status of a command?
Use the $status variable. This replaces the $? variable used in other shells.
somecommand
if test $status -eq 7
echo "That's my lucky number!"
end
If you are just interested in success or failure, you can run the command directly as the if-condition:
if somecommand
echo "Command succeeded"
else
echo "Command failed"
end
Or if you just want to do one command in case the first succeeded or failed, use and or or:
somecommand
or someothercommand
See the Conditions and the documentation for test and if for more information.
My command prints "No matches for wildcard" but works in bash
In short: quote or escape the wildcard:
scp user@ip:/dir/"string-*"
When fish sees an unquoted *, it performs wildcard expansion. That means it tries to match filenames to
the given string.
If the wildcard doesn't match any files, fish prints an error instead of running the command:
> echo *this*does*not*exist
fish: No matches for wildcard '*this*does*not*exist'. See `help expand`.
echo *this*does*not*exist
^
Now, bash also tries to match files in this case, but when it doesn't find a match, it passes along the
literal wildcard string instead.
That means that commands like the above
scp user@ip:/dir/string-*
or
apt install postgres-*
appear to work, because most of the time the string doesn't match and so it passes along the string-*,
which is then interpreted by the receiving program.
But it also means that these commands can stop working at any moment once a matching file is encountered
(because it has been created or the command is executed in a different working directory), and to deal
with that bash needs workarounds like
for f in ./*.mpg; do
# We need to test if the file really exists because
# the wildcard might have failed to match.
test -f "$f" || continue
mympgviewer "$f"
done
(from http://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/004)
For these reasons, fish does not do this, and instead expects asterisks to be quoted or escaped if they
aren't supposed to be expanded.
This is similar to bash's "failglob" option.
Why won't SSH/SCP/rsync connect properly when fish is my login shell?
This problem may show up as messages like "Received message too long", "open terminal failed: not a
terminal", "Bad packet length", or "Connection refused" with strange output in
ssh_exchange_identification messages in the debug log.
This usually happens because fish reads the user configuration file (~/.config/fish/config.fish) always,
whether it's in an interactive or login or non-interactive or non-login shell.
This simplifies matters, but it also means when config.fish generates output, it will do that even in
non-interactive shells like the one ssh/scp/rsync start when they connect.
Anything in config.fish that produces output should be guarded with status is-interactive (or status
is-login if you prefer):
if status is-interactive
...
end
The same applies for example when you start tmux in config.fish without guards, which will cause a
message like sessions should be nested with care, unset $TMUX to force.
I'm getting weird graphical glitches (a staircase effect, ghost characters, cursor in the wrong
position,...)?
In a terminal, the application running inside it and the terminal itself need to agree on the width of
characters in order to handle cursor movement.
This is more important to fish than other shells because features like syntax highlighting and
autosuggestions are implemented by moving the cursor.
Sometimes, there is disagreement on the width. There are numerous causes and fixes for this:
• It is possible the character is simply too new for your system to know - in this case you need to
refrain from using it.
• Fish or your terminal might not know about the character or handle it wrong - in this case fish or your
terminal needs to be fixed, or you need to update to a fixed version.
• The character has an "ambiguous" width and fish thinks that means a width of X while your terminal
thinks it's Y. In this case you either need to change your terminal's configuration or set
$fish_ambiguous_width to the correct value.
• The character is an emoji and the host system only supports Unicode 8, while you are running the
terminal on a system that uses Unicode >= 9. In this case set $fish_emoji_width to 2.
This also means that a few things are unsupportable:
• Non-monospace fonts - there is no way for fish to figure out what width a specific character has as it
has no influence on the terminal's font rendering.
• Different widths for multiple ambiguous width characters - there is no way for fish to know which width
you assign to each character.
Uninstalling fish
If you want to uninstall fish, first make sure fish is not set as your shell. Run chsh -s /bin/bash if
you are not sure.
If you installed it with a package manager, just use that package manager's uninstall function. If you
built fish yourself, assuming you installed it to /usr/local, do this:
rm -Rf /usr/local/etc/fish /usr/local/share/fish ~/.config/fish
rm /usr/local/share/man/man1/fish*.1
cd /usr/local/bin
rm -f fish fish_indent
Interactive use
Fish prides itself on being really nice to use interactively. That's down to a few features we'll explain
in the next few sections.
Fish is used by giving commands in the fish language, see The Fish Language for information on that.
Help
Fish has an extensive help system. Use the help command to obtain help on a specific subject or command.
For instance, writing help syntax displays the syntax section of this documentation.
Fish also has man pages for its commands, and translates the help pages to man pages. For example, man
set will show the documentation for set as a man page.
Help on a specific builtin can also be obtained with the -h parameter. For instance, to obtain help on
the fg builtin, either type fg -h or help fg.
The main page can be viewed via help index (or just help) or man fish-doc. The tutorial can be viewed
with help tutorial or man fish-tutorial.
Autosuggestions
fish suggests commands as you type, based on command history, completions, and valid file paths. As you
type commands, you will see a suggestion offered after the cursor, in a muted gray color (which can be
changed with the fish_color_autosuggestion variable).
To accept the autosuggestion (replacing the command line contents), press right (→) or ctrl-f. To accept
the first suggested word, press alt-right (→) or alt-f. If the autosuggestion is not what you want, just
ignore it: it won't execute unless you accept it.
Autosuggestions are a powerful way to quickly summon frequently entered commands, by typing the first few
characters. They are also an efficient technique for navigating through directory hierarchies.
If you don't like autosuggestions, you can disable them by setting $fish_autosuggestion_enabled to 0:
set -g fish_autosuggestion_enabled 0
Tab Completion
Tab completion is a time saving feature of any modern shell. When you type tab, fish tries to guess the
rest of the word under the cursor. If it finds just one possibility, it inserts it. If it finds more, it
inserts the longest unambiguous part and then opens a menu (the "pager") that you can navigate to find
what you're looking for.
The pager can be navigated with the arrow keys, pageup / pagedown, tab or shift-tab. Pressing ctrl-s (the
pager-toggle-search binding - / in vi mode) opens up a search menu that you can use to filter the list.
Fish provides some general purpose completions, like for commands, variable names, usernames or files.
It also provides a large number of program specific scripted completions. Most of these completions are
simple options like the -l option for ls, but a lot are more advanced. For example:
• man and whatis show the installed manual pages as completions.
• make uses targets in the Makefile in the current directory as completions.
• mount uses mount points specified in fstab as completions.
• apt, rpm and yum show installed or installable packages
You can also write your own completions or install some you got from someone else. For that, see Writing
your own completions.
Completion scripts are loaded on demand, just like functions are. The difference is the
$fish_complete_path list is used instead of $fish_function_path. Typically you can drop new completions
in ~/.config/fish/completions/name-of-command.fish and fish will find them automatically.
Syntax highlighting
Fish interprets the command line as it is typed and uses syntax highlighting to provide feedback. The
most important feedback is the detection of potential errors. By default, errors are marked red.
Detected errors include:
• Non-existing commands.
• Reading from or appending to a non-existing file.
• Incorrect use of output redirects
• Mismatched parenthesis
To customize the syntax highlighting, you can set the environment variables listed in the Variables for
changing highlighting colors section.
Fish also provides pre-made color themes you can pick with fish_config. Running just fish_config opens a
browser interface, or you can use fish_config theme in the terminal.
For example, to disable nearly all coloring:
fish_config theme choose None
Or, to see all themes, right in your terminal:
fish_config theme show
Syntax highlighting variables
The colors used by fish for syntax highlighting can be configured by changing the values of various
variables. The value of these variables can be one of the colors accepted by the set_color command. The
modifier switches accepted by set_color like --bold, --dim, --italics, --reverse and --underline are also
accepted.
Example: to make errors highlighted and red, use:
set fish_color_error red --bold
The following variables are available to change the highlighting colors in fish:
┌───────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Variable │ Meaning │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ default color │
│ fish_color_normal │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ commands like echo │
│ fish_color_command │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ keywords like if - this falls back on │
│ fish_color_keyword │ the command color if unset │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ quoted text like "abc" │
│ fish_color_quote │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ IO redirections like >/dev/null │
│ fish_color_redirection │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ process separators like ; and & │
│ fish_color_end │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ syntax errors │
│ fish_color_error │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ ordinary command parameters │
│ fish_color_param │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ parameters that are filenames (if the │
│ fish_color_valid_path │ file exists) │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ options starting with "-", up to the │
│ fish_color_option │ first "--" parameter │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ comments like '# important' │
│ fish_color_comment │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ selected text in vi visual mode │
│ fish_color_selection │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ parameter expansion operators like * │
│ fish_color_operator │ and ~ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ character escapes like \n and \x70 │
│ fish_color_escape │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ autosuggestions (the proposed rest of │
│ fish_color_autosuggestion │ a command) │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the current working directory in the │
│ fish_color_cwd │ default prompt │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the current working directory in the │
│ fish_color_cwd_root │ default prompt for the root user │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the username in the default prompt │
│ fish_color_user │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the hostname in the default prompt │
│ fish_color_host │ │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the hostname in the default prompt │
│ fish_color_host_remote │ for remote sessions (like ssh) │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the last command's nonzero exit code │
│ fish_color_status │ in the default prompt │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the '^C' indicator on a canceled │
│ fish_color_cancel │ command │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ history search matches and selected │
│ fish_color_search_match │ pager items (background only) │
├───────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the current position in the history │
│ fish_color_history_current │ for commands like dirh and cdh │
└───────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘
If a variable isn't set or is empty, fish usually tries $fish_color_normal, except for:
• $fish_color_keyword, where it tries $fish_color_command first.
• $fish_color_option, where it tries $fish_color_param first.
• For $fish_color_valid_path, if that doesn't have a color, but only modifiers, it adds those to the
color that would otherwise be used, like $fish_color_param. But if valid paths have a color, it uses
that and adds in modifiers from the other color.
Pager color variables
fish will sometimes present a list of choices in a table, called the pager.
Example: to set the background of each pager row, use:
set fish_pager_color_background --background=white
To have black text on alternating white and gray backgrounds:
set fish_pager_color_prefix black
set fish_pager_color_completion black
set fish_pager_color_description black
set fish_pager_color_background --background=white
set fish_pager_color_secondary_background --background=brwhite
Variables affecting the pager colors:
┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Variable │ Meaning │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the progress bar at the bottom left │
│ fish_pager_color_progress │ corner │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the background color of a line │
│ fish_pager_color_background │ │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the prefix string, i.e. the string │
│ fish_pager_color_prefix │ that is to be completed │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the completion itself, i.e. the │
│ fish_pager_color_completion │ proposed rest of the string │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ the completion description │
│ fish_pager_color_description │ │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ background of the selected completion │
│ fish_pager_color_selected_background │ │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ prefix of the selected completion │
│ fish_pager_color_selected_prefix │ │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ suffix of the selected completion │
│ fish_pager_color_selected_completion │ │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ description of the selected │
│ fish_pager_color_selected_description │ completion │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ background of every second unselected │
│ fish_pager_color_secondary_background │ completion │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ prefix of every second unselected │
│ fish_pager_color_secondary_prefix │ completion │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ suffix of every second unselected │
│ fish_pager_color_secondary_completion │ completion │
├───────────────────────────────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │ description of every second │
│ fish_pager_color_secondary_description │ unselected completion │
└───────────────────────────────────────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────┘
When the secondary or selected variables aren't set or are empty, the normal variables are used, except
for $fish_pager_color_selected_background, where the background of $fish_color_search_match is tried
first.
Abbreviations
To avoid needless typing, a frequently-run command like git checkout can be abbreviated to gco using the
abbr command.
abbr -a gco git checkout
After entering gco and pressing space or enter, a gco in command position will turn into git checkout in
the command line. If you want to use a literal gco sometimes, use ctrl-space [1].
Abbreviations are a lot more powerful than just replacing literal strings. For example you can make going
up a number of directories easier with this:
function multicd
echo cd (string repeat -n (math (string length -- $argv[1]) - 1) ../)
end
abbr --add dotdot --regex '^\.\.+$' --function multicd
Now, .. transforms to cd ../, while ... turns into cd ../../ and .... expands to cd ../../../.
The advantage over aliases is that you can see the actual command before using it, add to it or change
it, and the actual command will be stored in history.
[1] Any binding that executes the expand-abbr or execute bind function will expand abbreviations. By
default ctrl-space is bound to just inserting a space.
Programmable prompt
When it is fish's turn to ask for input (like after it started or the command ended), it will show a
prompt. Often this looks something like:
you@hostname ~>
This prompt is determined by running the fish_prompt and fish_right_prompt functions.
The output of the former is displayed on the left and the latter's output on the right side of the
terminal. For vi mode, the output of fish_mode_prompt will be prepended on the left.
Fish ships with a few prompts which you can see with fish_config. If you run just fish_config it will
open a web interface [2] where you'll be shown the prompts and can pick which one you want. fish_config
prompt show will show you the prompts right in your terminal.
For example fish_config prompt choose disco will temporarily select the "disco" prompt. If you like it
and decide to keep it, run fish_config prompt save.
You can also change these functions yourself by running funced fish_prompt and funcsave fish_prompt once
you are happy with the result (or fish_right_prompt if you want to change that).
[2] The web interface runs purely locally on your computer and requires python to be installed.
Configurable greeting
When it is started interactively, fish tries to run the fish_greeting function. The default fish_greeting
prints a simple message. You can change its text by changing the $fish_greeting variable, for instance
using a universal variable:
set -U fish_greeting
or you can set it globally in config.fish:
set -g fish_greeting 'Hey, stranger!'
or you can script it by changing the function:
function fish_greeting
random choice "Hello!" "Hi" "G'day" "Howdy"
end
save this in config.fish or a function file. You can also use funced and funcsave to edit it easily.
Programmable title
When using most terminals, it is possible to set the text displayed in the titlebar of the terminal
window. Fish does this by running the fish_title function. It is executed before and after a command and
the output is used as a titlebar message.
The status current-command builtin will always return the name of the job to be put into the foreground
(or fish if control is returning to the shell) when the fish_title function is called. The first argument
will contain the most recently executed foreground command as a string.
The default title shows the hostname if connected via ssh, the currently running command (unless it is
fish) and the current working directory. All of this is shortened to not make the tab too wide.
Examples:
To show the last command and working directory in the title:
function fish_title
# `prompt_pwd` shortens the title. This helps prevent tabs from becoming very wide.
echo $argv[1] (prompt_pwd)
pwd
end
Command line editor
The fish editor features copy and paste, a searchable history and many editor functions that can be bound
to special keyboard shortcuts.
Like bash and other shells, fish includes two sets of keyboard shortcuts (or key bindings): one inspired
by the Emacs text editor, and one by the vi text editor. The default editing mode is Emacs. You can
switch to vi mode by running fish_vi_key_bindings and switch back with fish_default_key_bindings. You can
also make your own key bindings by creating a function and setting the fish_key_bindings variable to its
name. For example:
function fish_hybrid_key_bindings --description \
"Vi-style bindings that inherit emacs-style bindings in all modes"
for mode in default insert visual
fish_default_key_bindings -M $mode
end
fish_vi_key_bindings --no-erase
end
set -g fish_key_bindings fish_hybrid_key_bindings
While the key bindings included with fish include many of the shortcuts popular from the respective text
editors, they are not a complete implementation. They include a shortcut to open the current command line
in your preferred editor (alt-e by default) if you need the full power of your editor.
Shared bindings
Some bindings are common across Emacs and vi mode, because they aren't text editing bindings, or because
what vi/Vim does for a particular key doesn't make sense for a shell.
• tab completes the current token. shift-tab completes the current token and starts the pager's search
mode. tab is the same as ctrl-i.
• left (←) and right (→) move the cursor left or right by one character. If the cursor is already at the
end of the line, and an autosuggestion is available, right (→) accepts the autosuggestion.
• enter executes the current commandline or inserts a newline if it's not complete yet (e.g. a ) or end
is missing).
• alt-enter inserts a newline at the cursor position. This is useful to add a line to a commandline
that's already complete.
• alt-left (←) and alt-right (→) move the cursor one word left or right (to the next space or punctuation
mark), or moves forward/backward in the directory history if the command line is empty. If the cursor
is already at the end of the line, and an autosuggestion is available, alt-right (→) (or alt-f) accepts
the first word in the suggestion.
• ctrl-left (←) and ctrl-right (→) move the cursor one word left or right. These accept one word of the
autosuggestion - the part they'd move over.
• shift-left (←) and shift-right (→) move the cursor one word left or right, without stopping on
punctuation. These accept one big word of the autosuggestion.
• up (↑) and down (↓) (or ctrl-p and ctrl-n for emacs aficionados) search the command history for the
previous/next command containing the string that was specified on the commandline before the search was
started. If the commandline was empty when the search started, all commands match. See the history
section for more information on history searching.
• alt-up (↑) and alt-down (↓) search the command history for the previous/next token containing the token
under the cursor before the search was started. If the commandline was not on a token when the search
started, all tokens match. See the history section for more information on history searching.
• ctrl-c interrupts/kills whatever is running (SIGINT).
• ctrl-d deletes one character to the right of the cursor. If the command line is empty, ctrl-d will exit
fish.
• ctrl-u removes contents from the beginning of line to the cursor (moving it to the killring).
• ctrl-l clears and repaints the screen.
• ctrl-w removes the previous path component (everything up to the previous "/", ":" or "@") (moving it
to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring)).
• ctrl-x copies the current buffer to the system's clipboard, ctrl-v inserts the clipboard contents. (see
fish_clipboard_copy and fish_clipboard_paste)
• alt-d or ctrl-delete moves the next word to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring).
• alt-d lists the directory history if the command line is empty.
• alt-delete moves the next argument to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring).
• shift-delete removes the current history item or autosuggestion from the command history.
• alt-h (or f1) shows the manual page for the current command, if one exists.
• alt-l lists the contents of the current directory, unless the cursor is over a directory argument, in
which case the contents of that directory will be listed.
• alt-o opens the file at the cursor in a pager. If the cursor is in command position and the command is
a script, it will instead open that script in your editor. The editor is chosen from the first
available of the $VISUAL or $EDITOR variables.
• alt-p adds the string &| less; to the end of the job under the cursor. The result is that the output of
the command will be paged.
• alt-w prints a short description of the command under the cursor.
• alt-e edits the current command line in an external editor. The editor is chosen from the first
available of the $VISUAL or $EDITOR variables.
• alt-v Same as alt-e.
• alt-s Prepends sudo to the current commandline. If the commandline is empty, prepend sudo to the last
commandline.
• ctrl-space Inserts a space without expanding an abbreviation. For vi mode, this only applies to
insert-mode.
Emacs mode commands
To enable emacs mode, use fish_default_key_bindings. This is also the default.
• home or ctrl-a moves the cursor to the beginning of the line.
• end or ctrl-e moves to the end of line. If the cursor is already at the end of the line, and an
autosuggestion is available, end or ctrl-e accepts the autosuggestion.
• ctrl-b, ctrl-f move the cursor one character left or right or accept the autosuggestion just like the
left (←) and right (→) shared bindings (which are available as well).
• alt-b, alt-f move the cursor one word left or right, or accept one word of the autosuggestion. If the
command line is empty, moves forward/backward in the directory history instead.
• ctrl-n, ctrl-p move the cursor up/down or through history, like the up and down arrow shared bindings.
• delete or backspace or ctrl-h removes one character forwards or backwards respectively.
• alt-backspace removes one word backwards. If supported by the terminal, ctrl-backspace does the same.
• alt-< moves to the beginning of the commandline, alt-> moves to the end.
• ctrl-k deletes from the cursor to the end of line (moving it to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring)).
• escape and ctrl-g cancel the current operation. Immediately after an unambiguous completion this undoes
it.
• alt-c capitalizes the current word.
• alt-u makes the current word uppercase.
• ctrl-t transposes the last two characters.
• alt-t transposes the last two words.
• ctrl-z, ctrl-_ (ctrl-/ on some terminals) undo the most recent edit of the line.
• alt-/ or ctrl-shift-z reverts the most recent undo.
• ctrl-r opens the history in a pager. This will show history entries matching the search, a few at a
time. Pressing ctrl-r again will search older entries, pressing ctrl-s (that otherwise toggles pager
search) will go to newer entries. The search bar will always be selected.
You can change these key bindings using the bind builtin.
Vi mode commands
Vi mode allows for the use of vi-like commands at the prompt. Initially, insert mode is active. escape
enters command mode. The commands available in command, insert and visual mode are described below. Vi
mode shares some bindings with Emacs mode.
To enable vi mode, use fish_vi_key_bindings. It is also possible to add all Emacs mode bindings to vi
mode by using something like:
function fish_user_key_bindings
# Execute this once per mode that emacs bindings should be used in
fish_default_key_bindings -M insert
# Then execute the vi-bindings so they take precedence when there's a conflict.
# Without --no-erase fish_vi_key_bindings will default to
# resetting all bindings.
# The argument specifies the initial mode (insert, "default" or visual).
fish_vi_key_bindings --no-erase insert
end
When in vi mode, the fish_mode_prompt function will display a mode indicator to the left of the prompt.
To disable this feature, override it with an empty function. To display the mode elsewhere (like in your
right prompt), use the output of the fish_default_mode_prompt function.
When a binding switches the mode, it will repaint the mode-prompt if it exists, and the rest of the
prompt only if it doesn't. So if you want a mode-indicator in your fish_prompt, you need to erase
fish_mode_prompt e.g. by adding an empty file at ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_mode_prompt.fish.
(Bindings that change the mode are supposed to call the repaint-mode bind function, see bind)
The fish_vi_cursor function will be used to change the cursor's shape depending on the mode in supported
terminals. The following snippet can be used to manually configure cursors after enabling vi mode:
# Emulates vim's cursor shape behavior
# Set the normal and visual mode cursors to a block
set fish_cursor_default block
# Set the insert mode cursor to a line
set fish_cursor_insert line
# Set the replace mode cursors to an underscore
set fish_cursor_replace_one underscore
set fish_cursor_replace underscore
# Set the external cursor to a line. The external cursor appears when a command is started.
# The cursor shape takes the value of fish_cursor_default when fish_cursor_external is not specified.
set fish_cursor_external line
# The following variable can be used to configure cursor shape in
# visual mode, but due to fish_cursor_default, is redundant here
set fish_cursor_visual block
Additionally, blink can be added after each of the cursor shape parameters to set a blinking cursor in
the specified shape.
Fish knows the shapes "block", "line" and "underscore", other values will be ignored.
If the cursor shape does not appear to be changing after setting the above variables, it's likely your
terminal emulator does not support the capabilities necessary to do this.
Command mode
Command mode is also known as normal mode.
• h moves the cursor left.
• l moves the cursor right.
• k and j search the command history for the previous/next command containing the string that was
specified on the commandline before the search was started. If the commandline was empty when the
search started, all commands match. See the history section for more information on history searching.
In multi-line commands, they move the cursor up and down respectively.
• i enters insert mode at the current cursor position.
• I enters insert mode at the beginning of the line.
• v enters visual mode at the current cursor position.
• a enters insert mode after the current cursor position.
• A enters insert mode at the end of the line.
• o inserts a new line under the current one and enters insert mode
• O (capital-"o") inserts a new line above the current one and enters insert mode
• 0 (zero) moves the cursor to beginning of line (remaining in command mode).
• d,d deletes the current line and moves it to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring).
• D deletes text after the current cursor position and moves it to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring).
• p pastes text from the Copy and paste (Kill Ring).
• u undoes the most recent edit of the command line.
• ctrl-r redoes the most recent edit.
• [ and ] search the command history for the previous/next token containing the token under the cursor
before the search was started. See the history section for more information on history searching.
• / opens the history in a pager. This will show history entries matching the search, a few at a time.
Pressing it again will search older entries, pressing ctrl-s (that otherwise toggles pager search) will
go to newer entries. The search bar will always be selected.
• backspace moves the cursor left.
• g / G moves the cursor to the beginning/end of the commandline, respectively.
• :,q exits fish.
Insert mode
• escape enters command mode.
• backspace removes one character to the left.
• ctrl-n accepts the autosuggestion.
Visual mode
• left (``←`) and right`(``→`) extend the selection backward/forward by one character.
• h moves the cursor left.
• l moves the cursor right.
• k moves the cursor up.
• j moves the cursor down.
• b and w extend the selection backward/forward by one word.
• d and x move the selection to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring) and enter command mode.
• escape and ctrl-c enter command mode.
• c and s remove the selection and switch to insert mode.
• X moves the entire line to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring), and enters command mode.
• y copies the selection to the Copy and paste (Kill Ring), and enters command mode.
• ~ toggles the case (upper/lower) on the selection, and enters command mode.
• ",*,y copies the selection to the clipboard, and enters command mode.
Custom bindings
In addition to the standard bindings listed here, you can also define your own with bind:
# Just clear the commandline on control-c
bind ctrl-c 'commandline -r ""'
Put bind statements into config.fish or a function called fish_user_key_bindings.
If you change your mind on a binding and want to go back to fish's default, you can simply erase it
again:
bind --erase ctrl-c
Fish remembers its preset bindings and so it will take effect again. This saves you from having to
remember what it was before and add it again yourself.
If you use vi bindings, note that bind will by default bind keys in command mode. To bind something in
insert mode:
bind --mode insert ctrl-c 'commandline -r ""'
Key sequences
To find out the name of a key, you can use fish_key_reader.
> fish_key_reader # Press Alt + right-arrow
Press a key:
bind alt-right 'do something'
Note that the historical way the terminal encodes keys and sends them to the application (fish, in this
case) makes a lot of combinations indistinguishable or unbindable. In the usual encoding, ctrl-i is the
same as the tab key, and shift cannot be detected when ctrl is also pressed.
There are more powerful encoding schemes, and fish tries to tell the terminal to turn them on, but there
are still many terminals that do not support them. When fish_key_reader prints the same sequence for two
different keys, then that is because your terminal sends the same sequence for them, and there isn't
anything fish can do about it. It is our hope that these schemes will become more widespread, making
input more flexible.
In the historical scheme, escape is the same thing as alt in a terminal. To distinguish between pressing
escape and then another key, and pressing alt and that key (or an escape sequence the key sends), fish
waits for a certain time after seeing an escape character. This is configurable via the
fish_escape_delay_ms variable.
If you want to be able to press escape and then a character and have it count as alt+that character, set
it to a higher value, e.g.:
set -g fish_escape_delay_ms 100
Similarly, to disambiguate other keypresses where you've bound a subsequence and a longer sequence, fish
has fish_sequence_key_delay_ms:
# This binds the sequence j,k to switch to normal mode in vi mode.
# If you kept it like that, every time you press "j",
# fish would wait for a "k" or other key to disambiguate
bind -M insert -m default j,k cancel repaint-mode
# After setting this, fish only waits 200ms for the "k",
# or decides to treat the "j" as a separate sequence, inserting it.
set -g fish_sequence_key_delay_ms 200
Copy and paste (Kill Ring)
Fish uses an Emacs-style kill ring for copy and paste functionality. For example, use ctrl-k (kill-line)
to cut from the current cursor position to the end of the line. The string that is cut (a.k.a. killed in
emacs-ese) is inserted into a list of kills, called the kill ring. To paste the latest value from the
kill ring (emacs calls this "yanking") use ctrl-y (the yank input function). After pasting, use alt-y
(yank-pop) to rotate to the previous kill.
Copy and paste from outside are also supported, both via the ctrl-x / ctrl-v bindings (the
fish_clipboard_copy and fish_clipboard_paste functions [3]) and via the terminal's paste function, for
which fish enables "Bracketed Paste Mode", so it can tell a paste from manually entered text. In
addition, when pasting inside single quotes, pasted single quotes and backslashes are automatically
escaped so that the result can be used as a single token simply by closing the quote after. Kill ring
entries are stored in fish_killring variable.
The commands begin-selection and end-selection (unbound by default; used for selection in vi visual mode)
control text selection together with cursor movement commands that extend the current selection. The
variable fish_cursor_selection_mode can be used to configure if that selection should include the
character under the cursor (inclusive) or not (exclusive). The default is exclusive, which works well
with any cursor shape. For vi mode, and particularly for the block or underscore cursor shapes you may
prefer inclusive.
[3] These rely on external tools. Currently xsel, xclip, wl-copy/wl-paste and pbcopy/pbpaste are
supported.
Multiline editing
The fish commandline editor can be used to work on commands that are several lines long. There are three
ways to make a command span more than a single line:
• Pressing the enter key while a block of commands is unclosed, such as when one or more block commands
such as for, begin or if do not have a corresponding end command.
• Pressing alt-enter instead of pressing the enter key.
• By inserting a backslash (\) character before pressing the enter key, escaping the newline.
The fish commandline editor works exactly the same in single line mode and in multiline mode. To move
between lines use the left and right arrow keys and other such keyboard shortcuts.
Searchable command history
After a command has been executed, it is remembered in the history list. Any duplicate history items are
automatically removed. By pressing the up and down keys, you can search forwards and backwards in the
history. If the current command line is not empty when starting a history search, only the commands
containing the string entered into the command line are shown.
By pressing alt-up (↑) and alt-down (↓), a history search is also performed, but instead of searching for
a complete commandline, each commandline is broken into separate elements just like it would be before
execution, and the history is searched for an element matching that under the cursor.
For more complicated searches, you can press ctrl-r to open a pager that allows you to search the
history. It shows a limited number of entries in one page, press ctrl-r [4] again to move to the next
page and ctrl-s [5] to move to the previous page. You can change the text to refine your search.
History searches are case-insensitive unless the search string contains an uppercase character. You can
stop a search to edit your search string by pressing escape or pagedown.
Prefixing the commandline with a space will prevent the entire line from being stored in the history. It
will still be available for recall until the next command is executed, but will not be stored on disk.
This is to allow you to fix misspellings and such.
The command history is stored in the file ~/.local/share/fish/fish_history (or
$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history if that variable is set) by default. However, you can set the
fish_history environment variable to change the name of the history session (resulting in a
<session>_history file); both before starting the shell and while the shell is running.
See the history command for other manipulations.
Examples:
To search for previous entries containing the word 'make', type make in the console and press the up key.
If the commandline reads cd m, place the cursor over the m character and press alt-up (↑) to search for
previously typed words containing 'm'.
[4] Or another binding that triggers the history-pager input function. See bind for a list.
[5] Or another binding that triggers the pager-toggle-search input function.
Private mode
Fish has a private mode, in which command history will not be written to the history file on disk. To
enable it, either set $fish_private_mode to a non-empty value, or launch with fish --private (or fish -P
for short).
If you launch fish with -P, it both hides old history and prevents writing history to disk. This is
useful to avoid leaking personal information (e.g. for screencasts) or when dealing with sensitive
information.
You can query the variable fish_private_mode (if test -n "$fish_private_mode" ...) if you would like to
respect the user's wish for privacy and alter the behavior of your own fish scripts.
Navigating directories
Navigating directories is usually done with the cd command, but fish offers some advanced features as
well.
The current working directory can be displayed with the pwd command, or the $PWD special variable.
Usually your prompt already does this.
Directory history
Fish automatically keeps a trail of the recent visited directories with cd by storing this history in the
dirprev and dirnext variables.
Several commands are provided to interact with this directory history:
• dirh prints the history
• cdh displays a prompt to quickly navigate the history
• prevd moves backward through the history. It is bound to alt-left (←)
• nextd moves forward through the history. It is bound to alt-right (→)
Directory stack
Another set of commands, usually also available in other shells like bash, deal with the directory stack.
Stack handling is not automatic and needs explicit calls of the following commands:
• dirs prints the stack
• pushd adds a directory on top of the stack and makes it the current working directory
• popd removes the directory on top of the stack and changes the current working directory
The fish language
This document is a comprehensive overview of fish's scripting language.
For interactive features see Interactive use.
Syntax overview
Shells like fish are used by giving them commands. A command is executed by writing the name of the
command followed by any arguments. For example:
echo hello world
echo command writes its arguments to the screen. In this example the output is hello world.
Everything in fish is done with commands. There are commands for repeating other commands, commands for
assigning variables, commands for treating a group of commands as a single command, etc. All of these
commands follow the same basic syntax.
Every program on your computer can be used as a command in fish. If the program file is located in one of
the PATH directories, you can just type the name of the program to use it. Otherwise the whole filename,
including the directory (like /home/me/code/checkers/checkers or ../checkers) is required.
Here is a list of some useful commands:
• cd: Change the current directory
• ls: List files and directories
• man: Display a manual page - try man ls to get help on your "ls" command, or man mv to get information
about "mv".
• mv: Move (rename) files
• cp: Copy files
• open: Open files with the default application associated with each filetype
• less: Display the contents of files
Commands and arguments are separated by the space character ' '. Every command ends with either a newline
(by pressing the return key) or a semicolon ;. Multiple commands can be written on the same line by
separating them with semicolons.
A switch is a very common special type of argument. Switches almost always start with one or more hyphens
- and alter the way a command operates. For example, the ls command usually lists the names of all files
and directories in the current working directory. By using the -l switch, the behavior of ls is changed
to not only display the filename, but also the size, permissions, owner, and modification time of each
file.
Switches differ between commands and are usually documented on a command's manual page. There are some
switches, however, that are common to most commands. For example, --help will usually display a help
text, --version will usually display the command version, and -i will often turn on interactive prompting
before taking action. Try man your-command-here to get information on your command's switches.
So the basic idea of fish is the same as with other unix shells: It gets a commandline, runs expansions,
and the result is then run as a command.
Terminology
Here we define some of the terms used on this page and throughout the rest of the fish documentation:
• Argument: A parameter given to a command. In echo foo, the "foo" is an argument.
• Builtin: A command that is implemented by the shell. Builtins are so closely tied to the operation of
the shell that it is impossible to implement them as external commands. In echo foo, the "echo" is a
builtin.
• Command: A program that the shell can run, or more specifically an external program that the shell runs
in another process. External commands are provided on your system, as executable files. In echo foo the
"echo" is a builtin command, in command echo foo the "echo" is an external command, provided by a file
like /bin/echo.
• Function: A block of commands that can be called as if they were a single command. By using functions,
it is possible to string together multiple simple commands into one more advanced command.
• Job: A running pipeline or command.
• Pipeline: A set of commands strung together so that the output of one command is the input of the next
command. echo foo | grep foo is a pipeline.
• Redirection: An operation that changes one of the input or output streams associated with a job.
• Switch or Option: A special kind of argument that alters the behavior of a command. A switch almost
always begins with one or two hyphens. In echo -n foo the "-n" is an option.
Quotes
Sometimes you want to give a command an argument that contains characters special to fish, like spaces or
$ or *. To do that, you can use quotes:
rm "my file.txt"
to remove a file called my file.txt instead of trying to remove two files, my and file.txt.
Fish understands two kinds of quotes: Single (') and double ("), and both work slightly differently.
Between single quotes, fish performs no expansions. Between double quotes, fish only performs variable
expansion and command substitution in the $(command). No other kind of expansion (including brace
expansion or parameter expansion) is performed, and escape sequences (for example, \n) are ignored.
Within quotes, whitespace is not used to separate arguments, allowing quoted arguments to contain spaces.
The only meaningful escape sequences in single quotes are \', which escapes a single quote and \\, which
escapes the backslash symbol. The only meaningful escapes in double quotes are \", which escapes a double
quote, \$, which escapes a dollar character, \ followed by a newline, which deletes the backslash and the
newline, and \\, which escapes the backslash symbol.
Single quotes have no special meaning within double quotes and vice versa.
More examples:
grep 'enabled)$' foo.txt
searches for lines ending in enabled) in foo.txt (the $ is special to grep: it matches the end of the
line).
apt install "postgres-*"
installs all packages with a name starting with "postgres-", instead of looking through the current
directory for files named "postgres-something".
Escaping Characters
Some characters cannot be written directly on the command line. For these characters, so-called escape
sequences are provided. These are:
• \a represents the alert character.
• \e represents the escape character.
• \f represents the form feed character.
• \n represents a newline character.
• \r represents the carriage return character.
• \t represents the tab character.
• \v represents the vertical tab character.
• \xHH or \XHH, where HH is a hexadecimal number, represents a byte of data with the specified value. For
example, \x9 is the tab character. If you are using a multibyte encoding, this can be used to enter
invalid strings. Typically fish is run with the ASCII or UTF-8 encoding, so anything up to \X7f is an
ASCII character.
• \ooo, where ooo is an octal number, represents the ASCII character with the specified value. For
example, \011 is the tab character. The highest allowed value is \177.
• \uXXXX, where XXXX is a hexadecimal number, represents the 16-bit Unicode character with the specified
value. For example, \u9 is the tab character.
• \UXXXXXXXX, where XXXXXXXX is a hexadecimal number, represents the 32-bit Unicode character with the
specified value. For example, \U9 is the tab character. The highest allowed value is U10FFFF.
• \cX, where X is a letter of the alphabet, represents the control sequence generated by pressing the
control key and the specified letter. For example, \ci is the tab character
Some characters have special meaning to the shell. For example, an apostrophe ' disables expansion (see
Quotes). To tell the shell to treat these characters literally, escape them with a backslash. For
example, the command:
echo \'hello world\'
outputs 'hello world' (including the apostrophes), while the command:
echo 'hello world'
outputs hello world (without the apostrophes). In the former case the shell treats the apostrophes as
literal ' characters, while in the latter case it treats them as special expansion modifiers.
The special characters and their escape sequences are:
• \ (backslash space) escapes the space character. This keeps the shell from splitting arguments on the
escaped space.
• \$ escapes the dollar character.
• \\ escapes the backslash character.
• \* escapes the star character.
• \? escapes the question mark character (this is not necessary if the qmark-noglob feature flag is
enabled).
• \~ escapes the tilde character.
• \# escapes the hash character.
• \( escapes the left parenthesis character.
• \) escapes the right parenthesis character.
• \{ escapes the left curly bracket character.
• \} escapes the right curly bracket character.
• \[ escapes the left bracket character.
• \] escapes the right bracket character.
• \< escapes the less than character.
• \> escapes the more than character.
• \& escapes the ampersand character.
• \| escapes the vertical bar character.
• \; escapes the semicolon character.
• \" escapes the quote character.
• \' escapes the apostrophe character.
As a special case, \ immediately followed by a literal new line is a "continuation" and tells fish to
ignore the line break and resume input at the start of the next line (without introducing any whitespace
or terminating a token).
Input/Output Redirection
Most programs use three input/output (I/O) streams:
• Standard input (stdin) for reading. Defaults to reading from the keyboard.
• Standard output (stdout) for writing output. Defaults to writing to the screen.
• Standard error (stderr) for writing errors and warnings. Defaults to writing to the screen.
Each stream has a number called the file descriptor (FD): 0 for stdin, 1 for stdout, and 2 for stderr.
The destination of a stream can be changed using something called redirection. For example, echo hello >
output.txt, redirects the standard output of the echo command to a text file.
• To read standard input from a file, use <SOURCE_FILE.
• To read standard input from a file or /dev/null if it can't be read, use <?SOURCE_FILE.
• To write standard output to a file, use >DESTINATION.
• To write standard error to a file, use 2>DESTINATION. [1]
• To append standard output to a file, use >>DESTINATION_FILE.
• To append standard error to a file, use 2>>DESTINATION_FILE.
• To not overwrite ("clobber") an existing file, use >?DESTINATION or 2>?DESTINATION. This is known as
the "noclobber" redirection.
DESTINATION can be one of the following:
• A filename to write the output to. Often >/dev/null to silence output by writing it to the special
"sinkhole" file.
• An ampersand (&) followed by the number of another file descriptor like &2 for standard error. The
output will be written to the destination descriptor.
• An ampersand followed by a minus sign (&-). The file descriptor will be closed. Note: This may cause
the program to fail because its writes will be unsuccessful.
As a convenience, the redirection &> can be used to direct both stdout and stderr to the same
destination. For example, echo hello &> all_output.txt redirects both stdout and stderr to the file
all_output.txt. This is equivalent to echo hello > all_output.txt 2>&1.
Any arbitrary file descriptor can be used in a redirection by prefixing the redirection with the FD
number.
• To redirect the input of descriptor N, use N<DESTINATION.
• To redirect the output of descriptor N, use N>DESTINATION.
• To append the output of descriptor N to a file, use N>>DESTINATION_FILE.
File descriptors cannot be used with a <? input redirection, only a regular < one.
For example:
# Write `foo`'s standard error (file descriptor 2)
# to a file called "output.stderr":
foo 2> output.stderr
# if $num doesn't contain a number,
# this test will be false and print an error,
# so by ignoring the error we can be sure that we're dealing
# with a number in the "if" block:
if test "$num" -gt 2 2>/dev/null
# do things with $num as a number greater than 2
else
# do things if $num is <= 2 or not a number
end
# Save `make`s output in a file:
make &>/log
# Redirections stack and can be used with blocks:
begin
echo stdout
echo stderr >&2 # <- this goes to stderr!
end >/dev/null # ignore stdout, so this prints "stderr"
# print all lines that include "foo" from myfile, or nothing if it doesn't exist.
string match '*foo*' <?myfile
It is an error to redirect a builtin, function, or block to a file descriptor above 2. However this is
supported for external commands.
[1] Previous versions of fish also allowed specifying this as ^DESTINATION, but that made another
character special so it was deprecated and removed. See feature flags.
Piping
Another way to redirect streams is a pipe. A pipe connects streams with each other. Usually the standard
output of one command is connected with the standard input of another. This is done by separating
commands with the pipe character |. For example:
cat foo.txt | head
The command cat foo.txt sends the contents of foo.txt to stdout. This output is provided as input for the
head program, which prints the first 10 lines of its input.
It is possible to pipe a different output file descriptor by prepending its FD number and the output
redirect symbol to the pipe. For example:
make fish 2>| less
will attempt to build fish, and any errors will be shown using the less pager. [2]
As a convenience, the pipe &| redirects both stdout and stderr to the same process. This is different
from bash, which uses |&.
[2] A "pager" here is a program that takes output and "paginates" it. less doesn't just do pages, it
allows arbitrary scrolling (even back!).
Combining pipes and redirections
It is possible to use multiple redirections and a pipe at the same time. In that case, they are read in
this order:
1. First the pipe is set up.
2. Then the redirections are evaluated from left-to-right.
This is important when any redirections reference other file descriptors with the &N syntax. When you say
>&2, that will redirect stdout to where stderr is pointing to at that time.
Consider this helper function:
# Just make a function that prints something to stdout and stderr
function print
echo out
echo err >&2
end
Now let's see a few cases:
# Redirect both stderr and stdout to less
print 2>&1 | less
# or
print &| less
# Show the "out" on stderr, silence the "err"
print >&2 2>/dev/null
# Silence both
print >/dev/null 2>&1
Job control
When you start a job in fish, fish itself will pause, and give control of the terminal to the program
just started. Sometimes, you want to continue using the commandline, and have the job run in the
background. To create a background job, append an & (ampersand) to your command. This will tell fish to
run the job in the background. Background jobs are very useful when running programs that have a
graphical user interface.
Example:
emacs &
will start the emacs text editor in the background. fg can be used to bring it into the foreground again
when needed.
Most programs allow you to suspend the program's execution and return control to fish by pressing ctrl-z
(also referred to as ^Z). Once back at the fish commandline, you can start other programs and do anything
you want. If you then want you can go back to the suspended command by using the fg (foreground) command.
If you instead want to put a suspended job into the background, use the bg command.
To get a listing of all currently started jobs, use the jobs command. These listed jobs can be removed
with the disown command.
At the moment, functions cannot be started in the background. Functions that are stopped and then
restarted in the background using the bg command will not execute correctly.
If the & character is followed by a non-separating character, it is not interpreted as background
operator. Separating characters are whitespace and the characters ;<>&|.
Functions
Functions are programs written in the fish syntax. They group together various commands and their
arguments using a single name.
For example, here's a simple function to list directories:
function ll
ls -l $argv
end
The first line tells fish to define a function by the name of ll, so it can be used by simply writing ll
on the commandline. The second line tells fish that the command ls -l $argv should be called when ll is
invoked. $argv is a list variable, which always contains all arguments sent to the function. In the
example above, these are simply passed on to the ls command. The end on the third line ends the
definition.
Calling this as ll /tmp/ will end up running ls -l /tmp/, which will list the contents of /tmp.
This is a kind of function known as an alias.
Fish's prompt is also defined in a function, called fish_prompt. It is run when the prompt is about to be
displayed and its output forms the prompt:
function fish_prompt
# A simple prompt. Displays the current directory
# (which fish stores in the $PWD variable)
# and then a user symbol - a '►' for a normal user and a '#' for root.
set -l user_char '►'
if fish_is_root_user
set user_char '#'
end
echo (set_color yellow)$PWD (set_color purple)$user_char
end
To edit a function, you can use funced, and to save a function funcsave. This will store it in a function
file that fish will autoload when needed.
The functions builtin can show a function's current definition (and type will also do if given a
function).
For more information on functions, see the documentation for the function builtin.
Defining aliases
One of the most common uses for functions is to slightly alter the behavior of an already existing
command. For example, one might want to redefine the ls command to display colors. The switch for turning
on colors on GNU systems is --color=auto. An alias around ls might look like this:
function ls
command ls --color=auto $argv
end
There are a few important things that need to be noted about aliases:
• Always take care to add the $argv variable to the list of parameters to the wrapped command. This makes
sure that if the user specifies any additional parameters to the function, they are passed on to the
underlying command.
• If the alias has the same name as the aliased command, you need to prefix the call to the program with
command to tell fish that the function should not call itself, but rather a command with the same name.
If you forget to do so, the function would call itself until the end of time. Usually fish is smart
enough to figure this out and will refrain from doing so (which is hopefully in your interest).
To easily create a function of this form, you can use the alias command. Unlike other shells, this just
makes functions - fish has no separate concept of an "alias", we just use the word for a simple wrapping
function like this. alias immediately creates a function. Consider using alias --save or funcsave to save
the created function into an autoload file instead of recreating the alias each time.
For an alternative, try abbreviations. These are words that are expanded while you type, instead of being
actual functions inside the shell.
Autoloading functions
Functions can be defined on the commandline or in a configuration file, but they can also be
automatically loaded. This has some advantages:
• An autoloaded function becomes available automatically to all running shells.
• If the function definition is changed, all running shells will automatically reload the altered
version, after a while.
• Startup time and memory usage is improved, etc.
When fish needs to load a function, it searches through any directories in the list variable
$fish_function_path for a file with a name consisting of the name of the function plus the suffix .fish
and loads the first it finds.
For example if you try to execute something called banana, fish will go through all directories in
$fish_function_path looking for a file called banana.fish and load the first one it finds.
By default $fish_function_path contains the following:
• A directory for users to keep their own functions, usually ~/.config/fish/functions (controlled by the
XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable).
• A directory for functions for all users on the system, usually /etc/fish/functions (really
$__fish_sysconfdir/functions).
• Directories for other software to put their own functions. These are in the directories under
$__fish_user_data_dir (usually ~/.local/share/fish, controlled by the XDG_DATA_HOME environment
variable) and in the XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable, in a subdirectory called
fish/vendor_functions.d. The default value for XDG_DATA_DIRS is usually
/usr/share/fish/vendor_functions.d and /usr/local/share/fish/vendor_functions.d.
• The functions shipped with fish, usually installed in /usr/share/fish/functions (really
$__fish_data_dir/functions).
If you are unsure, your functions probably belong in ~/.config/fish/functions.
As we've explained, autoload files are loaded by name, so, while you can put multiple functions into one
file, the file will only be loaded automatically once you try to execute the one that shares the name.
Autoloading also won't work for event handlers, since fish cannot know that a function is supposed to be
executed when an event occurs when it hasn't yet loaded the function. See the event handlers section for
more information.
If a file of the right name doesn't define the function, fish will not read other autoload files, instead
it will go on to try builtins and finally commands. This allows masking a function defined later in
$fish_function_path, e.g. if your administrator has put something into /etc/fish/functions that you want
to skip.
If you are developing another program and want to install fish functions for it, install them to the
"vendor" functions directory. As this path varies from system to system, you can use pkgconfig to
discover it with the output of pkg-config --variable functionsdir fish. Your installation system should
support a custom path to override the pkgconfig path, as other distributors may need to alter it easily.
Comments
Anything after a # until the end of the line is a comment. That means it's purely for the reader's
benefit, fish ignores it.
This is useful to explain what and why you are doing something:
function ls
# The function is called ls,
# so we have to explicitly call `command ls` to avoid calling ourselves.
command ls --color=auto $argv
end
There are no multiline comments. If you want to make a comment span multiple lines, simply start each
line with a #.
Comments can also appear after a line like so:
set -gx EDITOR emacs # I don't like vim.
Conditions
Fish has some builtins that let you execute commands only if a specific criterion is met: if, switch, and
and or, and also the familiar &&/|| syntax.
The if statement
The if statement runs a block of commands if the condition was true.
Like other shells, but unlike typical programming languages you might know, the condition here is a
command. Fish runs it, and if it returns a true exit status (that's 0), the if-block is run. For example:
if test -e /etc/os-release
cat /etc/os-release
end
This uses the test command to see if the file /etc/os-release exists. If it does, it runs cat, which
prints it on the screen.
Unlike other shells, the condition command just ends after the first job, there is no then here.
Combiners like and and or extend the condition.
A more complicated example with a command substitution:
if test "$(uname)" = Linux
echo I like penguins
end
Because test can be used for many different tests, it is important to quote variables and command
substitutions. If the $(uname) was not quoted, and uname printed nothing it would run test = Linux, which
is an error.
if can also take else if clauses with additional conditions and an else clause that is executed when
everything else was false:
if test "$number" -gt 10
echo Your number was greater than 10
else if test "$number" -gt 5
echo Your number was greater than 5
else if test "$number" -gt 1
echo Your number was greater than 1
else
echo Your number was smaller or equal to 1
end
The not keyword can be used to invert the status:
# Just see if the file contains the string "fish" anywhere.
# This executes the `grep` command, which searches for a string,
# and if it finds it returns a status of 0.
# The `not` then turns 0 into 1 or anything else into 0.
# The `-q` switch stops it from printing any matches.
if not grep -q fish myanimals
echo "You don't have fish!"
else
echo "You have fish!"
end
Other things commonly used in if-conditions:
• contains - to see if a list contains a specific element (if contains -- /usr/bin $PATH)
• string - to e.g. match strings (if string match -q -- '*-' $arg)
• path - to check if paths of some criteria exist (if path is -rf -- ~/.config/fish/config.fish)
• type - to see if a command, function or builtin exists (if type -q git)
The switch statement
The switch command is used to execute one of possibly many blocks of commands depending on the value of a
string. It can take multiple case blocks that are executed when the string matches. They can take
wildcards. For example:
switch (uname)
case Linux
echo Hi Tux!
case Darwin
echo Hi Hexley!
case DragonFly '*BSD'
echo Hi Beastie! # this also works for FreeBSD and NetBSD
case '*'
echo Hi, stranger!
end
Unlike other shells or programming languages, there is no fallthrough - the first matching case block is
executed and then control jumps out of the switch.
Combiners (and / or / && / ||)
For simple checks, you can use combiners. and or && run the second command if the first succeeded, while
or or || run it if the first failed. For example:
# $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is a standard place to store configuration.
# If it's not set applications should use ~/.config.
set -q XDG_CONFIG_HOME; and set -l configdir $XDG_CONFIG_HOME
or set -l configdir ~/.config
Note that combiners are lazy - only the part that is necessary to determine the final status is run.
Compare:
if sleep 2; and false
echo 'How did I get here? This should be impossible'
end
and:
if false; and sleep 2
echo 'How did I get here? This should be impossible'
end
These do essentially the same thing, but the former takes 2 seconds longer because the sleep always needs
to run.
Or you can have a case where it is necessary to stop early:
if command -sq foo; and foo
If this went on after seeing that the command "foo" doesn't exist, it would try to run foo and error
because it wasn't found!
Combiners really just execute step-by-step, so it isn't recommended to build longer chains of them
because they might do something you don't want. Consider:
test -e /etc/my.config
or echo "OH NO WE NEED A CONFIG FILE"
and return 1
This will execute return 1 also if the test succeeded. This is because fish runs test -e /etc/my.config,
sets $status to 0, then skips the echo, keeps $status at 0, and then executes the return 1 because
$status is still 0.
So if you have more complex conditions or want to run multiple things after something failed, consider
using an if. Here that would be:
if not test -e /etc/my.config
echo "OH NO WE NEED A CONFIG FILE"
return 1
end
Loops and blocks
Like most programming language, fish also has the familiar while and for loops.
while works like a repeated if:
while true
echo Still running
sleep 1
end
will print "Still running" once a second. You can abort it with ctrl-c.
for loops work like in other shells, which is more like python's for-loops than e.g. C's:
for file in *
echo file: $file
end
will print each file in the current directory. The part after the in is just a list of arguments, so you
can use any expansions there:
set moreanimals bird fox
for animal in {cat,}fish dog $moreanimals
echo I like the $animal
end
If you need a list of numbers, you can use the seq command to create one:
for i in (seq 1 5)
echo $i
end
break is available to break out of a loop, and continue to jump to the next iteration.
Input and output redirections (including pipes) can also be applied to loops:
while read -l line
echo line: $line
end < file
In addition there's a begin block that just groups commands together so you can redirect to a block or
use a new variable scope without any repetition:
begin
set -l foo bar # this variable will only be available in this block!
end
Parameter expansion
When fish is given a commandline, it expands the parameters before sending them to the command. There are
multiple different kinds of expansions:
• Wildcards, to create filenames from patterns - *.jpg
• Variable expansion, to use the value of a variable - $HOME
• Command substitution, to use the output of another command - $(cat /path/to/file)
• Brace expansion, to write lists with common pre- or suffixes in a shorter way {/usr,}/bin
• Tilde expansion, to turn the ~ at the beginning of paths into the path to the home directory ~/bin
Parameter expansion is limited to 524288 items. There is a limit to how many arguments the operating
system allows for any command, and 524288 is far above it. This is a measure to stop the shell from
hanging doing useless computation.
Wildcards ("Globbing")
When a parameter includes an unquoted * star (or "asterisk") or a ? question mark, fish uses it as a
wildcard to match files.
• * matches any number of characters (including zero) in a file name, not including /.
• ** matches any number of characters (including zero), and also descends into subdirectories. If ** is a
segment by itself, that segment may match zero times, for compatibility with other shells.
• ? can match any single character except /. This is deprecated and can be disabled via the qmark-noglob
feature flag, so ? will just be an ordinary character.
Wildcard matches are sorted case insensitively. When sorting matches containing numbers, they are
naturally sorted, so that the strings '1' '5' and '12' would be sorted like 1, 5, 12.
Hidden files (where the name begins with a dot) are not considered when wildcarding unless the wildcard
string has a dot in that place.
Examples:
• a* matches any files beginning with an 'a' in the current directory.
• ** matches any files and directories in the current directory and all of its subdirectories.
• ~/.* matches all hidden files (also known as "dotfiles") and directories in your home directory.
For most commands, if any wildcard fails to expand, the command is not executed, $status is set to
nonzero, and a warning is printed. This behavior is like what bash does with shopt -s failglob. There are
exceptions, namely set and path, overriding variables in overrides, count and for. Their globs will
instead expand to zero arguments (so the command won't see them at all), like with shopt -s nullglob in
bash.
Examples:
# List the .foo files, or warns if there aren't any.
ls *.foo
# List the .foo files, if any.
set foos *.foo
if count $foos >/dev/null
ls $foos
end
Unlike bash (by default), fish will not pass on the literal glob character if no match was found, so for
a command like apt install that does the matching itself, you need to add quotes:
apt install "ncurses-*"
Variable expansion
One of the most important expansions in fish is the "variable expansion". This is the replacing of a
dollar sign ($) followed by a variable name with the _value_ of that variable.
In the simplest case, this is just something like:
echo $HOME
which will replace $HOME with the home directory of the current user, and pass it to echo, which will
then print it.
Some variables like $HOME are already set because fish sets them by default or because fish's parent
process passed them to fish when it started it. You can define your own variables by setting them with
set:
set my_directory /home/cooluser/mystuff
ls $my_directory
# shows the contents of /home/cooluser/mystuff
For more on how setting variables works, see Shell variables and the following sections.
Sometimes a variable has no value because it is undefined or empty, and it expands to nothing:
echo $nonexistentvariable
# Prints no output.
To separate a variable name from text you can encase the variable within double-quotes or braces:
set WORD cat
echo The plural of $WORD is "$WORD"s
# Prints "The plural of cat is cats" because $WORD is set to "cat".
echo The plural of $WORD is {$WORD}s
# ditto
Without the quotes or braces, fish will try to expand a variable called $WORDs, which may not exist.
The latter syntax {$WORD} is a special case of brace expansion.
If $WORD here is undefined or an empty list, the "s" is not printed. However, it is printed if $WORD is
the empty string (like after set WORD "").
For more on shell variables, read the Shell variables section.
Quoting variables
Variable expansion also happens in double quoted strings. Inside double quotes ("these"), variables will
always expand to exactly one argument. If they are empty or undefined, it will result in an empty string.
If they have one element, they'll expand to that element. If they have more than that, the elements will
be joined with spaces, unless the variable is a path variable - in that case it will use a colon (:)
instead [3].
Fish variables are all lists, and they are split into elements when they are set - that means it is
important to decide whether to use quotes or not with set:
set foo 1 2 3 # a variable with three elements
rm $foo # runs the equivalent of `rm 1 2 3` - trying to delete three files: 1, 2 and 3.
rm "$foo" # runs `rm '1 2 3'` - trying to delete one file called '1 2 3'
set foo # an empty variable
rm $foo # runs `rm` without arguments
rm "$foo" # runs the equivalent of `rm ''`
set foo "1 2 3"
rm $foo # runs the equivalent of `rm '1 2 3'` - trying to delete one file
rm "$foo" # same thing
This is unlike other shells, which do what is known as "Word Splitting", where they split the variable
when it is used in an expansion. E.g. in bash:
foo="1 2 3"
rm $foo # runs the equivalent of `rm 1 2 3`
rm "$foo" # runs the equivalent of `rm '1 2 3'`
This is the cause of very common problems with filenames with spaces in bash scripts.
In fish, unquoted variables will expand to as many arguments as they have elements. That means an empty
list will expand to nothing, a variable with one element will expand to that element, and a variable with
multiple elements will expand to each of those elements separately.
If a variable expands to nothing, it will cancel out any other strings attached to it. See the Combining
Lists section for more information.
Most of the time, not quoting a variable is correct. The exception is when you need to ensure that the
variable is passed as one element, even if it might be unset or have multiple elements. This happens
often with test:
set -l foo one two three
test -n $foo
# prints an error that it got too many arguments, because it was executed like
test -n one two three
test -n "$foo"
# works, because it was executed like
test -n "one two three"
[3] Unlike bash or zsh, which will join with the first character of $IFS (which usually is space).
Dereferencing variables
The $ symbol can also be used multiple times, as a kind of "dereference" operator (the * in C or C++),
like in the following code:
set foo a b c
set a 10; set b 20; set c 30
for i in (seq (count $$foo))
echo $$foo[$i]
end
# Output is:
# 10
# 20
# 30
$$foo[$i] is "the value of the variable named by $foo[$i]".
This can also be used to give a variable name to a function:
function print_var
for arg in $argv
echo Variable $arg is $$arg
end
end
set -g foo 1 2 3
set -g bar a b c
print_var foo bar
# prints "Variable foo is 1 2 3" and "Variable bar is a b c"
Of course the variable will have to be accessible from the function, so it needs to be global/universal
or exported. It also can't clash with a variable name used inside the function. So if we had made $foo
there a local variable, or if we had named it "arg" instead, it would not have worked.
When using this feature together with slices, the slices will be used from the inside out. $$foo[5] will
use the fifth element of $foo as a variable name, instead of giving the fifth element of all the
variables $foo refers to. That would instead be expressed as $$foo[1..-1][5] (take all elements of $foo,
use them as variable names, then give the fifth element of those).
Some more examples:
set listone 1 2 3
set listtwo 4 5 6
set var listone listtwo
echo $$var
# Output is 1 2 3 4 5 6
echo $$var[1]
# Output is 1 2 3
echo $$var[2][3]
# $var[1] is listtwo, third element of that is 6, output is 6
echo $$var[..][2]
# The second element of every variable, so output is
# 2 5
Variables as command
Like other shells, you can run the value of a variable as a command.
> set -g EDITOR emacs
> $EDITOR foo # opens emacs, possibly the GUI version
If you want to give the command an argument inside the variable it needs to be a separate element:
> set EDITOR emacs -nw
> $EDITOR foo # opens emacs in the terminal even if the GUI is installed
> set EDITOR "emacs -nw"
> $EDITOR foo # tries to find a command called "emacs -nw"
Also like other shells, this only works with commands, builtins and functions - it will not work with
keywords because they have syntactical importance.
For instance set if $if won't allow you to make an if-block, and set cmd command won't allow you to use
the command decorator, but only uses like $cmd -q foo.
Command substitution
A command substitution is an expansion that uses the output of a command as the arguments to another. For
example:
echo $(pwd)
This executes the pwd command, takes its output (more specifically what it wrote to the standard output
"stdout" stream) and uses it as arguments to echo. So the inner command (the pwd) is run first and has to
complete before the outer command can even be started.
If the inner command prints multiple lines, fish will use each separate line as a separate argument to
the outer command. Unlike other shells, the value of $IFS is not used [4], fish splits on newlines.
Command substitutions can also be double-quoted:
echo "$(pwd)"
When using double quotes, the command output is not split up by lines, but trailing empty lines are still
removed.
If the output is piped to string split or string split0 as the last step, those splits are used as they
appear instead of splitting lines.
Fish also allows spelling command substitutions without the dollar, like echo (pwd). This variant will
not be expanded in double-quotes (echo "(pwd)" will print (pwd)).
The exit status of the last run command substitution is available in the status variable if the
substitution happens in the context of a set command (so if set -l (something) checks if something
returned true).
To use only some lines of the output, refer to slices.
Examples:
# Outputs 'image.png'.
echo (basename image.jpg .jpg).png
# Convert all JPEG files in the current directory to the
# PNG format using the 'convert' program.
for i in *.jpg; convert $i (basename $i .jpg).png; end
# Set the ``data`` variable to the contents of 'data.txt'
# without splitting it into a list.
set data "$(cat data.txt)"
# Set ``$data`` to the contents of data, splitting on NUL-bytes.
set data (cat data | string split0)
Sometimes you want to pass the output of a command to another command that only accepts files. If it's
just one file, you can usually just pass it via a pipe, like:
grep fish myanimallist1 | wc -l
but if you need multiple or the command doesn't read from standard input, "process substitution" is
useful. Other shells allow this via foo <(bar) <(baz), and fish uses the psub command:
# Compare just the lines containing "fish" in two files:
diff -u (grep fish myanimallist1 | psub) (grep fish myanimallist2 | psub)
This creates a temporary file, stores the output of the command in that file and prints the filename, so
it is given to the outer command.
Fish has a default limit of 100 MiB on the data it will read in a command substitution. If that limit is
reached the command (all of it, not just the command substitution - the outer command won't be executed
at all) fails and $status is set to 122. This is so command substitutions can't cause the system to go
out of memory, because typically your operating system has a much lower limit, so reading more than that
would be useless and harmful. This limit can be adjusted with the fish_read_limit variable (0 meaning no
limit). This limit also affects the read command.
[4] One exception: Setting $IFS to empty will disable line splitting. This is deprecated, use string
split instead.
Brace expansion
Curly braces can be used to write comma-separated lists. They will be expanded with each element becoming
a new parameter, with the surrounding string attached. This is useful to save on typing, and to separate
a variable name from surrounding text.
Examples:
> echo input.{c,h,txt}
input.c input.h input.txt
# Move all files with the suffix '.c' or '.h' to the subdirectory src.
> mv *.{c,h} src/
# Make a copy of `file` at `file.bak`.
> cp file{,.bak}
> set -l dogs hot cool cute "good "
> echo {$dogs}dog
hotdog cooldog cutedog good dog
If there is no "," or variable expansion between the curly braces, they will not be expanded:
# This {} isn't special
> echo foo-{}
foo-{}
# This passes "HEAD@{2}" to git
> git reset --hard HEAD@{2}
> echo {{a,b}}
{a} {b} # because the inner brace pair is expanded, but the outer isn't.
If after expansion there is nothing between the braces, the argument will be removed (see the Combining
Lists section):
> echo foo-{$undefinedvar}
# Output is an empty line, just like a bare `echo`.
If there is nothing between a brace and a comma or two commas, it's interpreted as an empty element:
> echo {,,/usr}/bin
/bin /bin /usr/bin
To use a "," as an element, quote or escape it.
Combining lists
Fish expands lists like brace expansions:
>_ set -l foo x y z
>_ echo 1$foo
# Any element of $foo is combined with the "1":
1x 1y 1z
>_ echo {good,bad}" apples"
# Any element of the {} is combined with the " apples":
good apples bad apples
# Or we can mix the two:
>_ echo {good,bad}" "$foo
good x bad x good y bad y good z bad z
Any string attached to a list will be concatenated to each element.
Two lists will be expanded in all combinations - every element of the first with every element of the
second:
>_ set -l a x y z; set -l b 1 2 3
>_ echo $a$b # same as {x,y,z}{1,2,3}
x1 y1 z1 x2 y2 z2 x3 y3 z3
A result of this is that, if a list has no elements, this combines the string with no elements, which
means the entire token is removed!
>_ set -l c # <- this list is empty!
>_ echo {$c}word
# Output is an empty line - the "word" part is gone
This can be quite useful. For example, if you want to go through all the files in all the directories in
PATH, use
for file in $PATH/*
Because PATH is a list, this expands to all the files in all the directories in it. And if there are no
directories in PATH, the right answer here is to expand to no files.
Sometimes this may be unwanted, especially that tokens can disappear after expansion. In those cases, you
should double-quote variables - echo "$c"word.
This also happens after command substitution. To avoid tokens disappearing there, make the inner command
return a trailing newline, or double-quote it:
>_ set b 1 2 3
>_ echo (echo x)$b
x1 x2 x3
>_ echo (printf '%s' '')banana
# the printf prints nothing, so this is nothing times "banana",
# which is nothing.
>_ echo (printf '%s\n' '')banana
# the printf prints a newline,
# so the command substitution expands to an empty string,
# so this is `''banana`
banana
>_ echo "$(printf '%s' '')"banana
# quotes mean this is one argument, the banana stays
Slices
Sometimes it's necessary to access only some of the elements of a list (all fish variables are lists), or
some of the lines a command substitution outputs. Both are possible in fish by writing a set of indices
in brackets, like:
# Make $var a list of four elements
set var one two three four
# Print the second:
echo $var[2]
# prints "two"
# or print the first three:
echo $var[1..3]
# prints "one two three"
In index brackets, fish understands ranges written like a..b ('a' and 'b' being indices). They are
expanded into a sequence of indices from a to b (so a a+1 a+2 ... b), going up if b is larger and going
down if a is larger. Negative indices can also be used - they are taken from the end of the list, so -1
is the last element, and -2 the one before it. If an index doesn't exist the range is clamped to the next
possible index.
If a list has 5 elements the indices go from 1 to 5, so a range of 2..16 will only go from element 2 to
element 5.
If the end is negative the range always goes up, so 2..-2 will go from element 2 to 4, and 2..-16 won't
go anywhere because there is no way to go from the second element to one that doesn't exist, while going
up. If the start is negative the range always goes down, so -2..1 will go from element 4 to 1, and
-16..2 won't go anywhere because there is no way to go from an element that doesn't exist to the second
element, while going down.
A missing starting index in a range defaults to 1. This is allowed if the range is the first index
expression of the sequence. Similarly, a missing ending index, defaulting to -1 is allowed for the last
index in the sequence.
Multiple ranges are also possible, separated with a space.
Some examples:
echo (seq 10)[1 2 3]
# Prints: 1 2 3
# Limit the command substitution output
echo (seq 10)[2..5]
# Uses elements from 2 to 5
# Output is: 2 3 4 5
echo (seq 10)[7..]
# Prints: 7 8 9 10
# Use overlapping ranges:
echo (seq 10)[2..5 1..3]
# Takes elements from 2 to 5 and then elements from 1 to 3
# Output is: 2 3 4 5 1 2 3
# Reverse output
echo (seq 10)[-1..1]
# Uses elements from the last output line to
# the first one in reverse direction
# Output is: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
# The command substitution has only one line,
# so these will result in empty output:
echo (echo one)[2..-1]
echo (echo one)[-3..1]
The same works when setting or expanding variables:
# Reverse path variable
set PATH $PATH[-1..1]
# or
set PATH[-1..1] $PATH
# Use only n last items of the PATH
set n -3
echo $PATH[$n..-1]
Variables can be used as indices for expansion of variables, like so:
set index 2
set letters a b c d
echo $letters[$index] # returns 'b'
However using variables as indices for command substitution is currently not supported, so:
echo (seq 5)[$index] # This won't work
set sequence (seq 5) # It needs to be written on two lines like this.
echo $sequence[$index] # returns '2'
When using indirect variable expansion with multiple $ ($$name), you have to give all indices up to the
variable you want to slice:
> set -l list 1 2 3 4 5
> set -l name list
> echo $$name[1]
1 2 3 4 5
> echo $$name[1..-1][1..3] # or $$name[1][1..3], since $name only has one element.
1 2 3
Home directory expansion
The ~ (tilde) character at the beginning of a parameter, followed by a username, is expanded into the
home directory of the specified user. A lone ~, or a ~ followed by a slash, is expanded into the home
directory of the process owner:
ls ~/Music # lists my music directory
echo ~root # prints root's home directory, probably "/root"
Combining different expansions
All of the above expansions can be combined. If several expansions result in more than one parameter, all
possible combinations are created.
When combining multiple parameter expansions, expansions are performed in the following order:
• Command substitutions
• Variable expansions
• Bracket expansion
• Wildcard expansion
Expansions are performed from right to left, nested bracket expansions and command substitutions are
performed from the inside and out.
Example:
If the current directory contains the files 'foo' and 'bar', the command echo a(ls){1,2,3} will output
abar1 abar2 abar3 afoo1 afoo2 afoo3.
Table Of Operators
Putting it together, here is a quick reference to fish's operators, all of the special symbols it uses:
┌────────────┬──────────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┐
│ Symbol │ Meaning │ Example │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ $ │ Variable expansion │ echo $foo │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ $() and () │ Command substitution │ cat (grep foo bar) or cat │
│ │ │ $(grep foo bar) │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ < and > │ Redirection, like command > │ git shortlog -nse . > │
│ │ file │ authors │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ | │ Pipe, connect two or more │ foo | grep bar | grep baz │
│ │ commands │ │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ ; │ End of the command, instead │ command1; command2 │
│ │ of a newline │ │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ & │ Backgrounding │ sleep 5m & │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ {} │ Brace expansion │ ls {/usr,}/bin │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ && and || │ Combiners │ mkdir foo && cd foo or rm │
│ │ │ foo || exit │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ * and ** │ Wildcards │ cat *.fish or count **.jpg │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ \\ │ Escaping │ echo foo\nbar or echo \$foo │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ '' and "" │ Quoting │ rm "file with spaces" or │
│ │ │ echo '$foo' │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ ~ │ Home directory expansion │ ls ~/ or ls ~root/ │
├────────────┼──────────────────────────────┼──────────────────────────────┤
│ # │ Comments │ echo Hello # this isn't │
│ │ │ printed │
└────────────┴──────────────────────────────┴──────────────────────────────┘
Shell variables
Variables are a way to save data and pass it around. They can be used just by the shell, or they can be
"exported", so that a copy of the variable is available to any external command the shell starts. An
exported variable is referred to as an "environment variable".
To set a variable value, use the set command. A variable name can not be empty and can contain only
letters, digits, and underscores. It may begin and end with any of those characters.
Example:
To set the variable smurf_color to the value blue, use the command set smurf_color blue.
After a variable has been set, you can use the value of a variable in the shell through variable
expansion.
Example:
set smurf_color blue
echo Smurfs are usually $smurf_color
set pants_color red
echo Papa smurf, who is $smurf_color, wears $pants_color pants
So you set a variable with set, and use it with a $ and the name.
Variable Scope
All variables in fish have a scope. For example they can be global or local to a function or block:
# This variable is global, we can use it everywhere.
set --global name Patrick
# This variable is local, it will not be visible in a function we call from here.
set --local place "at the Krusty Krab"
function local
# This can find $name, but not $place
echo Hello this is $name $place
# This variable is local, it will not be available
# outside of this function
set --local instrument mayonnaise
echo My favorite instrument is $instrument
# This creates a local $name, and won't touch the global one
set --local name Spongebob
echo My best friend is $name
end
local
# Will print:
# Hello this is Patrick
# My favorite instrument is mayonnaise
# My best friend is Spongebob
echo $name, I am $place and my instrument is $instrument
# Will print:
# Patrick, I am at the Krusty Krab and my instrument is
There are four kinds of variable scopes in fish: universal, global, function and local variables.
• Universal variables are shared between all fish sessions a user is running on one computer. They are
stored on disk and persist even after reboot.
• Global variables are specific to the current fish session. They can be erased by explicitly requesting
set -e.
• Function variables are specific to the currently executing function. They are erased ("go out of
scope") when the current function ends. Outside of a function, they don't go out of scope.
• Local variables are specific to the current block of commands, and automatically erased when a specific
block goes out of scope. A block of commands is a series of commands that begins with one of the
commands for, while , if, function, begin or switch, and ends with the command end. Outside of a block,
this is the same as the function scope.
Variables can be explicitly set to be universal with the -U or --universal switch, global with -g or
--global, function-scoped with -f or --function and local to the current block with -l or --local. The
scoping rules when creating or updating a variable are:
• When a scope is explicitly given, it will be used. If a variable of the same name exists in a different
scope, that variable will not be changed.
• When no scope is given, but a variable of that name exists, the variable of the smallest scope will be
modified. The scope will not be changed.
• When no scope is given and no variable of that name exists, the variable is created in function scope
if inside a function, or global scope if no function is executing.
There can be many variables with the same name, but different scopes. When you use a variable, the
smallest scoped variable of that name will be used. If a local variable exists, it will be used instead
of the global or universal variable of the same name.
Example:
There are a few possible uses for different scopes.
Typically inside functions you should use local scope:
function something
set -l file /path/to/my/file
if not test -e "$file"
set file /path/to/my/otherfile
end
end
# or
function something
if test -e /path/to/my/file
set -f file /path/to/my/file
else
set -f file /path/to/my/otherfile
end
end
If you want to set something in config.fish, or set something in a function and have it available for the
rest of the session, global scope is a good choice:
# Don't shorten the working directory in the prompt
set -g fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length 0
# Set my preferred cursor style:
function setcursors
set -g fish_cursor_default block
set -g fish_cursor_insert line
set -g fish_cursor_visual underscore
end
# Set my language
set -gx LANG de_DE.UTF-8
If you want to set some personal customization, universal variables are nice:
# Typically you'd run this interactively, fish takes care of keeping it.
set -U fish_color_autosuggestion 555
Here is an example of local vs function-scoped variables:
function test-scopes
begin
# This is a nice local scope where all variables will die
set -l pirate 'There be treasure in them thar hills'
set -f captain Space, the final frontier
# If no variable of that name was defined, it is function-local.
set gnu "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded"
end
# This will not output anything, since the pirate was local
echo $pirate
# This will output the good Captain's speech
# since $captain had function-scope.
echo $captain
# This will output Sir Terry's wisdom.
echo $gnu
end
When a function calls another, local variables aren't visible:
function shiver
set phrase 'Shiver me timbers'
end
function avast
set --local phrase 'Avast, mateys'
# Calling the shiver function here can not
# change any variables in the local scope
# so phrase remains as we set it here.
shiver
echo $phrase
end
avast
# Outputs "Avast, mateys"
When in doubt, use function-scoped variables. When you need to make a variable accessible everywhere,
make it global. When you need to persistently store configuration, make it universal. When you want to
use a variable only in a short block, make it local.
Overriding variables for a single command
If you want to override a variable for a single command, you can use "var=val" statements before the
command:
# Call git status on another directory
# (can also be done via `git -C somerepo status`)
GIT_DIR=somerepo git status
Unlike other shells, fish will first set the variable and then perform other expansions on the line, so:
set foo banana
foo=gagaga echo $foo
# prints gagaga, while in other shells it might print "banana"
Multiple elements can be given in a brace expansion:
# Call bash with a reasonable default path.
PATH={/usr,}/{s,}bin bash
Or with a glob:
# Run vlc on all mp3 files in the current directory
# If no file exists it will still be run with no arguments
mp3s=*.mp3 vlc $mp3s
Unlike other shells, this does not inhibit any lookup (aliases or similar). Calling a command after
setting a variable override will result in the exact same command being run.
This syntax is supported since fish 3.1.
Universal Variables
Universal variables are variables that are shared between all the user's fish sessions on the computer.
Fish stores many of its configuration options as universal variables. This means that in order to change
fish settings, all you have to do is change the variable value once, and it will be automatically updated
for all sessions, and preserved across computer reboots and login/logout.
To see universal variables in action, start two fish sessions side by side, and issue the following
command in one of them set fish_color_cwd blue. Since fish_color_cwd is a universal variable, the color
of the current working directory listing in the prompt will instantly change to blue on both terminals.
Universal variables are stored in the file .config/fish/fish_variables. Do not edit this file directly,
as your edits may be overwritten. Edit the variables through fish scripts or by using fish interactively
instead.
Do not append to universal variables in config.fish, because these variables will then get longer with
each new shell instance. Instead, simply set them once at the command line.
Exporting variables
Variables in fish can be exported, so they will be inherited by any commands started by fish. In
particular, this is necessary for variables used to configure external commands like PAGER or GOPATH, but
also for variables that contain general system settings like PATH or LANGUAGE. If an external command
needs to know a variable, it needs to be exported. Exported variables are also often called "environment
variables".
This also applies to fish - when it starts up, it receives environment variables from its parent (usually
the terminal). These typically include system configuration like PATH and locale variables.
Variables can be explicitly set to be exported with the -x or --export switch, or not exported with the
-u or --unexport switch. The exporting rules when setting a variable are similar to the scoping rules
for variables - when an option is passed it is respected, otherwise the variable's existing state is
used. If no option is passed and the variable didn't exist yet it is not exported.
As a naming convention, exported variables are in uppercase and unexported variables are in lowercase.
For example:
set -gx ANDROID_HOME ~/.android # /opt/android-sdk
set -gx CDPATH . ~ (test -e ~/Videos; and echo ~/Videos)
set -gx EDITOR emacs -nw
set -gx GOPATH ~/dev/go
set -gx GTK2_RC_FILES "$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/gtk-2.0/gtkrc"
set -gx LESSHISTFILE "-"
Note: Exporting is not a scope, but an additional state. It typically makes sense to make exported
variables global as well, but local-exported variables can be useful if you need something more specific
than Overrides. They are copied to functions so the function can't alter them outside, and still
available to commands. Global variables are accessible to functions whether they are exported or not.
Lists
Fish can store a list (or an "array" if you wish) of multiple strings inside of a variable:
> set mylist first second third
> printf '%s\n' $mylist # prints each element on its own line
first
second
third
To access one element of a list, use the index of the element inside of square brackets, like this:
echo $PATH[3]
List indices start at 1 in fish, not 0 like in other languages. This is because it requires less
subtracting of 1 and many common Unix tools like seq work better with it (seq 5 prints 1 to 5, not 0 to
5). An invalid index is silently ignored resulting in no value (not even an empty string, just no
argument at all).
If you don't use any brackets, all the elements of the list will be passed to the command as separate
items. This means you can iterate over a list with for:
for i in $PATH
echo $i is in the path
end
This goes over every directory in PATH separately and prints a line saying it is in the path.
To create a variable smurf, containing the items blue and small, simply write:
set smurf blue small
It is also possible to set or erase individual elements of a list:
# Set smurf to be a list with the elements 'blue' and 'small'
set smurf blue small
# Change the second element of smurf to 'evil'
set smurf[2] evil
# Erase the first element
set -e smurf[1]
# Output 'evil'
echo $smurf
If you specify a negative index when expanding or assigning to a list variable, the index will be taken
from the end of the list. For example, the index -1 is the last element of the list:
> set fruit apple orange banana
> echo $fruit[-1]
banana
> echo $fruit[-2..-1]
orange
banana
> echo $fruit[-1..1] # reverses the list
banana
orange
apple
As you see, you can use a range of indices, see slices for details.
All lists are one-dimensional and can't contain other lists, although it is possible to fake nested lists
using dereferencing - see variable expansion.
When a list is exported as an environment variable, it is either space or colon delimited, depending on
whether it is a path variable:
> set -x smurf blue small
> set -x smurf_PATH forest mushroom
> env | grep smurf
smurf=blue small
smurf_PATH=forest:mushroom
Fish automatically creates lists from all environment variables whose name ends in PATH (like PATH,
CDPATH or MANPATH), by splitting them on colons. Other variables are not automatically split.
Lists can be inspected with the count or the contains commands:
> count $smurf
2
> contains blue $smurf
# blue was found, so it exits with status 0
# (without printing anything)
> echo $status
0
> contains -i blue $smurf
1
A nice thing about lists is that they are passed to commands one element as one argument, so once you've
set your list, you can just pass it:
set -l grep_args -r "my string"
grep $grep_args . # will run the same as `grep -r "my string"` .
Unlike other shells, fish does not do "word splitting" - elements in a list stay as they are, even if
they contain spaces or tabs.
Argument Handling
An important list is $argv, which contains the arguments to a function or script. For example:
function myfunction
echo $argv[1]
echo $argv[3]
end
This function takes whatever arguments it gets and prints the first and third:
> myfunction first second third
first
third
> myfunction apple cucumber banana
apple
banana
That covers the positional arguments, but commandline tools often get various options and flags, and
$argv would contain them intermingled with the positional arguments. Typical unix argument handling
allows short options (-h, also grouped like in ls -lah), long options (--help) and allows those options
to take arguments (--color=auto or --position anywhere or complete -C"git ") as well as a -- separator to
signal the end of options. Handling all of these manually is tricky and error-prone.
A more robust approach to option handling is argparse, which checks the defined options and puts them
into various variables, leaving only the positional arguments in $argv. Here's a simple example:
function mybetterfunction
# We tell argparse about -h/--help and -s/--second
# - these are short and long forms of the same option.
# The "--" here is mandatory,
# it tells it from where to read the arguments.
argparse h/help s/second -- $argv
# exit if argparse failed because
# it found an option it didn't recognize
# - it will print an error
or return
# If -h or --help is given, we print a little help text and return
if set -ql _flag_help
echo "mybetterfunction [-h|--help] [-s|--second] [ARGUMENT ...]"
return 0
end
# If -s or --second is given, we print the second argument,
# not the first and third.
# (this is also available as _flag_s because of the short version)
if set -ql _flag_second
echo $argv[2]
else
echo $argv[1]
echo $argv[3]
end
end
The options will be removed from $argv, so $argv[2] is the second positional argument now:
> mybetterfunction first -s second third
second
For more information on argparse, like how to handle option arguments, see the argparse documentation.
PATH variables
Path variables are a special kind of variable used to support colon-delimited path lists including PATH,
CDPATH, MANPATH, PYTHONPATH, etc. All variables that end in "PATH" (case-sensitive) become PATH variables
by default.
PATH variables act as normal lists, except they are implicitly joined and split on colons.
set MYPATH 1 2 3
echo "$MYPATH"
# 1:2:3
set MYPATH "$MYPATH:4:5"
echo $MYPATH
# 1 2 3 4 5
echo "$MYPATH"
# 1:2:3:4:5
Path variables will also be exported in the colon form, so set -x MYPATH 1 2 3 will have external
commands see it as 1:2:3.
> set -gx MYPATH /bin /usr/bin /sbin
> env | grep MYPATH
MYPATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin
This is for compatibility with other tools. Unix doesn't have variables with multiple elements, the
closest thing it has are colon-lists like PATH. For obvious reasons this means no element can contain a
:.
Variables can be marked or unmarked as PATH variables via the --path and --unpath options to set.
Special variables
You can change the settings of fish by changing the values of certain variables.
PATH A list of directories in which to search for commands. This is a common unix variable also used by
other tools.
CDPATH A list of directories in which the cd builtin looks for a new directory.
Locale Variables
The locale variables LANG, LC_ALL, LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_MONETARY, LC_NUMERIC, and
LANG set the language option for the shell and subprograms. See the section Locale variables for
more information.
Color variables
A number of variable starting with the prefixes fish_color and fish_pager_color. See Variables for
changing highlighting colors for more information.
fish_term24bit
If this is set to 1, fish will assume the terminal understands 24-bit RGB color sequences, and
won't translate them to the 256 or 16 color palette. This is often detected automatically.
fish_term256
If this is set to 1, fish will assume the terminal understands 256 colors, and won't translate
matching colors down to the 16 color palette. This is usually autodetected.
fish_ambiguous_width
controls the computed width of ambiguous-width characters. This should be set to 1 if your
terminal renders these characters as single-width (typical), or 2 if double-width.
fish_emoji_width
controls whether fish assumes emoji render as 2 cells or 1 cell wide. This is necessary because
the correct value changed from 1 to 2 in Unicode 9, and some terminals may not be aware. Set this
if you see graphical glitching related to emoji (or other "special" characters). It should usually
be auto-detected.
fish_autosuggestion_enabled
controls if Autosuggestions are enabled. Set it to 0 to disable, anything else to enable. By
default they are on.
fish_handle_reflow
determines whether fish should try to repaint the commandline when the terminal resizes. In
terminals that reflow text this should be disabled. Set it to 1 to enable, anything else to
disable.
fish_key_bindings
the name of the function that sets up the keyboard shortcuts for the command-line editor.
fish_escape_delay_ms
sets how long fish waits for another key after seeing an escape, to distinguish pressing the
escape key from the start of an escape sequence. The default is 30ms. Increasing it increases the
latency but allows pressing escape instead of alt for alt+character bindings. For more
information, see the chapter in the bind documentation.
fish_sequence_key_delay_ms
sets how long fish waits for another key after seeing a key that is part of a longer sequence, to
disambiguate. For instance if you had bound \cx\ce to open an editor, fish would wait for this
long in milliseconds to see a ctrl-e after a ctrl-x. If the time elapses, it will handle it as a
ctrl-x (by default this would copy the current commandline to the clipboard). See also Key
sequences.
fish_complete_path
determines where fish looks for completion. When trying to complete for a command, fish looks for
files in the directories in this variable.
fish_cursor_selection_mode
controls whether the selection is inclusive or exclusive of the character under the cursor (see
Copy and Paste).
fish_function_path
determines where fish looks for functions. When fish autoloads a function, it will look for files
in these directories.
fish_greeting
the greeting message printed on startup. This is printed by a function of the same name that can
be overridden for more complicated changes (see funced)
fish_history
the current history session name. If set, all subsequent commands within an interactive fish
session will be logged to a separate file identified by the value of the variable. If unset, the
default session name "fish" is used. If set to an empty string, history is not saved to disk (but
is still available within the interactive session).
fish_trace
if set and not empty, will cause fish to print commands before they execute, similar to set -x in
bash. The trace is printed to the path given by the --debug-output option to fish or the
FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT variable. It goes to stderr by default.
FISH_DEBUG
Controls which debug categories fish enables for output, analogous to the --debug option.
FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT
Specifies a file to direct debug output to.
fish_user_paths
a list of directories that are prepended to PATH. This can be a universal variable.
umask the current file creation mask. The preferred way to change the umask variable is through the
umask function. An attempt to set umask to an invalid value will always fail.
BROWSER
your preferred web browser. If this variable is set, fish will use the specified browser instead
of the system default browser to display the fish documentation.
Fish also provides additional information through the values of certain environment variables. Most of
these variables are read-only and their value can't be changed with set.
_ the name of the currently running command (though this is deprecated, and the use of status
current-command is preferred).
argv a list of arguments to the shell or function. argv is only defined when inside a function call, or
if fish was invoked with a list of arguments, like fish myscript.fish foo bar. This variable can
be changed.
CMD_DURATION
the runtime of the last command in milliseconds.
COLUMNS and LINES
the current size of the terminal in height and width. These values are only used by fish if the
operating system does not report the size of the terminal. Both variables must be set in that case
otherwise a default of 80x24 will be used. They are updated when the window size changes.
fish_kill_signal
the signal that terminated the last foreground job, or 0 if the job exited normally.
fish_killring
a list of entries in fish's kill ring of cut text.
fish_read_limit
how many bytes fish will process with read or in a command substitution.
fish_pid
the process ID (PID) of the shell.
history
a list containing the last commands that were entered.
HOME the user's home directory. This variable can be changed.
hostname
the machine's hostname.
IFS the internal field separator that is used for word splitting with the read builtin. Setting this
to the empty string will also disable line splitting in command substitution. This variable can be
changed.
last_pid
the process ID (PID) of the last background process.
PWD the current working directory.
pipestatus
a list of exit statuses of all processes that made up the last executed pipe. See exit status.
SHLVL the level of nesting of shells. Fish increments this in interactive shells, otherwise it simply
passes it along.
status the exit status of the last foreground job to exit. If the job was terminated through a signal,
the exit status will be 128 plus the signal number.
status_generation
the "generation" count of $status. This will be incremented only when the previous command
produced an explicit status. (For example, background jobs will not increment this).
TERM the type of the current terminal. When fish tries to determine how the terminal works - how many
colors it supports, what sequences it sends for keys and other things - it looks at this variable
and the corresponding information in the terminfo database (see man terminfo).
Note: Typically this should not be changed as the terminal sets it to the correct value.
USER the current username. This variable can be changed.
EUID the current effective user id, set by fish at startup. This variable can be changed.
version
the version of the currently running fish (also available as FISH_VERSION for backward
compatibility).
As a convention, an uppercase name is usually used for exported variables, while lowercase variables are
not exported. (CMD_DURATION is an exception for historical reasons). This rule is not enforced by fish,
but it is good coding practice to use casing to distinguish between exported and unexported variables.
Fish also uses some variables internally, their name usually starting with __fish. These are internal and
should not typically be modified directly.
The status variable
Whenever a process exits, an exit status is returned to the program that started it (usually the shell).
This exit status is an integer number, which tells the calling application how the execution of the
command went. In general, a zero exit status means that the command executed without problem, but a
non-zero exit status means there was some form of problem.
Fish stores the exit status of the last process in the last job to exit in the status variable.
If fish encounters a problem while executing a command, the status variable may also be set to a specific
value:
• 0 is generally the exit status of commands if they successfully performed the requested operation.
• 1 is generally the exit status of commands if they failed to perform the requested operation.
• 121 is generally the exit status of commands if they were supplied with invalid arguments.
• 123 means that the command was not executed because the command name contained invalid characters.
• 124 means that the command was not executed because none of the wildcards in the command produced any
matches.
• 125 means that while an executable with the specified name was located, the operating system could not
actually execute the command.
• 126 means that while a file with the specified name was located, it was not executable.
• 127 means that no function, builtin or command with the given name could be located.
If a process exits through a signal, the exit status will be 128 plus the number of the signal.
The status can be negated with not (or !), which is useful in a condition. This turns a status of 0 into
1 and any non-zero status into 0.
There is also $pipestatus, which is a list of all status values of processes in a pipe. One difference is
that not applies to $status, but not $pipestatus, because it loses information.
For example:
not cat file | grep -q fish
echo status is: $status pipestatus is $pipestatus
Here $status reflects the status of grep, which returns 0 if it found something, negated with not (so 1
if it found something, 0 otherwise). $pipestatus reflects the status of cat (which returns non-zero for
example when it couldn't find the file) and grep, without the negation.
So if both cat and grep succeeded, $status would be 1 because of the not, and $pipestatus would be 0 and
0.
It's possible for the first command to fail while the second succeeds. One common example is when the
second program quits early.
For example, if you have a pipeline like:
cat file1 file2 | head -n 50
This will tell cat to print two files, "file1" and "file2", one after the other, and the head will then
only print the first 50 lines. In this case you might often see this constellation:
> cat file1 file2 | head -n 50
# 50 lines of output
> echo $pipestatus
141 0
Here, the "141" signifies that cat was killed by signal number 13 (128 + 13 == 141) - a SIGPIPE. You can
also use fish_kill_signal to see the signal number. This happens because it was still working, and then
head closed the pipe, so cat received a signal that it didn't ignore and so it died.
Whether cat here will see a SIGPIPE depends on how long the file is and how much it writes at once, so
you might see a pipestatus of "0 0", depending on the implementation. This is a general unix issue and
not specific to fish. Some shells feature a "pipefail" feature that will call a pipeline failed if one of
the processes in it failed, and this is a big problem with it.
Locale Variables
The "locale" of a program is its set of language and regional settings that depend on language and
cultural convention. In UNIX, these are made up of several categories. The categories are:
LANG This is the typical environment variable for specifying a locale. A user may set this variable to
express the language they speak, their region, and a character encoding. The actual values are
specific to their platform, except for special values like C or POSIX.
The value of LANG is used for each category unless the variable for that category was set or
LC_ALL is set. So typically you only need to set LANG.
An example value might be en_US.UTF-8 for the american version of english and the UTF-8 encoding,
or de_AT.UTF-8 for the austrian version of german and the UTF-8 encoding. Your operating system
might have a locale command that you can call as locale -a to see a list of defined locales.
A UTF-8 encoding is recommended.
LC_ALL Overrides the LANG environment variable and the values of the other LC_* variables. If this is
set, none of the other variables are used for anything.
Usually the other variables should be used instead. Use LC_ALL only when you need to override
something.
LC_COLLATE
This determines the rules about equivalence of cases and alphabetical ordering: collation.
LC_CTYPE
This determines classification rules, like if the type of character is an alpha, digit, and so on.
Most importantly, it defines the text encoding - which numbers map to which characters. On modern
systems, this should typically be something ending in "UTF-8".
LC_MESSAGES
LC_MESSAGES determines the language in which messages are diisplayed.
LC_MONETARY
Determines currency, how it is formatted, and the symbols used.
LC_NUMERIC
Sets the locale for formatting numbers.
LC_TIME
Sets the locale for formatting dates and times.
Builtin commands
Fish includes a number of commands in the shell directly. We call these "builtins". These include:
• Builtins that manipulate the shell state - cd changes directory, set sets variables
• Builtins for dealing with data, like string for strings and math for numbers, count for counting lines
or arguments, path for dealing with path
• status for asking about the shell's status
• printf and echo for creating output
• test for checking conditions
• argparse for parsing function arguments
• source to read a script in the current shell (so changes to variables stay) and eval to execute a
string as script
• random to get random numbers or pick a random element from a list
• read for reading from a pipe or the terminal
For a list of all builtins, use builtin -n.
For a list of all builtins, functions and commands shipped with fish, see the list of commands. The
documentation is also available by using the --help switch.
Command lookup
When fish is told to run something, it goes through multiple steps to find it.
If it contains a /, fish tries to execute the given file, from the current directory on.
If it doesn't contain a /, it could be a function, builtin, or external command, and so fish goes through
the full lookup.
In order:
1. It tries to resolve it as a function.
• If the function is already known, it uses that
• If there is a file of the name with a ".fish" suffix in fish_function_path, it loads that. (If there
is more than one file only the first is used)
• If the function is now defined it uses that
2. It tries to resolve it as a builtin.
3. It tries to find an executable file in PATH.
• If it finds a file, it tells the kernel to run it.
• If the kernel knows how to run the file (e.g. via a #! line - #!/bin/sh or #!/usr/bin/python), it
does it.
• If the kernel reports that it couldn't run it because of a missing interpreter, and the file passes
a rudimentary check, fish tells /bin/sh to run it.
If none of these work, fish runs the function fish_command_not_found and sets status to 127.
You can use type to see how fish resolved something:
> type --short --all echo
echo is a builtin
echo is /usr/bin/echo
Querying for user input
Sometimes, you want to ask the user for input, for instance to confirm something. This can be done with
the read builtin.
Let's make up an example. This function will glob the files in all the directories it gets as arguments,
and if there are more than five it will ask the user if it is supposed to show them, but only if it is
connected to a terminal:
function show_files
# This will glob on all arguments. Any non-directories will be ignored.
set -l files $argv/*
# If there are more than 5 files
if test (count $files) -gt 5
# and both stdin (for reading input)
# and stdout (for writing the prompt)
# are terminals
and isatty stdin
and isatty stdout
# Keep asking until we get a valid response
while read --nchars 1 -l response --prompt-str="Are you sure? (y/n)"
or return 1 # if the read was aborted with ctrl-c/ctrl-d
switch $response
case y Y
echo Okay
# We break out of the while and go on with the function
break
case n N
# We return from the function without printing
echo Not showing
return 1
case '*'
# We go through the while loop and ask again
echo Not valid input
continue
end
end
end
# And now we print the files
printf '%s\n' $files
end
If you run this as show_files /, it will most likely ask you until you press Y/y or N/n. If you run this
as show_files / | cat, it will print the files without asking. If you run this as show_files ., it might
just print something without asking because there are fewer than five files.
Shell variable and function names
The names given to variables and functions (so-called "identifiers") have to follow certain rules:
• A variable name cannot be empty. It can contain only letters, digits, and underscores. It may begin and
end with any of those characters.
• A function name cannot be empty. It may not begin with a hyphen ("-") and may not contain a slash
("/"). All other characters, including a space, are valid. A function name also can't be the same as a
reserved keyword or essential builtin like if or set.
• A bind mode name (e.g., bind -m abc ...) must be a valid variable name.
Other things have other restrictions. For instance what is allowed for file names depends on your system,
but at the very least they cannot contain a "/" (because that is the path separator) or NULL byte
(because that is how UNIX ends strings).
Configuration files
When fish is started, it reads and runs its configuration files. Where these are depends on build
configuration and environment variables.
The main file is ~/.config/fish/config.fish (or more precisely $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fish/config.fish).
Configuration files are run in the following order:
• Configuration snippets (named *.fish) in the directories:
• $__fish_config_dir/conf.d (by default, ~/.config/fish/conf.d/)
• $__fish_sysconf_dir/conf.d (by default, /etc/fish/conf.d/)
• Directories for others to ship configuration snippets for their software:
• the directories under $__fish_user_data_dir (usually ~/.local/share/fish, controlled by the
XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable)
• a fish/vendor_conf.d directory in the directories listed in $XDG_DATA_DIRS (default
/usr/share/fish/vendor_conf.d and /usr/local/share/fish/vendor_conf.d)
These directories are also accessible in $__fish_vendor_confdirs. Note that changing that in a
running fish won't do anything as by that point the directories have already been read.
If there are multiple files with the same name in these directories, only the first will be executed.
They are executed in order of their filename, sorted (like globs) in a natural order (i.e. "01" sorts
before "2").
• System-wide configuration files, where administrators can include initialization for all users on the
system - similar to /etc/profile for POSIX-style shells - in $__fish_sysconf_dir (usually
/etc/fish/config.fish).
• User configuration, usually in ~/.config/fish/config.fish (controlled by the XDG_CONFIG_HOME
environment variable, and accessible as $__fish_config_dir).
~/.config/fish/config.fish is sourced after the snippets. This is so you can copy snippets and override
some of their behavior.
These files are all executed on the startup of every shell. If you want to run a command only on starting
an interactive shell, use the exit status of the command status --is-interactive to determine if the
shell is interactive. If you want to run a command only when using a login shell, use status --is-login
instead. This will speed up the starting of non-interactive or non-login shells.
If you are developing another program, you may want to add configuration for all users of fish on a
system. This is discouraged; if not carefully written, they may have side-effects or slow the startup of
the shell. Additionally, users of other shells won't benefit from the fish-specific configuration.
However, if they are required, you can install them to the "vendor" configuration directory. As this path
may vary from system to system, pkg-config should be used to discover it: pkg-config --variable confdir
fish.
For system integration, fish also ships a file called __fish_build_paths.fish. This can be customized
during build, for instance because your system requires special paths to be used.
Future feature flags
Feature flags are how fish stages changes that might break scripts. Breaking changes are introduced as
opt-in, in a few releases they become opt-out, and eventually the old behavior is removed.
You can see the current list of features via status features:
> status features
stderr-nocaret on 3.0 ^ no longer redirects stderr
qmark-noglob on 3.0 ? no longer globs
regex-easyesc on 3.1 string replace -r needs fewer \\'s
ampersand-nobg-in-token on 3.4 & only backgrounds if followed by a separating character
remove-percent-self off 4.0 %self is no longer expanded (use $fish_pid)
test-require-arg off 4.0 builtin test requires an argument
keyboard-protocols on 4.0 Use keyboard protocols (kitty, xterm's modifyotherkeys
Here is what they mean:
• stderr-nocaret was introduced in fish 3.0 and cannot be turned off since fish 3.5. It can still be
tested for compatibility, but a no-stderr-nocaret value will simply be ignored. The flag made ^ an
ordinary character instead of denoting an stderr redirection. Use 2> instead.
• qmark-noglob was also introduced in fish 3.0 (and made the default in 4.0). It makes ? an ordinary
character instead of a single-character glob. Use a * instead (which will match multiple characters) or
find other ways to match files like find.
• regex-easyesc was introduced in 3.1 (and made the default in 3.5). It makes it so the replacement
expression in string replace -r does one fewer round of escaping. Before, to escape a backslash you
would have to use string replace -ra '([ab])' '\\\\\\\\$1'. After, just '\\\\$1' is enough. Check your
string replace calls if you use this anywhere.
• ampersand-nobg-in-token was introduced in fish 3.4 (and made the default in 3.5). It makes it so a & i
no longer interpreted as the backgrounding operator in the middle of a token, so dealing with URLs
becomes easier. Either put spaces or a semicolon after the &. This is recommended formatting anyway,
and fish_indent will have done it for you already.
• remove-percent-self turns off the special %self expansion. It was introduced in 4.0. To get fish's pid,
you can use the fish_pid variable.
• test-require-arg removes builtin test's one-argument form (test "string". It was introduced in 4.0. To
test if a string is non-empty, use test -n "string". If disabled, any call to test that would change
sends a debug message of category "deprecated-test", so starting fish with fish --debug=deprecated-test
can be used to find offending calls.
• keyboard-protocols lets fish turn on various keyboard protocols including the kitty keyboard protocol.
It was introduced in 4.0 and is on by default. Disable it with no-keyboard-protocols to work around
bugs in your terminal.
These changes are introduced off by default. They can be enabled on a per session basis:
> fish --features qmark-noglob,regex-easyesc
or opted into globally for a user:
> set -U fish_features regex-easyesc qmark-noglob
Features will only be set on startup, so this variable will only take effect if it is universal or
exported.
You can also use the version as a group, so 3.0 is equivalent to "stderr-nocaret" and "qmark-noglob".
Instead of a version, the special group all enables all features.
Prefixing a feature with no- turns it off instead. E.g. to reenable the ? single-character glob:
set -Ua fish_features no-qmark-noglob
Event handlers
When defining a new function in fish, it is possible to make it into an event handler, i.e. a function
that is automatically run when a specific event takes place. Events that can trigger a handler currently
are:
• When a signal is delivered
• When a job exits
• When the value of a variable is updated
• When the prompt is about to be shown
Example:
To specify a signal handler for the WINCH signal, write:
function my_signal_handler --on-signal WINCH
echo Got WINCH signal!
end
Fish already has the following named events for the --on-event switch:
• fish_prompt is emitted whenever a new fish prompt is about to be displayed.
• fish_preexec is emitted right before executing an interactive command. The commandline is passed as the
first parameter. Not emitted if command is empty.
• fish_posterror is emitted right after executing a command with syntax errors. The commandline is passed
as the first parameter.
• fish_postexec is emitted right after executing an interactive command. The commandline is passed as the
first parameter. Not emitted if command is empty.
• fish_exit is emitted right before fish exits.
• fish_cancel is emitted when a commandline is cleared.
• fish_focus_in is emitted when fish's terminal gains focus.
• fish_focus_out is emitted when fish's terminal loses focus.
Events can be fired with the emit command, and do not have to be defined before. The names just need to
match. For example:
function handler --on-event imdone
echo generator is done $argv
end
function generator
sleep 1
# The "imdone" is the name of the event
# the rest is the arguments to pass to the handler
emit imdone with $argv
end
If there are multiple handlers for an event, they will all be run, but the order might change between
fish releases, so you should not rely on it.
Please note that event handlers only become active when a function is loaded, which means you need to
otherwise source or execute a function instead of relying on autoloading. One approach is to put it into
your configuration file.
For more information on how to define new event handlers, see the documentation for the function command.
Debugging fish scripts
Fish includes basic built-in debugging facilities that allow you to stop execution of a script at an
arbitrary point. When this happens you are presented with an interactive prompt where you can execute any
fish command to inspect or change state (there are no debug commands as such). For example, you can check
or change the value of any variables using printf and set. As another example, you can run status
print-stack-trace to see how the current breakpoint was reached. To resume normal execution of the
script, simply type exit or ctrl-d.
To start a debug session simply insert the builtin command breakpoint at the point in a function or
script where you wish to gain control, then run the function or script. Also, the default action of the
TRAP signal is to call this builtin, meaning a running script can be actively debugged by sending it the
TRAP signal (kill -s TRAP <PID>). There is limited support for interactively setting or modifying
breakpoints from this debug prompt: it is possible to insert new breakpoints in (or remove old ones from)
other functions by using the funced function to edit the definition of a function, but it is not possible
to add or remove a breakpoint from the function/script currently loaded and being executed.
Another way to debug script issues is to set the fish_trace variable, e.g. fish_trace=1 fish_prompt to
see which commands fish executes when running the fish_prompt function.
Profiling fish scripts
If you specifically want to debug performance issues, fish can be run with the --profile
/path/to/profile.log option to save a profile to the specified path. This profile log includes a
breakdown of how long each step in the execution took.
For example:
> fish --profile /tmp/sleep.prof -ic 'sleep 3s'
> cat /tmp/sleep.prof
Time Sum Command
3003419 3003419 > sleep 3s
This will show the time for each command itself in the first column, the time for the command and every
subcommand (like any commands inside of a function or command substitutions) in the second and the
command itself in the third, separated with tabs.
The time is given in microseconds.
To see the slowest commands last, sort -nk2 /path/to/logfile is useful.
For profiling fish's startup there is also --profile-startup /path/to/logfile.
See fish for more information.
Commands
This is a list of all the commands fish ships with.
Broadly speaking, these fall into a few categories:
Keywords
Core language keywords that make up the syntax, like
• if and else for conditions.
• for and while for loops.
• break and continue to control loops.
• function to define functions.
• return to return a status from a function.
• begin to begin a block and end to end any block (including ifs and loops).
• and, or and not to combine commands logically.
• switch and case to make multiple blocks depending on the value of a variable.
• command or builtin to tell fish what sort of thing to execute
• time to time execution
• exec tells fish to replace itself with a command.
• end to end a block
Tools
Builtins to do a task, like
• cd to change the current directory.
• echo or printf to produce output.
• set_color to colorize output.
• set to set, query or erase variables.
• read to read input.
• string for string manipulation.
• path for filtering paths and handling their components.
• math does arithmetic.
• argparse to make arguments easier to handle.
• count to count arguments.
• type to find out what sort of thing (command, builtin or function) fish would call, or if it exists at
all.
• test checks conditions like if a file exists or a string is empty.
• contains to see if a list contains an entry.
• eval and source to run fish code from a string or file.
• status to get shell information, like whether it's interactive or a login shell, or which file it is
currently running.
• abbr manages Abbreviations.
• bind to change bindings.
• complete manages completions.
• commandline to get or change the commandline contents.
• fish_config to easily change fish's configuration, like the prompt or colorscheme.
• random to generate random numbers or pick from a list.
Known functions
Known functions are a customization point. You can change them to change how your fish behaves. This
includes:
• fish_prompt and fish_right_prompt and fish_mode_prompt to print your prompt.
• fish_command_not_found to tell fish what to do when a command is not found.
• fish_title to change the terminal's title.
• fish_greeting to show a greeting when fish starts.
• fish_should_add_to_history to determine if a command should be added to history
Helper functions
Some helper functions, often to give you information for use in your prompt:
• fish_git_prompt and fish_hg_prompt to print information about the current git or mercurial repository.
• fish_vcs_prompt to print information for either.
• fish_svn_prompt to print information about the current svn repository.
• fish_status_to_signal to give a signal name from a return status.
• prompt_pwd to give the current directory in a nicely formatted and shortened way.
• prompt_login to describe the current login, with user and hostname, and to explain if you are in a
chroot or connected via ssh.
• prompt_hostname to give the hostname, shortened for use in the prompt.
• fish_is_root_user to check if the current user is an administrator user like root.
• fish_add_path to easily add a path to $PATH.
• alias to quickly define wrapper functions ("aliases").
• fish_delta to show what you have changed from the default configuration.
• export as a compatibility function for other shells.
Helper commands
fish also ships some things as external commands so they can be easily called from elsewhere.
This includes fish_indent to format fish code and fish_key_reader to show you what escape sequence a
keypress produces.
The full list
And here is the full list:
_ - call fish's translations
Synopsis
_ STRING
Description
_ translates its arguments into the current language, if possible.
It is equivalent to gettext fish STRING, meaning it can only be used to look up fish's own translations.
It requires fish to be built with gettext support. If that support is disabled, or there is no
translation it will simply echo the argument back.
The language depends on the current locale, set with LANG and LC_MESSAGES.
Options
_ takes no options.
Examples
> _ File
Datei
abbr - manage fish abbreviations
Synopsis
abbr --add NAME [--position command | anywhere] [-r | --regex PATTERN] [-c | --command COMMAND]
[--set-cursor[=MARKER]] ([-f | --function FUNCTION] | EXPANSION)
abbr --erase NAME ...
abbr --rename OLD_WORD NEW_WORD
abbr --show
abbr --list
abbr --query NAME ...
Description
abbr manages abbreviations - user-defined words that are replaced with longer phrases when entered.
NOTE:
Only typed-in commands use abbreviations. Abbreviations are not expanded in scripts.
For example, a frequently-run command like git checkout can be abbreviated to gco. After entering gco
and pressing space or enter, the full text git checkout will appear in the command line. To avoid
expanding something that looks like an abbreviation, the default ctrl-space binding inserts a space
without expanding.
An abbreviation may match a literal word, or it may match a pattern given by a regular expression. When
an abbreviation matches a word, that word is replaced by new text, called its expansion. This expansion
may be a fixed new phrase, or it can be dynamically created via a fish function. This expansion occurs
after pressing space or enter.
Combining these features, it is possible to create custom syntaxes, where a regular expression recognizes
matching tokens, and the expansion function interprets them. See the Examples section.
Changed in version 3.6.0: Previous versions of this allowed saving abbreviations in universal variables.
That's no longer possible. Existing variables will still be imported and abbr --erase will also erase the
variables. We recommend adding abbreviations to config.fish by just adding the abbr --add command. When
you run abbr, you will see output like this
> abbr
abbr -a -- foo bar # imported from a universal variable, see `help abbr`
In that case you should take the part before the # comment and save it in config.fish, then you can run
abbr --erase to remove the universal variable:
> abbr >> ~/.config/fish/config.fish
> abbr --erase (abbr --list)
Alternatively you can keep them in a separate configuration file by doing something like the following:
> abbr > ~/.config/fish/conf.d/myabbrs.fish
This will save all your abbreviations in "myabbrs.fish", overwriting the whole file so it doesn't leave
any duplicates, or restore abbreviations you had erased. Of course any functions will have to be saved
separately, see funcsave.
"add" subcommand
abbr [-a | --add] NAME [--position command | anywhere] [-r | --regex PATTERN]
[-c | --command COMMAND] [--set-cursor[=MARKER]] ([-f | --function FUNCTION] | EXPANSION)
abbr --add creates a new abbreviation. With no other options, the string NAME is replaced by EXPANSION.
With --position command, the abbreviation will only expand when it is positioned as a command, not as an
argument to another command. With --position anywhere the abbreviation may expand anywhere in the command
line. The default is command.
With --command COMMAND, the abbreviation will only expand when it is used as an argument to the given
COMMAND. Multiple --command can be used together, and the abbreviation will expand for each. An empty
COMMAND means it will expand only when there is no command. --command implies --position anywhere and
disallows --position command. Even with different COMMANDS, the NAME of the abbreviation needs to be
unique. Consider using --regex if you want to expand the same word differently for multiple commands.
With --regex, the abbreviation matches using the regular expression given by PATTERN, instead of the
literal NAME. The pattern is interpreted using PCRE2 syntax and must match the entire token. If multiple
abbreviations match the same token, the last abbreviation added is used.
With --set-cursor=MARKER, the cursor is moved to the first occurrence of MARKER in the expansion. The
MARKER value is erased. The MARKER may be omitted (i.e. simply --set-cursor), in which case it defaults
to %.
With -f FUNCTION or --function FUNCTION, FUNCTION is treated as the name of a fish function instead of a
literal replacement. When the abbreviation matches, the function will be called with the matching token
as an argument. If the function's exit status is 0 (success), the token will be replaced by the
function's output; otherwise the token will be left unchanged. No EXPANSION may be given separately.
Examples
abbr --add gco git checkout
Add a new abbreviation where gco will be replaced with git checkout.
abbr -a --position anywhere -- -C --color
Add a new abbreviation where -C will be replaced with --color. The -- allows -C to be treated as the name
of the abbreviation, instead of an option.
abbr -a L --position anywhere --set-cursor "% | less"
Add a new abbreviation where L will be replaced with | less, placing the cursor before the pipe.
function last_history_item
echo $history[1]
end
abbr -a !! --position anywhere --function last_history_item
This first creates a function last_history_item which outputs the last entered command. It then adds an
abbreviation which replaces !! with the result of calling this function. Taken together, this is similar
to the !! history expansion feature of bash.
function vim_edit
echo vim $argv
end
abbr -a vim_edit_texts --position command --regex ".+\.txt" --function vim_edit
This first creates a function vim_edit which prepends vim before its argument. It then adds an
abbreviation which matches commands ending in .txt, and replaces the command with the result of calling
this function. This allows text files to be "executed" as a command to open them in vim, similar to the
"suffix alias" feature in zsh.
abbr 4DIRS --set-cursor=! "$(string join \n -- 'for dir in */' 'cd $dir' '!' 'cd ..' 'end')"
This creates an abbreviation "4DIRS" which expands to a multi-line loop "template." The template enters
each directory and then leaves it. The cursor is positioned ready to enter the command to run in each
directory, at the location of the !, which is itself erased.
abbr --command git co checkout
Turns "co" as an argument to "git" into "checkout". Multiple commands are possible, --command={git,hg}
would expand "co" to "checkout" for both git and hg.
Other subcommands
abbr --rename OLD_NAME NEW_NAME
Renames an abbreviation, from OLD_NAME to NEW_NAME
abbr [-s | --show]
Show all abbreviations in a manner suitable for import and export
abbr [-l | --list]
Prints the names of all abbreviation
abbr [-e | --erase] NAME
Erases the abbreviation with the given name
abbr -q or --query [NAME...]
Return 0 (true) if one of the NAME is an abbreviation.
abbr -h or --help
Displays help for the abbr command.
alias - create a function
Synopsis
alias
alias [--save] NAME DEFINITION
alias [--save] NAME=DEFINITION
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin alias. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man alias.
alias is a simple wrapper for the function builtin, which creates a function wrapping a command. It has
similar syntax to POSIX shell alias. For other uses, it is recommended to define a function.
If you want to ease your interactive use, to save typing, consider using an abbreviation instead.
fish marks functions that have been created by alias by including the command used to create them in the
function description. You can list alias-created functions by running alias without arguments. They must
be erased using functions -e.
• NAME is the name of the alias
• DEFINITION is the actual command to execute. alias automatically appends $argv, so that all parameters
used with the alias are passed to the actual command.
You cannot create an alias to a function with the same name. Note that spaces need to be escaped in the
call to alias just like at the command line, even inside quoted parts.
The following options are available:
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
-s or --save
Saves the function created by the alias into your fish configuration directory using funcsave.
Example
The following code will create rmi, which runs rm with additional arguments on every invocation.
alias rmi="rm -i"
# This is equivalent to entering the following function:
function rmi --wraps rm --description 'alias rmi=rm -i'
rm -i $argv
end
alias sometimes requires escaping, as you can see here:
# This needs to have the spaces escaped or "Chrome.app..."
# will be seen as an argument to "/Applications/Google":
alias chrome='/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome'
See more
1. The function command this builds on.
2. Functions.
3. Defining aliases.
and - conditionally execute a command
Synopsis
PREVIOUS; and COMMAND
Description
and is used to execute a command if the previous command was successful (returned a status of 0).
and statements may be used as part of the condition in an while or if block.
and does not change the current exit status itself, but the command it runs most likely will. The exit
status of the last foreground command to exit can always be accessed using the $status variable.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
The following code runs the make command to build a program. If the build succeeds, make's exit status is
0, and the program is installed. If either step fails, the exit status is 1, and make clean is run, which
removes the files created by the build process.
make; and make install; or make clean
See Also
• or command
• not command
argparse - parse options passed to a fish script or function
Synopsis
argparse [OPTIONS] OPTION_SPEC ... -- [ARG ...]
Description
This command makes it easy for fish scripts and functions to handle arguments. You pass arguments that
define the known options, followed by a literal --, then the arguments to be parsed (which might also
include a literal --). argparse then sets variables to indicate the passed options with their values, and
sets $argv to the remaining arguments. See the usage section below.
Each option specification (OPTION_SPEC) is written in the domain specific language described below. All
OPTION_SPECs must appear after any argparse flags and before the -- that separates them from the
arguments to be parsed.
Each option that is seen in the ARG list will result in variables named _flag_X, where X is the short
flag letter and the long flag name (if they are defined). For example a --help option could cause
argparse to define one variable called _flag_h and another called _flag_help.
The variables will be set with local scope (i.e., as if the script had done set -l _flag_X). If the flag
is a boolean (that is, it just is passed or not, it doesn't have a value) the values are the short and
long flags seen. If the option is not a boolean the values will be zero or more values corresponding to
the values collected when the ARG list is processed. If the flag was not seen the flag variable will not
be set.
Options
The following argparse options are available. They must appear before all OPTION_SPECs:
-n or --name
The command name for use in error messages. By default the current function name will be used, or
argparse if run outside of a function.
-x or --exclusive OPTIONS
A comma separated list of options that are mutually exclusive. You can use this more than once to
define multiple sets of mutually exclusive options. You give either the short or long version of
each option, and you still need to otherwise define the options.
-N or --min-args NUMBER
The minimum number of acceptable non-option arguments. The default is zero.
-X or --max-args NUMBER
The maximum number of acceptable non-option arguments. The default is infinity.
-i or --ignore-unknown
Ignores unknown options, keeping them and their arguments in $argv instead.
-s or --stop-nonopt
Causes scanning the arguments to stop as soon as the first non-option argument is seen. Among
other things, this is useful to implement subcommands that have their own options.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Usage
To use this command, pass the option specifications (OPTION_SPEC), a mandatory --, and then the arguments
to be parsed.
A simple example:
argparse 'h/help' 'n/name=' -- $argv
or return
If $argv is empty then there is nothing to parse and argparse returns zero to indicate success. If $argv
is not empty then it is checked for flags -h, --help, -n and --name. If they are found they are removed
from the arguments and local variables called _flag_OPTION are set so the script can determine which
options were seen. If $argv doesn't have any errors, like an unknown option or a missing mandatory value
for an option, then argparse exits with a status of zero. Otherwise it writes appropriate error messages
to stderr and exits with a status of one.
The or return means that the function returns argparse's status if it failed, so if it goes on argparse
succeeded.
To use the flags argparse has extracted:
# Checking for _flag_h and _flag_help is equivalent
# We check if it has been given at least once
if set -ql _flag_h
echo "Usage: my_function [-h | --help] [-n | --name=NAME]" >&2
return 1
end
set -l myname somedefault
set -ql _flag_name[1]
and set myname $_flag_name[-1] # here we use the *last* --name=
Any characters in the flag name that are not valid in a variable name (like - dashes) will be replaced
with underscores.
The -- argument is required. You do not have to include any option specifications or arguments after the
-- but you must include the --. For example, this is acceptable:
set -l argv foo
argparse 'h/help' 'n/name' -- $argv
argparse --min-args=1 -- $argv
But this is not:
set -l argv
argparse 'h/help' 'n/name' $argv
The first -- seen is what allows the argparse command to reliably separate the option specifications and
options to argparse itself (like --ignore-unknown) from the command arguments, so it is required.
Option Specifications
Each option specification consists of:
• An optional alphanumeric short flag character, followed by a / if the short flag can be used by someone
invoking your command or, for backwards compatibility, a - if it should not be exposed as a valid short
flag (in which case it will also not be exposed as a flag variable).
• An optional long flag name, which if not present the short flag can be used, and if that is also not
present, an error is reported
• Nothing if the flag is a boolean that takes no argument or is an integer flag, or
• = if it requires a value and only the last instance of the flag is saved, or
• =? if it takes an optional value and only the last instance of the flag is saved, or
• =+ if it requires a value and each instance of the flag is saved.
• Optionally a ! followed by fish script to validate the value. Typically this will be a function to run.
If the exit status is zero the value for the flag is valid. If non-zero the value is invalid. Any error
messages should be written to stdout (not stderr). See the section on Flag Value Validation for more
information.
See the fish_opt command for a friendlier but more verbose way to create option specifications.
If a flag is not seen when parsing the arguments then the corresponding _flag_X var(s) will not be set.
Integer flag
Sometimes commands take numbers directly as options, like foo -55. To allow this one option spec can have
the # modifier so that any integer will be understood as this flag, and the last number will be given as
its value (as if = was used).
The # must follow the short flag letter (if any), and other modifiers like = are not allowed, except for
- (for backwards compatibility):
m#maximum
This does not read numbers given as +NNN, only those that look like flags - -NNN.
Note: Optional arguments
An option defined with =? can take optional arguments. Optional arguments have to be directly attached to
the option they belong to.
That means the argument will only be used for the option if you use it like:
cmd --flag=value
# or
cmd -fvalue
but not if used like:
cmd --flag value
# "value" here will be used as a positional argument
# and "--flag" won't have an argument.
If this weren't the case, using an option without an optional argument would be difficult if you also
wanted to use positional arguments.
For example:
grep --color auto
# Here "auto" will be used as the search string,
# "color" will not have an argument and will fall back to the default,
# which also *happens to be* auto.
grep --color always
# Here grep will still only use color "auto"matically
# and search for the string "always".
This isn't specific to argparse but common to all things using getopt(3) (if they have optional arguments
at all). That grep example is how GNU grep actually behaves.
Flag Value Validation
Sometimes you need to validate the option values. For example, that it is a valid integer within a
specific range, or an ip address, or something entirely different. You can always do this after argparse
returns but you can also request that argparse perform the validation by executing arbitrary fish script.
To do so simply append an ! (exclamation-mark) then the fish script to be run. When that code is executed
three vars will be defined:
• _argparse_cmd will be set to the value of the value of the argparse --name value.
• _flag_name will be set to the short or long flag that being processed.
• _flag_value will be set to the value associated with the flag being processed.
These variables are passed to the function as local exported variables.
The script should write any error messages to stdout, not stderr. It should return a status of zero if
the flag value is valid otherwise a non-zero status to indicate it is invalid.
Fish ships with a _validate_int function that accepts a --min and --max flag. Let's say your command
accepts a -m or --max flag and the minimum allowable value is zero and the maximum is 5. You would define
the option like this: m/max=!_validate_int --min 0 --max 5. The default if you just call _validate_int
without those flags is to simply check that the value is a valid integer with no limits on the min or max
value allowed.
Here are some examples of flag validations:
# validate that a path is a directory
argparse 'p/path=!test -d "$_flag_value"' -- --path $__fish_config_dir
# validate that a function does not exist
argparse 'f/func=!not functions -q "$_flag_value"' -- -f alias
# validate that a string matches a regex
argparse 'c/color=!string match -rq \'^#?[0-9a-fA-F]{6}$\' "$_flag_value"' -- -c 'c0ffee'
# validate with a validator function
argparse 'n/num=!_validate_int --min 0 --max 99' -- --num 42
Example OPTION_SPECs
Some OPTION_SPEC examples:
• h/help means that both -h and --help are valid. The flag is a boolean and can be used more than once.
If either flag is used then _flag_h and _flag_help will be set to however either flag was seen, as many
times as it was seen. So it could be set to -h, -h and --help, and count $_flag_h would yield "3".
• help means that only --help is valid. The flag is a boolean and can be used more than once. If it is
used then _flag_help will be set as above. Also h-help (with an arbitrary short letter) for backwards
compatibility.
• longonly= is a flag --longonly that requires an option, there is no short flag or even short flag
variable.
• n/name= means that both -n and --name are valid. It requires a value and can be used at most once. If
the flag is seen then _flag_n and _flag_name will be set with the single mandatory value associated
with the flag.
• n/name=? means that both -n and --name are valid. It accepts an optional value and can be used at most
once. If the flag is seen then _flag_n and _flag_name will be set with the value associated with the
flag if one was provided else it will be set with no values.
• name=+ means that only --name is valid. It requires a value and can be used more than once. If the flag
is seen then _flag_name will be set with the values associated with each occurrence.
• x means that only -x is valid. It is a boolean that can be used more than once. If it is seen then
_flag_x will be set as above.
• x=, x=?, and x=+ are similar to the n/name examples above but there is no long flag alternative to the
short flag -x.
• #max (or #-max) means that flags matching the regex "^--?\d+$" are valid. When seen they are assigned
to the variable _flag_max. This allows any valid positive or negative integer to be specified by
prefixing it with a single "-". Many commands support this idiom. For example head -3 /a/file to emit
only the first three lines of /a/file.
• n#max means that flags matching the regex "^--?\d+$" are valid. When seen they are assigned to the
variables _flag_n and _flag_max. This allows any valid positive or negative integer to be specified by
prefixing it with a single "-". Many commands support this idiom. For example head -3 /a/file to emit
only the first three lines of /a/file. You can also specify the value using either flag: -n NNN or
--max NNN in this example.
• #longonly causes the last integer option to be stored in _flag_longonly.
After parsing the arguments the argv variable is set with local scope to any values not already consumed
during flag processing. If there are no unbound values the variable is set but count $argv will be zero.
If an error occurs during argparse processing it will exit with a non-zero status and print error
messages to stderr.
Examples
A simple use:
argparse h/help -- $argv
or return
if set -q _flag_help
# TODO: Print help here
return 0
end
This just wants one option - -h / --help. Any other option is an error. If it is given it prints help and
exits.
How fish_add_path - add to the path parses its args:
argparse -x g,U -x P,U -x a,p g/global U/universal P/path p/prepend a/append h/help m/move v/verbose n/dry-run -- $argv
There are a variety of boolean flags, all with long and short versions. A few of these cannot be used
together, and that is what the -x flag is used for. -x g,U means that --global and --universal or their
short equivalents conflict, and if they are used together you get an error. In this case you only need
to give the short or long flag, not the full option specification.
After this it figures out which variable it should operate on according to the --path flag:
set -l var fish_user_paths
set -q _flag_path
and set var PATH
# ...
# Check for --dry-run.
# The "-" has been replaced with a "_" because
# it is not valid in a variable name
not set -ql _flag_dry_run
and set $var $result
Limitations
One limitation with --ignore-unknown is that, if an unknown option is given in a group with known
options, the entire group will be kept in $argv. argparse will not do any permutations here.
For instance:
argparse --ignore-unknown h -- -ho
echo $_flag_h # is -h, because -h was given
echo $argv # is still -ho
This limitation may be lifted in future.
Additionally, it can only parse known options up to the first unknown option in the group - the unknown
option could take options, so it isn't clear what any character after an unknown option means.
begin - start a new block of code
Synopsis
begin; [COMMANDS ...]; end
Description
begin is used to create a new block of code.
A block allows the introduction of a new variable scope, redirection of the input or output of a set of
commands as a group, or to specify precedence when using the conditional commands like and.
The block is unconditionally executed. begin; ...; end is equivalent to if true; ...; end.
begin does not change the current exit status itself. After the block has completed, $status will be set
to the status returned by the most recent command.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
The following code sets a number of variables inside of a block scope. Since the variables are set inside
the block and have local scope, they will be automatically deleted when the block ends.
begin
set -l PIRATE Yarrr
...
end
echo $PIRATE
# This will not output anything, since the PIRATE variable
# went out of scope at the end of the block
In the following code, all output is redirected to the file out.html.
begin
echo $xml_header
echo $html_header
if test -e $file
...
end
...
end > out.html
bg - send jobs to background
Synopsis
bg [PID ...]
Description
bg sends jobs to the background, resuming them if they are stopped.
A background job is executed simultaneously with fish, and does not have access to the keyboard. If no
job is specified, the last job to be used is put in the background. If PID is specified, the jobs
containing the specified process IDs are put in the background.
A PID of the format %n, where n is an integer, will be interpreted as the PID of job number n. Job
numbers can be seen in the output of jobs.
When at least one of the arguments isn't a valid job specifier, bg will print an error without
backgrounding anything.
When all arguments are valid job specifiers, bg will background all matching jobs that exist.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
The typical use is to run something, stop it with ctrl-z, and then continue it in the background with bg:
> find / -name "*.js" >/tmp/jsfiles 2>/dev/null # oh no, this takes too long, let's press Ctrl-z!
fish: Job 1, 'find / -name "*.js" >/tmp/jsfil…' has stopped
> bg
Send job 1 'find / -name "*.js" >/tmp/jsfiles 2>/dev/null' to background
> # I can continue using this shell!
> # Eventually:
fish: Job 1, 'find / -name "*.js" >/tmp/jsfil…' has ended
bg 123 456 789 will background the jobs that contain processes 123, 456 and 789.
If only 123 and 789 exist, it will still background them and print an error about 456.
bg 123 banana or bg banana 123 will complain that "banana" is not a valid job specifier.
bg %2 will background job 2.
bind - handle fish key bindings
Synopsis
bind [(-M | --mode) MODE] [(-m | --sets-mode) NEW_MODE] [--preset | --user] [-s | --silent] KEYS COMMAND ...
bind [(-M | --mode) MODE] [--preset] [--user] [KEYS]
bind [-a | --all] [--preset] [--user]
bind (-f | --function-names)
bind (-L | --list-modes)
bind (-e | --erase) [(-M | --mode) MODE] [--preset] [--user] [-a | --all] | KEYS ...
Description
bind manages key bindings.
If both KEYS and COMMAND are given, bind adds (or replaces) a binding in MODE. If only KEYS is given,
any existing binding in the given MODE will be printed.
KEYS is a comma-separated list of key names. Modifier keys can be specified by prefixing a key name with
a combination of ctrl-, alt-, shift- and super- (i.e. the "windows" or "command" key). For example,
pressing w while holding the Alt modifier is written as alt-w. Key names are case-sensitive; for example
alt-W is the same as alt-shift-w. ctrl-x,ctrl-e would mean pressing ctrl-x followed by ctrl-e.
Some keys have names, usually because they don't have an obvious printable character representation.
They are:
• the arrow keys up, down, left and right,
• backspace,
• comma (,),
• delete,
• end,
• enter,
• escape,
• f1 through f12.
• home,
• insert,
• minus (-),
• pageup,
• pagedown,
• space and
• tab,
These names are case-sensitive.
An empty value ('') for KEYS designates the generic binding that will be used if nothing else matches.
For most bind modes, it makes sense to bind this to the self-insert function (i.e. bind '' self-insert).
This will insert any keystrokes that have no bindings otherwise. Non-printable characters are ignored by
the editor, so this will not result in control sequences being inserted.
To find the name of a key combination you can use fish_key_reader.
COMMAND can be any fish command, but it can also be one of a set of special input functions. These
include functions for moving the cursor, operating on the kill-ring, performing tab completion, etc. Use
bind --function-names or see below for a list of these input functions.
NOTE:
If a script changes the commandline, it should finish by calling the repaint special input function.
If no KEYS argument is provided, all bindings (in the given MODE) are printed. If KEYS is provided but no
COMMAND, just the binding matching that sequence is printed.
Key bindings may use "modes", which mimics vi's modal input behavior. The default mode is "default".
Every key binding applies to a single mode; you can specify which one with -M MODE. If the key binding
should change the mode, you can specify the new mode with -m NEW_MODE. The mode can be viewed and changed
via the $fish_bind_mode variable. If you want to change the mode from inside a fish function, use set
fish_bind_mode MODE.
To save custom key bindings, put the bind statements into config.fish. Alternatively, fish also
automatically executes a function called fish_user_key_bindings if it exists.
Options
The following options are available:
-f or --function-names
Display a list of available input functions
-L or --list-modes
Display a list of defined bind modes
-M MODE or --mode MODE
Specify a bind mode that the bind is used in. Defaults to "default"
-m NEW_MODE or --sets-mode NEW_MODE
Change the current mode to NEW_MODE after this binding is executed
-e or --erase
Erase the binding with the given sequence and mode instead of defining a new one. Multiple
sequences can be specified with this flag. Specifying -a or --all with -M or --mode erases all
binds in the given mode regardless of sequence. Specifying -a or --all without -M or --mode
erases all binds in all modes regardless of sequence.
-a or --all
See --erase
--preset and --user
Specify if bind should operate on user or preset bindings. User bindings take precedence over
preset bindings when fish looks up mappings. By default, all bind invocations work on the "user"
level except for listing, which will show both levels. All invocations except for inserting new
bindings can operate on both levels at the same time (if both --preset and --user are given).
--preset should only be used in full binding sets (like when working on fish_vi_key_bindings).
-s or --silent
Silences some of the error messages, including for unknown key names and unbound sequences.
-k KEY_NAME or --key KEY_NAME
This looks up KEY_NAME in terminfo and binds that sequence instead of a key that fish would
decode. To view a list of the terminfo keys fish knows about, use bind --key-names or bind -K.
This is deprecated and provided for compatibility with older fish versions. You should bind the
keys directly. Instead of bind -k sright use bind shift-right, instead of bind -k nul use bind
ctrl-space and so on.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Special input functions
The following special input functions are available:
and only execute the next function if the previous succeeded (note: only some functions report
success)
accept-autosuggestion
accept the current autosuggestion. Returns false when there was nothing to accept.
backward-char
move one character to the left. If the completion pager is active, select the previous completion
instead.
backward-char-passive
move one character to the left, but do not trigger any non-movement-related operations. If the
cursor is at the start of the commandline, does nothing. Does not change the selected item in the
completion pager UI when shown.
backward-bigword
move one whitespace-delimited word to the left
backward-token
move one argument to the left
backward-delete-char
deletes one character of input to the left of the cursor
backward-kill-bigword
move the whitespace-delimited word to the left of the cursor to the killring
backward-kill-token
move the argument to the left of the cursor to the killring
backward-kill-line
move everything from the beginning of the line to the cursor to the killring
backward-kill-path-component
move one path component to the left of the cursor to the killring. A path component is everything
likely to belong to a path component, i.e. not any of the following: /={,}'":@ |;<>&, plus
newlines and tabs.
backward-kill-word
move the word to the left of the cursor to the killring. The "word" here is everything up to
punctuation or whitespace.
backward-word
move one word to the left
beginning-of-buffer
moves to the beginning of the buffer, i.e. the start of the first line
beginning-of-history
move to the beginning of the history
beginning-of-line
move to the beginning of the line
begin-selection
start selecting text
cancel close the pager if it is open, or undo the most recent completion if one was just inserted, or
otherwise cancel the current commandline and replace it with a new empty one
cancel-commandline
cancel the current commandline and replace it with a new empty one, leaving the old one in place
with a marker to show that it was cancelled
capitalize-word
make the current word begin with a capital letter
clear-commandline
empty the entire commandline
clear-screen
clears the screen and redraws the prompt. if the terminal doesn't support clearing the screen it
is the same as repaint.
complete
guess the remainder of the current token
complete-and-search
invoke the searchable pager on completion options (for convenience, this also moves backwards in
the completion pager)
delete-char
delete one character to the right of the cursor
delete-or-exit
delete one character to the right of the cursor, or exit the shell if the commandline is empty
down-line
move down one line
downcase-word
make the current word lowercase
end-of-buffer
moves to the end of the buffer, i.e. the end of the first line
end-of-history
move to the end of the history
end-of-line
move to the end of the line
end-selection
end selecting text
expand-abbr
expands any abbreviation currently under the cursor
execute
run the current commandline
exit exit the shell
forward-bigword
move one whitespace-delimited word to the right
forward-token
move one argument to the right
forward-char
move one character to the right; or if at the end of the commandline, accept the current
autosuggestion. If the completion pager is active, select the next completion instead.
forward-char-passive
move one character to the right, but do not trigger any non-movement-related operations. If the
cursor is at the end of the commandline, does not accept the current autosuggestion (if any). Does
not change the selected item in the completion pager, if shown.
forward-single-char
move one character to the right; or if at the end of the commandline, accept a single char from
the current autosuggestion.
forward-word
move one word to the right; or if at the end of the commandline, accept one word from the current
autosuggestion.
history-pager
invoke the searchable pager on history (incremental search); or if the history pager is already
active, search further backwards in time.
history-pager-delete
permanently delete the current history item, either from the history pager or from an active
up-arrow history search
history-search-backward
search the history for the previous match
history-search-forward
search the history for the next match
history-prefix-search-backward
search the history for the previous prefix match
history-prefix-search-forward
search the history for the next prefix match
history-token-search-backward
search the history for the previous matching argument
history-token-search-forward
search the history for the next matching argument
forward-jump and backward-jump
read another character and jump to its next occurrence after/before the cursor
forward-jump-till and backward-jump-till
jump to right before the next occurrence
repeat-jump and repeat-jump-reverse
redo the last jump in the same/opposite direction
jump-to-matching-bracket
jump to matching bracket if the character under the cursor is bracket; otherwise, jump to the next
occurrence of any right bracket after the cursor. The following brackets are considered: ([{}])
jump-till-matching-bracket
the same as jump-to-matching-bracket but offset cursor to the right for left bracket, and offset
cursor to the left for right bracket. The offset is applied for both the position we jump from
and position we jump to. In other words, the cursor will continuously jump inside the brackets
but won't reach them by 1 character. The input function is useful to emulate ib vi text object.
The following brackets are considered: ([{}])
kill-bigword
move the next whitespace-delimited word to the killring
kill-token
move the next argument to the killring
kill-line
move everything from the cursor to the end of the line to the killring
kill-selection
move the selected text to the killring
kill-whole-line
move the line (including the following newline) to the killring. If the line is the last line, its
preceding newline is also removed
kill-inner-line
move the line (without the following newline) to the killring
kill-word
move the next word to the killring
nextd-or-forward-word
if the commandline is empty, then move forward in the directory history, otherwise move one word
to the right; or if at the end of the commandline, accept one word from the current
autosuggestion.
or only execute the next function if the previous did not succeed (note: only some functions report
failure)
pager-toggle-search
toggles the search field if the completions pager is visible; or if used after history-pager,
search forwards in time.
prevd-or-backward-word
if the commandline is empty, then move backward in the directory history, otherwise move one word
to the left
repaint
reexecutes the prompt functions and redraws the prompt (also force-repaint for
backwards-compatibility)
repaint-mode
reexecutes the fish_mode_prompt and redraws the prompt. This is useful for vi mode. If no
fish_mode_prompt exists or it prints nothing, it acts like a normal repaint.
self-insert
inserts the matching sequence into the command line
self-insert-notfirst
inserts the matching sequence into the command line, unless the cursor is at the beginning
suppress-autosuggestion
remove the current autosuggestion. Returns true if there was a suggestion to remove.
swap-selection-start-stop
go to the other end of the highlighted text without changing the selection
transpose-chars
transpose two characters to the left of the cursor
transpose-words
transpose two words to the left of the cursor
togglecase-char
toggle the capitalisation (case) of the character under the cursor
togglecase-selection
toggle the capitalisation (case) of the selection
insert-line-under
add a new line under the current line
insert-line-over
add a new line over the current line
up-line
move up one line
undo and redo
revert or redo the most recent edits on the command line
upcase-word
make the current word uppercase
yank insert the latest entry of the killring into the buffer
yank-pop
rotate to the previous entry of the killring
Additional functions
The following functions are included as normal functions, but are particularly useful for input editing:
up-or-search and down-or-search
move the cursor or search the history depending on the cursor position and current mode
edit_command_buffer
open the visual editor (controlled by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variables) with the current
command-line contents
fish_clipboard_copy
copy the current selection to the system clipboard
fish_clipboard_paste
paste the current selection from the system clipboard before the cursor
fish_commandline_append
append the argument to the command-line. If the command-line already ends with the argument, this
removes the suffix instead. Starts with the last command from history if the command-line is
empty.
fish_commandline_prepend
prepend the argument to the command-line. If the command-line already starts with the argument,
this removes the prefix instead. Starts with the last command from history if the command-line is
empty.
Examples
Exit the shell when ctrl-d is pressed:
bind ctrl-d 'exit'
Perform a history search when pageup is pressed:
bind pageup history-search-backward
Turn on vi key bindings and rebind ctrl-c to clear the input line:
set -g fish_key_bindings fish_vi_key_bindings
bind -M insert ctrl-c kill-whole-line repaint
Launch git diff and repaint the commandline afterwards when ctrl-g is pressed:
bind ctrl-g 'git diff' repaint
Terminal Limitations
Unix terminals, like the ones fish operates in, are at heart 70s technology. They have some limitations
that applications running inside them can't workaround.
For instance, historically the control key modifies a character by setting the top three bits to 0. This
means:
• Many characters + control are indistinguishable from other keys: ctrl-i is tab, ctrl-j is newline (\n).
• Control and shift don't work simultaneously - ctrl-X is the same as ctrl-x.
Other keys don't have a direct encoding, and are sent as escape sequences. For example right (→) usually
sends \e\[C.
Some modern terminals support newer encodings for keys, that allow distinguishing more characters and
modifiers, and fish enables as many of these as it can, automatically.
When in doubt, run fish_key_reader - explore what characters keyboard keys send. If that tells you that
pressing ctrl-i sends tab, your terminal does not support these better encodings, and so fish is limited
to what it sends.
Key timeout
When you've bound a sequence of multiple characters, there is always the possibility that fish has only
seen a part of it, and then it needs to disambiguate between the full sequence and part of it.
For example:
bind j,k 'commandline -i foo'
# or `bind jk`
will bind the sequence jk to insert "foo" into the commandline. When you've only pressed "j", fish
doesn't know if it should insert the "j" (because of the default self-insert), or wait for the "k".
You can enable a timeout for this, by setting the fish_sequence_key_delay_ms variable to the timeout in
milliseconds. If the timeout elapses, fish will no longer wait for the sequence to be completed, and do
what it can with the characters it already has.
The escape key is a special case, because it can be used standalone as a real key or as part of a longer
escape sequence, like function or arrow keys. Holding alt and something else also typically sends escape,
for example holding alt+a will send an escape character and then an "a". So the escape character has its
own timeout configured with fish_escape_delay_ms.
See also Key sequences.
block - temporarily block delivery of events
Synopsis
block [(--local | --global)]
block --erase
Description
block delays delivery of all events triggered by fish or the emit, thus delaying the execution of any
function registered --on-event, --on-process-exit, --on-job-exit, --on-variable and --on-signal until
after the block is removed.
Event blocks should not be confused with code blocks, which are created with begin, if, while or for
Without options, block sets up a block that is released automatically at the end of the current function
scope.
The following options are available:
-l or --local
Release the block automatically at the end of the current innermost code block scope.
-g or --global
Never automatically release the lock.
-e or --erase
Release global block.
-h or --help
Display help about using this command.
Example
# Create a function that listens for events
function --on-event foo foo; echo 'foo fired'; end
# Block the delivery of events
block -g
emit foo
# No output will be produced
block -e
# 'foo fired' will now be printed
Notes
Events are only received from the current fish process as there is no way to send events from one fish
process to another.
break - stop the current inner loop
Synopsis
LOOP_CONSTRUCT
[COMMANDS ...]
break
[COMMANDS ...]
end
Description
break halts a currently running loop (LOOP_CONSTRUCT), such as a for or while loop. It is usually added
inside of a conditional block such as an if block.
There are no parameters for break.
Example
The following code searches all .c files for "smurf", and halts at the first occurrence.
for i in *.c
if grep smurf $i
echo Smurfs are present in $i
break
end
end
See Also
• the continue command, to skip the remainder of the current iteration of the current inner loop
breakpoint - launch debug mode
Synopsis
breakpoint
Description
breakpoint is used to halt a running script and launch an interactive debugging prompt.
For more details, see Debugging fish scripts in the fish manual.
There are no parameters for breakpoint.
builtin - run a builtin command
Synopsis
builtin [OPTIONS] BUILTINNAME
builtin --query BUILTINNAME ...
builtin --names
Description
builtin forces the shell to use a builtin command named BUILTIN, rather than a function or external
program.
The following options are available:
-n or --names
Lists the names of all defined builtins.
-q or --query BUILTIN
Tests if any of the specified builtins exist. If any exist, it returns 0, 1 otherwise.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Example
builtin jobs
# executes the jobs builtin, even if a function named jobs exists
case - conditionally execute a block of commands
Synopsis
switch VALUE
[case [GLOB ...]
[COMMAND ...]]
end
Description
switch executes one of several blocks of commands, depending on whether a specified value matches one of
several values. case is used together with the switch statement in order to determine which block should
be executed.
Each case command is given one or more parameters. The first case command with a parameter that matches
the string specified in the switch command will be evaluated. case parameters may contain wildcards.
These need to be escaped or quoted in order to avoid regular wildcard expansion using filenames.
Note that fish does not fall through on case statements. Only the first matching case is executed.
Note that command substitutions in a case statement will be evaluated even if its body is not taken. All
substitutions, including command substitutions, must be performed before the value can be compared
against the parameter.
Example
Say $animal contains the name of an animal. Then this code would classify it:
switch $animal
case cat
echo evil
case wolf dog human moose dolphin whale
echo mammal
case duck goose albatross
echo bird
case shark trout stingray
echo fish
# Note that the next case has a wildcard which is quoted
case '*'
echo I have no idea what a $animal is
end
If the above code was run with $animal set to whale, the output would be mammal.
If $animal was set to "banana", it would print "I have no idea what a banana is".
cd - change directory
Synopsis
cd [DIRECTORY]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin cd. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man cd.
cd changes the current working directory.
If DIRECTORY is given, it will become the new directory. If no parameter is given, the HOME environment
variable will be used.
If DIRECTORY is a relative path, all the paths in the CDPATH will be tried as prefixes for it, in
addition to PWD. It is recommended to keep . as the first element of CDPATH, or PWD will be tried last.
Fish will also try to change directory if given a command that looks like a directory (starting with ., /
or ~, or ending with /), without explicitly requiring cd.
Fish also ships a wrapper function around the builtin cd that understands cd - as changing to the
previous directory. See also prevd. This wrapper function maintains a history of the 25 most recently
visited directories in the $dirprev and $dirnext global variables. If you make those universal variables
your cd history is shared among all fish instances.
As a special case, cd . is equivalent to cd $PWD, which is useful in cases where a mountpoint has been
recycled or a directory has been removed and recreated.
The --help or -h option displays help about using this command, and does not change the directory.
Examples
cd
# changes the working directory to your home directory.
cd /usr/src/fish-shell
# changes the working directory to /usr/src/fish-shell
See Also
Navigate directories using the directory history or the directory stack
cdh - change to a recently visited directory
Synopsis
cdh [DIRECTORY]
Description
cdh with no arguments presents a list of recently visited directories. You can then select one of the
entries by letter or number. You can also press tab to use the completion pager to select an item from
the list. If you give it a single argument it is equivalent to cd DIRECTORY.
Note that the cd command limits directory history to the 25 most recently visited directories. The
history is stored in the dirprev and dirnext variables, which this command manipulates. If you make
those universal variables, your cd history is shared among all fish instances.
See Also
• the dirh command to print the directory history
• the prevd command to move backward
• the nextd command to move forward
command - run a program
Synopsis
command [OPTIONS] [COMMANDNAME [ARG ...]]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin command. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions,
use command man command.
command forces the shell to execute the program COMMANDNAME and ignore any functions or builtins with the
same name.
In command foo, command is a keyword.
The following options are available:
-a or --all
Prints all COMMAND found in PATH, in the order found.
-q or --query
Return 0 if any of the given commands could be found, 127 otherwise. Don't print anything. For
compatibility, this is also --quiet (deprecated).
-s or --search (or -v)
Prints the external command that would be executed, or prints nothing if no file with the
specified name could be found in PATH.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Examples
command ls executes the ls program, even if an ls function also exists.
command -s ls prints the path to the ls program.
command -q git; and command git log runs git log only if git exists.
command -sq git and command -q git and command -vq git return true (0) if a git command could be found and don't print anything.
commandline - set or get the current command line buffer
Synopsis
commandline [OPTIONS] [CMD]
Description
commandline can be used to set or get the current contents of the command line buffer.
With no parameters, commandline returns the current value of the command line.
With CMD specified, the command line buffer is erased and replaced with the contents of CMD.
The following options are available:
-C or --cursor
Set or get the current cursor position, not the contents of the buffer. If no argument is given,
the current cursor position is printed, otherwise the argument is interpreted as the new cursor
position. If one of the options -j, -p or -t is given, the position is relative to the respective
substring instead of the entire command line buffer.
-B or --selection-start
Get current position of the selection start in the buffer.
-E or --selection-end
Get current position of the selection end in the buffer.
-f or --function
Causes any additional arguments to be interpreted as input functions, and puts them into the
queue, so that they will be read before any additional actual key presses are. This option cannot
be combined with any other option. See bind for a list of input functions.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
The following options change the way commandline updates the command line buffer:
-a or --append
Do not remove the current commandline, append the specified string at the end of it.
-i or --insert
Do not remove the current commandline, insert the specified string at the current cursor position
-r or --replace
Remove the current commandline and replace it with the specified string (default)
The following options change what part of the commandline is printed or updated:
-b or --current-buffer
Select the entire commandline, not including any displayed autosuggestion (default).
-j or --current-job
Select the current job - a job here is one pipeline. Stops at logical operators or terminators
(;, &, and newlines).
-p or --current-process
Select the current process - a process here is one command. Stops at logical operators,
terminators, and pipes.
-s or --current-selection
Selects the current selection
-t or --current-token
Selects the current token
--search-field
Use the pager search field instead of the command line. Returns false if the search field is not
shown.
The following options change the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer:
-c or --cut-at-cursor
Only print selection up until the current cursor position. If combined with --tokens-expanded,
this will print up until the last completed token - excluding the token the cursor is in. This is
typically what you would want for instance in completions. To get both, use both commandline
--cut-at-cursor --tokens-expanded; commandline --cut-at-cursor --current-token, or commandline
-cx; commandline -ct for short.
-x or --tokens-expanded
Perform argument expansion on the selection and print one argument per line. Command
substitutions are not expanded but forwarded as-is.
--tokens-raw
Print arguments in the selection as they appear on the command line, one per line.
-o or tokenize
Deprecated; do not use.
If commandline is called during a call to complete a given string using complete -C STRING, commandline
will consider the specified string to be the current contents of the command line.
The following options output metadata about the commandline state:
-L or --line
If no argument is given, print the line that the cursor is on, with the topmost line starting at
1. Otherwise, set the cursor to the given line.
--column
If no argument is given, print the 1-based offset from the start of the line to the cursor
position in Unicode code points. Otherwise, set the cursor to the given code point offset.
-S or --search-mode
Evaluates to true if the commandline is performing a history search.
-P or --paging-mode
Evaluates to true if the commandline is showing pager contents, such as tab completions.
--paging-full-mode
Evaluates to true if the commandline is showing pager contents, such as tab completions and all
lines are shown (no "<n> more rows" message).
--is-valid
Returns true when the commandline is syntactically valid and complete. If it is, it would be
executed when the execute bind function is called. If the commandline is incomplete, return 2, if
erroneous, return 1.
--showing-suggestion
Evaluates to true (i.e. returns 0) when the shell is currently showing an automatic history
completion/suggestion, available to be consumed via one of the forward- bindings. For example,
can be used to determine if moving the cursor to the right when already at the end of the line
would have no effect or if it would cause a completion to be accepted (note that
forward-char-passive does this automatically).
Example
commandline -j $history[3] replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the command line
history.
If the commandline contains
>_ echo $flounder >&2 | less; and echo $catfish
(with the cursor on the "o" of "flounder")
The echo $flounder >& is the first process, less the second and and echo $catfish the third.
echo $flounder >&2 | less is the first job, and echo $catfish the second.
$flounder is the current token.
The most common use for something like completions is
set -l tokens (commandline -xpc)
which gives the current process (what is being completed), tokenized into separate entries, up to but
excluding the currently being completed token
If you are then also interested in the in-progress token, add
set -l current (commandline -ct)
Note that this makes it easy to render fish's infix matching moot - if possible it's best if the
completions just print all possibilities and leave the matching to the current token up to fish's logic.
More examples:
>_ commandline -t
$flounder
>_ commandline -ct
$fl
>_ commandline -b # or just commandline
echo $flounder >&2 | less; and echo $catfish
>_ commandline -p
echo $flounder >&2
>_ commandline -j
echo $flounder >&2 | less
complete - edit command-specific tab-completions
Synopsis
complete ((-c | --command) | (-p | --path)) COMMAND [OPTIONS]
complete (-C | --do-complete) [--escape] STRING
Description
complete defines, removes or lists completions for a command.
For an introduction to writing your own completions, see Writing your own completions in the fish manual.
The following options are available:
-c or --command COMMAND
Specifies that COMMAND is the name of the command. If there is no -c or -p, one non-option
argument will be used as the command.
-p or --path COMMAND
Specifies that COMMAND is the absolute path of the command (optionally containing wildcards).
-e or --erase
Deletes the specified completion.
-s or --short-option SHORT_OPTION
Adds a short option to the completions list.
-l or --long-option LONG_OPTION
Adds a GNU-style long option to the completions list.
-o or --old-option OPTION
Adds an old-style short or long option (see below for details).
-a or --arguments ARGUMENTS
Adds the specified option arguments to the completions list.
-k or --keep-order
Keeps the order of ARGUMENTS instead of sorting alphabetically. Multiple complete calls with -k
result in arguments of the later ones displayed first.
-f or --no-files
This completion may not be followed by a filename.
-F or --force-files
This completion may be followed by a filename, even if another applicable complete specified
--no-files.
-r or --require-parameter
This completion must have an option argument, i.e. may not be followed by another option. This
means that the next argument is the argument to the option. If this is not given, the option
argument must be attached like -xFoo or --color=auto.
-x or --exclusive
Short for -r and -f.
-d or --description DESCRIPTION
Add a description for this completion, to be shown in the completion pager.
-w or --wraps WRAPPED_COMMAND
Causes the specified command to inherit completions from WRAPPED_COMMAND (see below for details).
-n or --condition CONDITION
This completion should only be used if the CONDITION (a shell command) returns 0. This makes it
possible to specify completions that should only be used in some cases. If multiple conditions are
specified, fish will try them in the order they are specified until one fails or all succeeded.
-C or --do-complete STRING
Makes complete try to find all possible completions for the specified string. If there is no
STRING, the current commandline is used instead.
--escape
When used with -C, escape special characters in completions.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Command-specific tab-completions in fish are based on the notion of options and arguments. An option is a
parameter which begins with a hyphen, such as -h, -help or --help. Arguments are parameters that do not
begin with a hyphen. Fish recognizes three styles of options, the same styles as the GNU getopt library.
These styles are:
• Short options, like -a. Short options are a single character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and
can be grouped together (like -la, which is equivalent to -l -a). Option arguments may be specified by
appending the option with the value (-w32), or, if --require-parameter is given, in the following
parameter (-w 32).
• Old-style options, long like -Wall or -name or even short like -a. Old-style options can be more than
one character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may not be grouped together. Option arguments
are specified by default following a space (-foo null) or after = (-foo=null).
• GNU-style long options, like --colors. GNU-style long options can be more than one character long, are
preceded by two hyphens, and can't be grouped together. Option arguments may be specified after a =
(--quoting-style=shell), or, if --require-parameter is given, in the following parameter
(--quoting-style shell).
Multiple commands and paths can be given in one call to define the same completions for multiple
commands.
Multiple command switches and wrapped commands can also be given to define multiple completions in one
call.
Invoking complete multiple times for the same command adds the new definitions on top of any existing
completions defined for the command.
When -a or --arguments is specified in conjunction with long, short, or old-style options, the specified
arguments are only completed as arguments for any of the specified options. If -a or --arguments is
specified without any long, short, or old-style options, the specified arguments are used when completing
non-option arguments to the command (except when completing an option argument that was specified with -r
or --require-parameter).
Command substitutions found in ARGUMENTS should return a newline-separated list of arguments, and each
argument may optionally have a tab character followed by the argument description. Description given this
way override a description given with -d or --description.
Descriptions given with --description are also used to group options given with -s, -o or -l. Options
with the same (non-empty) description will be listed as one candidate, and one of them will be picked. If
the description is empty or no description was given this is skipped.
The -w or --wraps options causes the specified command to inherit completions from another command,
"wrapping" the other command. The wrapping command can also have additional completions. A command can
wrap multiple commands, and wrapping is transitive: if A wraps B, and B wraps C, then A automatically
inherits all of C's completions. Wrapping can be removed using the -e or --erase options. Wrapping only
works for completions specified with -c or --command and are ignored when specifying completions with -p
or --path.
When erasing completions, it is possible to either erase all completions for a specific command by
specifying complete -c COMMAND -e, or by specifying a specific completion option to delete.
When complete is called without anything that would define or erase completions (options, arguments,
wrapping, ...), it shows matching completions instead. So complete without any arguments shows all loaded
completions, complete -c foo shows all loaded completions for foo. Since completions are autoloaded, you
will have to trigger them first.
Examples
The short-style option -o for the gcc command needs a file argument:
complete -c gcc -s o -r
The short-style option -d for the grep command requires one of read, skip or recurse:
complete -c grep -s d -x -a "read skip recurse"
The su command takes any username as an argument. Usernames are given as the first colon-separated field
in the file /etc/passwd. This can be specified as:
complete -x -c su -d "Username" -a "(cat /etc/passwd | cut -d : -f 1)"
The rpm command has several different modes. If the -e or --erase flag has been specified, rpm should
delete one or more packages, in which case several switches related to deleting packages are valid, like
the nodeps switch.
This can be written as:
complete -c rpm -n "__fish_contains_opt -s e erase" -l nodeps -d "Don't check dependencies"
where __fish_contains_opt is a function that checks the command line buffer for the presence of a
specified set of options.
To implement an alias, use the -w or --wraps option:
complete -c hub -w git
Now hub inherits all of the completions from git. Note this can also be specified in a function
declaration (function thing -w otherthing).
complete -c git
Shows all completions for git.
Any command foo that doesn't support grouping multiple short options in one string (not supporting -xf as
short for -x -f) or a short option and its value in one string (not supporting -d9 instead of -d 9)
should be specified as a single-character old-style option instead of as a short-style option; for
example, complete -c foo -o s; complete -c foo -o v would never suggest foo -ov but rather foo -o -v.
contains - test if a word is present in a list
Synopsis
contains [OPTIONS] KEY [VALUES ...]
Description
contains tests whether the set VALUES contains the string KEY. If so, contains exits with code 0; if
not, it exits with code 1.
The following options are available:
-i or --index
Print the index (number of the element in the set) of the first matching element.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Note that contains interprets all arguments starting with a - as an option to contains, until an --
argument is reached.
See the examples below.
Example
If animals is a list of animals, the following will test if animals contains "cat":
if contains cat $animals
echo Your animal list is evil!
end
This code will add some directories to PATH if they aren't yet included:
for i in ~/bin /usr/local/bin
if not contains $i $PATH
set PATH $PATH $i
end
end
While this will check if function hasargs is being ran with the -q option:
function hasargs
if contains -- -q $argv
echo '$argv contains a -q option'
end
end
The -- here stops contains from treating -q to an option to itself. Instead it treats it as a normal
string to check.
continue - skip the remainder of the current iteration of the current inner loop
Synopsis
LOOP_CONSTRUCT; [COMMANDS ...;] continue; [COMMANDS ...;] end
Description
continue skips the remainder of the current iteration of the current inner loop, such as a for loop or a
while loop. It is usually added inside of a conditional block such as an if statement or a switch
statement.
Example
The following code removes all tmp files that do not contain the word smurf.
for i in *.tmp
if grep smurf $i
continue
end
# This "rm" is skipped over if "continue" is executed.
rm $i
# As is this "echo"
echo $i
end
See Also
• the break command, to stop the current inner loop
count - count the number of elements of a list
Synopsis
count STRING1 STRING2 ...
COMMAND | count
count [...] < FILE
Description
count prints the number of arguments that were passed to it, plus the number of newlines passed to it via
stdin. This is usually used to find out how many elements an environment variable list contains, or how
many lines there are in a text file.
count does not accept any options, not even -h or --help.
count exits with a non-zero exit status if no arguments were passed to it, and with zero if at least one
argument was passed.
Note that, like wc -l, reading from stdin counts newlines, so echo -n foo | count will print 0.
Example
count $PATH
# Returns the number of directories in the users PATH variable.
count *.txt
# Returns the number of files in the current working directory
# ending with the suffix '.txt'.
git ls-files --others --exclude-standard | count
# Returns the number of untracked files in a git repository
printf '%s\n' foo bar | count baz
# Returns 3 (2 lines from stdin plus 1 argument)
count < /etc/hosts
# Counts the number of entries in the hosts file
dirh - print directory history
Synopsis
dirh
Description
dirh prints the current directory history. The current position in the history is highlighted using the
color defined in the fish_color_history_current environment variable.
dirh does not accept any parameters.
Note that the cd command limits directory history to the 25 most recently visited directories. The
history is stored in the $dirprev and $dirnext variables.
See Also
• the cdh command to display a prompt to quickly navigate the history
• the prevd command to move backward
• the nextd command to move forward
dirs - print directory stack
Synopsis
dirs [-c]
Description
dirs prints the current directory stack, as created by pushd and modified by popd.
The following options are available:
-c: Clear the directory stack instead of printing it.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
dirs does not accept any arguments.
See Also
• the cdh command, which provides a more intuitive way to navigate to recently visited directories.
disown - remove a process from the list of jobs
Synopsis
disown [PID ...]
Description
disown removes the specified job from the list of jobs. The job itself continues to exist, but fish does
not keep track of it any longer. This will make fish lose all knowledge of the job, so functions defined
with --on-process-exit or --on-job-exit will no longer fire.
Jobs in the list of jobs are sent a hang-up signal when fish terminates, which usually causes the job to
terminate; disown allows these processes to continue regardless.
If no process is specified, the most recently-used job is removed (like bg and fg). If one or more PIDs
are specified, jobs with the specified process IDs are removed from the job list. Invalid jobs are
ignored and a warning is printed.
If a job is stopped, it is sent a signal to continue running, and a warning is printed. It is not
possible to use the bg builtin to continue a job once it has been disowned.
disown returns 0 if all specified jobs were disowned successfully, and 1 if any problems were
encountered.
The --help or -h option displays help about using this command.
Example
firefox &; disown will start the Firefox web browser in the background and remove it from the job list,
meaning it will not be closed when the fish process is closed.
disown (jobs -p) removes all jobs from the job list without terminating them.
echo - display a line of text
Synopsis
echo [OPTIONS] [STRING]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin echo. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man echo.
echo displays STRING of text.
The following options are available:
-n Do not output a newline.
-s Do not separate arguments with spaces.
-E Disable interpretation of backslash escapes (default).
-e Enable interpretation of backslash escapes.
Unlike other shells, this echo accepts -- to signal the end of the options.
Escape Sequences
If -e is used, the following sequences are recognized:
• \ backslash
• \a alert (BEL)
• \b backspace
• \c produce no further output
• \e escape
• \f form feed
• \n new line
• \r carriage return
• \t horizontal tab
• \v vertical tab
• \0NNN byte with octal value NNN (1 to 3 digits)
• \xHH byte with hexadecimal value HH (1 to 2 digits)
Example
> echo 'Hello World'
Hello World
> echo -e 'Top\nBottom'
Top
Bottom
> echo -- -n
-n
See Also
• the printf command, for more control over output formatting
else - execute command if a condition is not met
Synopsis
if CONDITION; COMMANDS_TRUE ...; [else; COMMANDS_FALSE ...;] end
Description
if will execute the command CONDITION*. If the condition's exit status is 0, the commands COMMANDS_TRUE
will execute. If it is not 0 and else is given, COMMANDS_FALSE will be executed.
Example
The following code tests whether a file foo.txt exists as a regular file.
if test -f foo.txt
echo foo.txt exists
else
echo foo.txt does not exist
end
emit - emit a generic event
Synopsis
emit EVENT_NAME [ARGUMENTS ...]
Description
emit emits, or fires, an event. Events are delivered to, or caught by, special functions called event
handlers. The arguments are passed to the event handlers as function arguments.
The --help or -h option displays help about using this command.
Example
The following code first defines an event handler for the generic event named 'test_event', and then
emits an event of that type.
function event_test --on-event test_event
echo event test: $argv
end
emit test_event something
Notes
Note that events are only sent to the current fish process as there is no way to send events from one
fish process to another.
end - end a block of commands
Synopsis
begin
[COMMANDS ...]
end
function NAME [OPTIONS]; COMMANDS ...; end
if CONDITION; COMMANDS_TRUE ...; [else; COMMANDS_FALSE ...;] end
switch VALUE; [case [WILDCARD ...]; [COMMANDS ...]; ...] end
while CONDITION; COMMANDS ...; end
for VARNAME in [VALUES ...]; COMMANDS ...; end
Description
The end keyword ends a block of commands started by one of the following commands:
• begin to start a block of commands
• function to define a function
• if, switch to conditionally execute commands
• while, for to perform commands multiple times
The end keyword does not change the current exit status. Instead, the status after it will be the status
returned by the most recent command.
eval - evaluate the specified commands
Synopsis
eval [COMMANDS ...]
Description
eval evaluates the specified parameters as a command. If more than one parameter is specified, all
parameters will be joined using a space character as a separator.
If the command does not need access to stdin, consider using source instead.
If no piping or other compound shell constructs are required, variable-expansion-as-command, as in set
cmd ls -la; $cmd, is also an option.
Example
The following code will call the ls command and truncate each filename to the first 12 characters.
set cmd ls \| cut -c 1-12
eval $cmd
exec - execute command in current process
Synopsis
exec COMMAND
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin exec. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man exec.
exec replaces the currently running shell with a new command. On successful completion, exec never
returns. exec cannot be used inside a pipeline.
The --help or -h option displays help about using this command.
Example
exec emacs starts up the emacs text editor, and exits fish. When emacs exits, the session will terminate.
exit - exit the shell
Synopsis
exit [CODE]
Description
exit is a special builtin that causes the shell to exit. Either 255 or the CODE supplied is used,
whichever is lesser. Otherwise, the exit status will be that of the last command executed.
If exit is called while sourcing a file (using the source builtin) the rest of the file will be skipped,
but the shell itself will not exit.
The --help or -h option displays help about using this command.
export - compatibility function for exporting variables
Synopsis
export
export NAME=VALUE
Description
export is a function included for compatibility with POSIX shells. In general, the set builtin should be
used instead.
When called without arguments, export prints a list of currently-exported variables, like set -x.
When called with a NAME=VALUE pair, the variable NAME is set to VALUE in the global scope, and exported
as an environment variable to other commands.
There are no options available.
Example
The following commands have an identical effect.
set -gx PAGER bat
export PAGER=bat
Note: If you want to add to e.g. $PATH, you need to be careful to combine the list. Quote it, like so:
export PATH="$PATH:/opt/bin"
Or just use set, which avoids this:
set -gx PATH $PATH /opt/bin
See more
1. The set command.
false - return an unsuccessful result
Synopsis
false
Description
false sets the exit status to 1.
See Also
• true command
• $status variable
fg - bring job to foreground
Synopsis
fg [PID]
Description
The fg builtin brings the specified job to the foreground, resuming it if it is stopped. While a
foreground job is executed, fish is suspended. If no job is specified, the last job to be used is put in
the foreground. If PID is specified, the job containing a process with the specified process ID is put
in the foreground.
For compatibility with other shells, job expansion syntax is supported for fg. A PID of the format %1
will foreground job 1. Job numbers can be seen in the output of jobs.
The --help or -h option displays help about using this command.
Example
fg will put the last job in the foreground.
fg %3 will put job 3 into the foreground.
fish - the friendly interactive shell
Synopsis
fish [OPTIONS] [FILE [ARG ...]]
fish [OPTIONS] [-c COMMAND [ARG ...]]
Description
fish is a command-line shell written mainly with interactive use in mind. This page briefly describes
the options for invoking fish. The full manual is available in HTML by using the help command from
inside fish, and in the fish-doc(1) man page. The tutorial is available as HTML via help tutorial or in
man fish-tutorial.
The following options are available:
-c or --command=COMMAND
Evaluate the specified commands instead of reading from the commandline, passing additional
positional arguments through $argv.
-C or --init-command=COMMANDS
Evaluate specified commands after reading the configuration but before executing command specified
by -c or reading interactive input.
-d or --debug=DEBUG_CATEGORIES
Enables debug output and specify a pattern for matching debug categories. See Debugging below for
details.
-o or --debug-output=DEBUG_FILE
Specifies a file path to receive the debug output, including categories and fish_trace. The
default is standard error.
-i or --interactive
The shell is interactive.
--install[=PATH]
When built as self-installable (via cargo), this will unpack fish's data files and place them in
~/.local/share/fish/install/. fish will also ask to do this automatically when run interactively.
If PATH is given, fish will install itself into a relocatable directory tree rooted at that path.
That means it will install the data files to PATH/share/fish and copy itself to PATH/bin/fish.
-l or --login
Act as if invoked as a login shell.
-N or --no-config
Do not read configuration files.
-n or --no-execute
Do not execute any commands, only perform syntax checking.
-p or --profile=PROFILE_FILE
when fish exits, output timing information on all executed commands to the specified file. This
excludes time spent starting up and reading the configuration.
--profile-startup=PROFILE_FILE
Will write timing for fish startup to specified file.
-P or --private
Enables private mode: fish will not access old or store new history.
--print-rusage-self
When fish exits, output stats from getrusage.
--print-debug-categories
Print all debug categories, and then exit.
-v or --version
Print version and exit.
-f or --features=FEATURES
Enables one or more comma-separated feature flags.
The fish exit status is generally the exit status of the last foreground command.
Debugging
While fish provides extensive support for debugging fish scripts, it is also possible to debug and
instrument its internals. Debugging can be enabled by passing the --debug option. For example, the
following command turns on debugging for background IO thread events, in addition to the default
categories, i.e. debug, error, warning, and warning-path:
> fish --debug=iothread
Available categories are listed by fish --print-debug-categories. The --debug option accepts a
comma-separated list of categories, and supports glob syntax. The following command turns on debugging
for complete, history, history-file, and profile-history, as well as the default categories:
> fish --debug='complete,*history*'
Debug messages output to stderr by default. Note that if fish_trace is set, execution tracing also
outputs to stderr by default. You can output to a file using the --debug-output option:
> fish --debug='complete,*history*' --debug-output=/tmp/fish.log --init-command='set fish_trace on'
These options can also be changed via the FISH_DEBUG and FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT variables. The categories
enabled via --debug are added to the ones enabled by $FISH_DEBUG, so they can be disabled by prefixing
them with - (reader-*,-ast* enables reader debugging and disables ast debugging).
The file given in --debug-output takes precedence over the file in FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT.
fish_add_path - add to the path
Synopsis
fish_add_path path ...
fish_add_path [(-g | --global) | (-U | --universal) | (-P | --path)] [(-m | --move)] [(-a | --append) | (-p | --prepend)] [(-v | --verbose) | (-n | --dry-run)] PATHS ...
Description
fish_add_path is a simple way to add more directories to fish's PATH. It does this by adding the
directories either to fish_user_paths or directly to PATH (if the --path switch is given).
It is (by default) safe to use fish_add_path in config.fish, or it can be used once, interactively, and
the paths will stay in future because of universal variables. This is a "do what I mean" style command -
it tries to do the right thing by default, and follow your lead on what you have already set up (e.g. by
using a global fish_user_paths if you have that already). If you need more control, consider modifying
the variable yourself.
Directories are normalized with realpath. Trailing slashes are ignored and relative paths are made
absolute (but symlinks are not resolved). If a directory is already included, it is not added again and
stays in the same place unless the --move switch is given.
Directories are added in the order they are given, and they are prepended to the path unless --append is
given. If $fish_user_paths is used, that means they are last in $fish_user_paths, which is itself
prepended to PATH, so they still stay ahead of the system paths. If the --path option is used, the paths
are appended/prepended to PATH directly, so this doesn't happen.
With --path, because PATH must be a global variable instead of a universal one, the changes won't
persist, so those calls need to be stored in config.fish. This also applies to fish_user_paths if you
make it global (for instance by passing --global).
If no directory is new, the variable (fish_user_paths or PATH) is not set again or otherwise modified, so
variable handlers are not triggered.
If an argument is not an existing directory, fish_add_path ignores it.
Options
-a or --append
Add directories to the end of the variable.
-p or --prepend
Add directories to the front of the variable (this is the default).
-g or --global
Use a global fish_user_paths.
-U or --universal
Use a universal fish_user_paths - this is the default if it doesn't already exist.
-P or --path
Manipulate PATH directly.
-m or --move
Move already-included directories to the place they would be added - by default they would be left
in place and not added again.
-v or --verbose
Print the set command used, and some more warnings, like when a path is skipped because it doesn't
exist or is not a directory. Verbose mode is automatically enabled when fish_add_path is used
interactively and the output goes to the terminal.
-n or --dry-run
Print the set command that would be used without executing it.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
If --move is used, it may of course lead to the path swapping order, so you should be careful doing that
in config.fish.
Example
# I just installed mycoolthing and need to add it to the path to use it.
# It is at /opt/mycoolthing/bin/mycoolthing,
# so let's add the directory: /opt/mycoolthing/bin.
> fish_add_path /opt/mycoolthing/bin
# I want my ~/.local/bin to be checked first,
# even if it was already added.
> fish_add_path -m ~/.local/bin
# I prefer using a global fish_user_paths
# This isn't saved automatically, I need to add this to config.fish
# if I want it to stay.
> fish_add_path -g ~/.local/bin ~/.otherbin /usr/local/sbin
# I want to append to the entire $PATH because this directory contains fallbacks
# This needs --path/-P because otherwise it appends to $fish_user_paths,
# which is added to the front of $PATH.
> fish_add_path --append --path /opt/fallback/bin
# I want to add the bin/ directory of my current $PWD (say /home/nemo/)
# -v/--verbose shows what fish_add_path did.
> fish_add_path -v bin/
set fish_user_paths /home/nemo/bin /usr/bin /home/nemo/.local/bin
# I have installed ruby via homebrew
> fish_add_path /usr/local/opt/ruby/bin
fish_breakpoint_prompt - define the prompt when stopped at a breakpoint
Synopsis
fish_breakpoint_prompt
function fish_breakpoint_prompt
...
end
Description
fish_breakpoint_prompt is the prompt function when asking for input in response to a breakpoint command.
The exit status of commands within fish_breakpoint_prompt will not modify the value of $status outside of
the fish_breakpoint_prompt function.
fish ships with a default version of this function that displays the function name and line number of the
current execution context.
Example
A simple prompt that is a simplified version of the default debugging prompt:
function fish_breakpoint_prompt -d "Write out the debug prompt"
set -l function (status current-function)
set -l line (status current-line-number)
set -l prompt "$function:$line >"
echo -ns (set_color $fish_color_status) "BP $prompt" (set_color normal) ' '
end
fish_clipboard_copy - copy text to the system's clipboard
Synopsis
fish_clipboard_copy
foo | fish_clipboard_copy
Description
The fish_clipboard_copy function copies text to the system clipboard.
If stdin is not a terminal (see isatty), it will read all input from there and copy it. If it is, it will
use the current commandline, or the current selection if there is one.
It is bound to ctrl-x by default.
fish_clipboard_copy works by calling a system-specific backend. If it doesn't appear to work you may need
to install yours.
Currently supported are:
• pbcopy
• wl-copy using wayland
• xsel and xclip for X11
• clip.exe on Windows.
See also
• fish_clipboard_paste - get text from the system's clipboard which does the inverse.
fish_clipboard_paste - get text from the system's clipboard
Synopsis
fish_clipboard_paste
fish_clipboard_paste | foo
Description
The fish_clipboard_paste function copies text from the system clipboard.
If its stdout is not a terminal (see isatty), it will output everything there, as-is, without any
additional newlines. If it is, it will put the text in the commandline instead.
If it outputs to the commandline, it will automatically escape the output if the cursor is currently
inside single-quotes so it is suitable for single-quotes (meaning it escapes ' and \\).
It is bound to ctrl-v by default.
fish_clipboard_paste works by calling a system-specific backend. If it doesn't appear to work you may
need to install yours.
Currently supported are:
• pbpaste
• wl-paste using wayland
• xsel and xclip for X11
• powershell.exe on Windows (this backend has encoding limitations and uses windows line endings that
fish_clipboard_paste undoes)
See also
• fish_clipboard_copy - copy text to the system's clipboard which does the inverse.
fish_command_not_found - what to do when a command wasn't found
Synopsis
function fish_command_not_found
...
end
Description
When fish tries to execute a command and can't find it, it invokes this function.
It can print a message to tell you about it, and it often also checks for a missing package that would
include the command.
Fish ships multiple handlers for various operating systems and chooses from them when this function is
loaded, or you can define your own.
It receives the full commandline as one argument per token, so $argv[1] contains the missing command.
When you leave fish_command_not_found undefined (e.g. by adding an empty function file) or explicitly
call __fish_default_command_not_found_handler, fish will just print a simple error.
Example
A simple handler:
function fish_command_not_found
echo Did not find command $argv[1]
end
> flounder
Did not find command flounder
Or the handler for OpenSUSE's command-not-found:
function fish_command_not_found
/usr/bin/command-not-found $argv[1]
end
Or the simple default handler:
function fish_command_not_found
__fish_default_command_not_found_handler $argv
end
Backwards compatibility
This command was introduced in fish 3.2.0. Previous versions of fish used the "fish_command_not_found"
event instead.
To define a handler that works in older versions of fish as well, define it the old way:
function __fish_command_not_found_handler --on-event fish_command_not_found
echo COMMAND WAS NOT FOUND MY FRIEND $argv[1]
end
in which case fish will define a fish_command_not_found that calls it, or define a wrapper:
function fish_command_not_found
echo "G'day mate, could not find your command: $argv"
end
function __fish_command_not_found_handler --on-event fish_command_not_found
fish_command_not_found $argv
end
fish_config - start the web-based configuration interface
Synopsis
fish_config [browse]
fish_config prompt (choose | list | save | show)
fish_config theme (choose | demo | dump | list | save | show)
Description
fish_config is used to configure fish.
Without arguments or with the browse command it starts the web-based configuration interface. The web
interface allows you to view your functions, variables and history, and to make changes to your prompt
and color configuration. It starts a local web server and opens a browser window. When you are finished,
close the browser window and press the Enter key to terminate the configuration session.
If the BROWSER environment variable is set, it will be used as the name of the web browser to open
instead of the system default.
With the prompt command fish_config can be used to view and choose a prompt from fish's sample prompts
inside the terminal directly.
Available subcommands for the prompt command:
• choose loads a sample prompt in the current session.
• list lists the names of the available sample prompts.
• save saves the current prompt to a file (via funcsave).
• show shows what the given sample prompts (or all) would look like.
With the theme command fish_config can be used to view and choose a theme (meaning a color scheme) inside
the terminal.
Available subcommands for the theme command:
• choose loads a sample theme in the current session.
• demo displays some sample text in the current theme.
• dump prints the current theme in a loadable format.
• list lists the names of the available sample themes.
• save saves the given theme to universal variables.
• show shows what the given sample theme (or all) would look like.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Theme Files
fish_config theme and the theme selector in the web config tool load their themes from theme files. These
are stored in the fish configuration directory, typically ~/.config/fish/themes, with a .theme ending.
You can add your own theme by adding a file in that directory.
To get started quickly:
fish_config theme dump > ~/.config/fish/themes/my.theme
which will save your current theme in .theme format.
The format looks like this:
# name: 'Cool Beans'
# preferred_background: black
fish_color_autosuggestion 666
fish_color_cancel -r
fish_color_command normal
fish_color_comment '888' '--italics'
fish_color_cwd 0A0
fish_color_cwd_root A00
fish_color_end 009900
The two comments at the beginning are the name and background that the web config tool shows.
The other lines are just like set variable value, except that no expansions are allowed. Quotes are, but
aren't necessary.
Any color variable fish knows about that the theme doesn't set will be set to empty when it is loaded, so
the old theme is completely overwritten.
Other than that, .theme files can contain any variable with a name that matches the regular expression
'^fish_(?:pager_)?color.*$' - starts with fish_, an optional pager_, then color and then anything.
Example
fish_config or fish_config browse opens a new web browser window and allows you to configure certain fish
settings.
fish_config prompt show demos the available sample prompts.
fish_config prompt choose disco makes the disco prompt the prompt for the current session. This can also
be used in config.fish to set the prompt.
fish_config prompt save saves the current prompt to an autoloaded file.
fish_config prompt save default chooses the default prompt and saves it.
fish_default_key_bindings - set emacs key bindings for fish
Synopsis
fish_default_key_bindings
Description
fish_default_key_bindings sets the emacs key bindings for fish shell.
Some of the Emacs key bindings are defined here.
There are no parameters for fish_default_key_bindings.
Examples
To start using emacs key bindings:
fish_default_key_bindings
fish_delta - compare functions and completions to the default
Synopsis
fish_delta name ...
fish_delta [-f | --no-functions] [-c | --no-completions] [-C | --no-config] [-d | --no-diff] [-n | --new] [-V | --vendor=]
fish_delta [-h | --help]
Description
The fish_delta function tells you, at a glance, which of your functions and completions differ from the
set that fish ships.
It does this by going through the relevant variables (fish_function_path for functions and
fish_complete_path for completions) and comparing the files against fish's default directories.
If any names are given, it will only compare files by those names (plus a ".fish" extension).
By default, it will also use diff to display the difference between the files. If diff is unavailable, it
will skip it, but in that case it also cannot figure out if the files really differ.
The exit status is 1 if there was a difference and 2 for other errors, otherwise 0.
Options
The following options are available:
-f or --no-functions
Stops checking functions
-c or --no-completions
Stops checking completions
-C or --no-config
Stops checking configuration files like config.fish or snippets in the conf.d directories.
-d or --no-diff
Removes the diff display (this happens automatically if diff can't be found)
-n or --new
Also prints new files (i.e. those that can't be found in fish's default directories).
-Vvalue or --vendor=value
Determines how the vendor directories are counted. Valid values are:
• "default" - counts vendor files as belonging to the defaults. Any changes in other directories
will be counted as changes over them. This is the default.
• "user" - counts vendor files as belonging to the user files. Any changes in them will be counted
as new or changed files.
• "ignore" - ignores vendor directories. Files of the same name will be counted as "new" if no
file of the same name in fish's default directories exists.
-h or --help
Prints fish_delta's help (this).
Example
Running just:
fish_delta
will give you a list of all your changed functions and completions, including diffs (if you have the diff
command).
It might look like this:
> fish_delta
New: /home/alfa/.config/fish/functions/battery.fish
Changed: /home/alfa/.config/fish/test/completions/cargo.fish
--- /home/alfa/.config/fish/test/completions/cargo.fish 2022-09-02 12:57:55.579229959 +0200
+++ /usr/share/fish/completions/cargo.fish 2022-09-25 17:51:53.000000000 +0200
# the output of `diff` follows
The options are there to select which parts of the output you want. With --no-completions you can compare
just functions, and with --no-diff you can turn off the diff display.
To only compare your fish_git_prompt, you might use:
fish_delta --no-completions fish_git_prompt
which will only compare files called "fish_git_prompt.fish".
fish_git_prompt - output git information for use in a prompt
Synopsis
fish_git_prompt
function fish_prompt
printf '%s' $PWD (fish_git_prompt) ' $ '
end
Description
The fish_git_prompt function displays information about the current git repository, if any.
Git <https://git-scm.com> must be installed.
There are numerous customization options, which can be controlled with git options or fish variables. git
options, where available, take precedence over the fish variable with the same function. git options can
be set on a per-repository or global basis. git options can be set with the git config command, while
fish variables can be set as usual with the set command.
Boolean options (those which enable or disable something) understand "1", "yes" or "true" to mean true
and every other value to mean false.
• $__fish_git_prompt_show_informative_status or the git option bash.showInformativeStatus can be set to
1, true or yes to enable the "informative" display, which will show a large amount of information - the
number of dirty files, unpushed/unpulled commits, and more. In large repositories, this can take a lot
of time, so you may wish to disable it in these repositories with git config --local
bash.showInformativeStatus false. It also changes the characters the prompt uses to less plain ones (✚
instead of * for the dirty state for example) , and if you are only interested in that, set
$__fish_git_prompt_use_informative_chars instead.
Because counting untracked files requires a lot of time, the number of untracked files is only shown if
enabled via $__fish_git_prompt_showuntrackedfiles or the git option bash.showUntrackedFiles.
• $__fish_git_prompt_showdirtystate or the git option bash.showDirtyState can be set to 1, true or yes to
show if the repository is "dirty", i.e. has uncommitted changes.
• $__fish_git_prompt_showuntrackedfiles or the git option bash.showUntrackedFiles can be set to 1, true
or yes to show if the repository has untracked files (that aren't ignored).
• $__fish_git_prompt_showupstream can be set to a list of values to determine how changes between HEAD
and upstream are shown:
auto summarize the difference between HEAD and its upstream
verbose
show number of commits ahead/behind (+/-) upstream
name if verbose, then also show the upstream abbrev name
informative
similar to verbose, but shows nothing when equal - this is the default if informative status
is enabled.
git always compare HEAD to @{upstream}
svn always compare HEAD to your SVN upstream
none disables (useful with informative status)
• $__fish_git_prompt_showstashstate can be set to 1, true or yes to display the state of the stash.
• $__fish_git_prompt_shorten_branch_len can be set to the number of characters that the branch name will
be shortened to.
• $__fish_git_prompt_describe_style can be set to one of the following styles to describe the current
HEAD:
contains
relative to newer annotated tag, such as (v1.6.3.2~35)
branch relative to newer tag or branch, such as (master~4)
describe
relative to older annotated tag, such as (v1.6.3.1-13-gdd42c2f)
default
an exactly matching tag ((develop))
If none of these apply, the commit SHA shortened to 8 characters is used.
• $__fish_git_prompt_showcolorhints can be set to 1, true or yes to enable coloring for the branch name
and status symbols.
A number of variables set characters and color used as indicators. Many of these have a different default
if used with informative status enabled, or $__fish_git_prompt_use_informative_chars set. The usual
default is given first, then the informative default (if it is different). If no default for the colors
is given, they default to $__fish_git_prompt_color.
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_stateseparator (' ', |) - the character to be used between the state characters
• $__fish_git_prompt_color (no default)
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_prefix - the color of the ( prefix
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_suffix - the color of the ) suffix
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_bare - the color to use for a bare repository - one without a working tree
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_merging - the color when a merge/rebase/revert/bisect or cherry-pick is in
progress
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_cleanstate (✔ in informative mode) - the character to be used when nothing else
applies
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_cleanstate (no default)
Variables used with showdirtystate:
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_dirtystate (*, ✚) - the number of "dirty" changes, i.e. unstaged files with
changes
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_invalidstate (#, ✖) - the number of "unmerged" changes, e.g. additional changes
to already added files
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_stagedstate (+, ●) - the number of staged files without additional changes
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_dirtystate (red with showcolorhints, same as color_flags otherwise)
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_invalidstate
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_stagedstate (green with showcolorhints, color_flags otherwise)
Variables used with showstashstate:
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_stashstate ($, ⚑)
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_stashstate (same as color_flags)
Variables used with showuntrackedfiles:
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_untrackedfiles (%, …) - the symbol for untracked files
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_untrackedfiles (same as color_flags)
Variables used with showupstream (also implied by informative status):
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_upstream_ahead (>, ↑) - the character for the commits this repository is ahead
of upstream
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_upstream_behind (<, ↓) - the character for the commits this repository is
behind upstream
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_upstream_diverged (<>) - the symbol if this repository is both ahead and behind
upstream
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_upstream_equal (=) - the symbol if this repo is equal to upstream
• $__fish_git_prompt_char_upstream_prefix ('')
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_upstream
Colors used with showcolorhints:
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_branch (green) - the color of the branch if nothing else applies
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_branch_detached (red) the color of the branch if it's detached (e.g. a commit
is checked out)
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_branch_dirty (no default) the color of the branch if it's dirty and not
detached
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_branch_staged (no default) the color of the branch if it just has something
staged and is otherwise clean
• $__fish_git_prompt_color_flags (--bold blue) - the default color for dirty/staged/stashed/untracked
state
Note that all colors can also have a corresponding _done color. For example, the contents of
$__fish_git_prompt_color_upstream_done is printed right _after_ the upstream.
See also fish_vcs_prompt, which will call all supported version control prompt functions, including git,
Mercurial and Subversion.
Example
A simple prompt that displays git info:
function fish_prompt
# ...
set -g __fish_git_prompt_showupstream auto
printf '%s %s$' $PWD (fish_git_prompt)
end
fish_greeting - display a welcome message in interactive shells
Synopsis
fish_greeting
function fish_greeting
...
end
Description
When an interactive fish starts, it executes fish_greeting and displays its output.
The default fish_greeting is a function that prints a variable of the same name ($fish_greeting), so you
can also just change that if you just want to change the text.
While you could also just put echo calls into config.fish, fish_greeting takes care of only being used in
interactive shells, so it won't be used e.g. with scp (which executes a shell), which prevents some
errors.
Example
To just empty the text, with the default greeting function:
set -U fish_greeting
or set -g fish_greeting in config.fish.
A simple greeting:
function fish_greeting
echo Hello friend!
echo The time is (set_color yellow)(date +%T)(set_color normal) and this machine is called $hostname
end
fish_hg_prompt - output Mercurial information for use in a prompt
Synopsis
fish_hg_prompt
function fish_prompt
printf '%s' $PWD (fish_hg_prompt) ' $ '
end
Description
The fish_hg_prompt function displays information about the current Mercurial repository, if any.
Mercurial <https://www.mercurial-scm.org/> (hg) must be installed.
By default, only the current branch is shown because hg status can be slow on a large repository. You can
enable a more informative prompt by setting the variable $fish_prompt_hg_show_informative_status, for
example:
set --universal fish_prompt_hg_show_informative_status
If you enabled the informative status, there are numerous customization options, which can be controlled
with fish variables.
• $fish_color_hg_clean, $fish_color_hg_modified and $fish_color_hg_dirty are colors used when the
repository has the respective status.
Some colors for status symbols:
• $fish_color_hg_added
• $fish_color_hg_renamed
• $fish_color_hg_copied
• $fish_color_hg_deleted
• $fish_color_hg_untracked
• $fish_color_hg_unmerged
The status symbols themselves:
• $fish_prompt_hg_status_added, default '✚'
• $fish_prompt_hg_status_modified, default '*'
• $fish_prompt_hg_status_copied, default '⇒'
• $fish_prompt_hg_status_deleted, default '✖'
• $fish_prompt_hg_status_untracked, default '?'
• $fish_prompt_hg_status_unmerged, default '!'
Finally, $fish_prompt_hg_status_order, which can be used to change the order the status symbols appear
in. It defaults to added modified copied deleted untracked unmerged.
See also fish_vcs_prompt, which will call all supported version control prompt functions, including git,
Mercurial and Subversion.
Example
A simple prompt that displays hg info:
function fish_prompt
...
set -g fish_prompt_hg_show_informative_status
printf '%s %s$' $PWD (fish_hg_prompt)
end
fish_indent - indenter and prettifier
Synopsis
fish_indent [OPTIONS] [FILE ...]
Description
fish_indent is used to indent a piece of fish code. fish_indent reads commands from standard input or the
given filenames and outputs them to standard output or a specified file (if -w is given).
The following options are available:
-w or --write
Indents a specified file and immediately writes to that file.
-i or --no-indent
Do not indent commands; only reformat to one job per line.
--only-indent
Do not reformat, only indent each line.
--only-unindent
Do not reformat, only unindent each line.
-c or --check
Do not indent, only return 0 if the code is already indented as fish_indent would, the number of
failed files otherwise. Also print the failed filenames if not reading from standard input.
-v or --version
Displays the current fish version and then exits.
--ansi Colorizes the output using ANSI escape sequences, appropriate for the current TERM, using the
colors defined in the environment (such as fish_color_command).
--html Outputs HTML, which supports syntax highlighting if the appropriate CSS is defined. The CSS class
names are the same as the variable names, such as fish_color_command.
-d or --debug=DEBUG_CATEGORIES
Enable debug output and specify a pattern for matching debug categories. See Debugging in fish (1)
for details.
-o or --debug-output=DEBUG_FILE
Specify a file path to receive the debug output, including categories and fish_trace. The default
is standard error.
--dump-parse-tree
Dumps information about the parsed statements to standard error. This is likely to be of interest
only to people working on the fish source code.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
fish_is_root_user - check if the current user is root
Synopsis
fish_is_root_user
Description
fish_is_root_user will check if the current user is root. It can be useful for the prompt to display
something different if the user is root, for example.
Example
A simple example:
function example --description 'Just an example'
if fish_is_root_user
do_something_different
end
end
fish_key_reader - explore what characters keyboard keys send
Synopsis
fish_key_reader [OPTIONS]
Description
fish_key_reader is used to explain how you would bind a certain key sequence. By default, it prints the
bind command for one key sequence read interactively over standard input.
The following options are available:
-c or --continuous
Begins a session where multiple key sequences can be inspected. By default the program exits after
capturing a single key sequence.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
-V or --verbose
Explain what sequence was received in addition to the decoded key.
-v or --version
Displays the current fish version and then exits.
Usage Notes
fish_key_reader intentionally disables handling of many signals. To terminate fish_key_reader in
--continuous mode do:
• press ctrl-c twice, or
• press ctrl-d twice, or
• type exit, or
• type quit
Example
> fish_key_reader
Press a key:
# press up-arrow
bind up 'do something'
fish_mode_prompt - define the appearance of the mode indicator
Synopsis
fish_mode_prompt
function fish_mode_prompt
echo -n "$fish_bind_mode "
end
Description
The fish_mode_prompt function outputs the mode indicator for use in vi mode.
The default fish_mode_prompt function will output indicators about the current vi editor mode displayed
to the left of the regular prompt. Define your own function to customize the appearance of the mode
indicator. The $fish_bind_mode variable can be used to determine the current mode. It will be one of
default, insert, replace_one, or visual.
You can also define an empty fish_mode_prompt function to remove the vi mode indicators:
function fish_mode_prompt; end
funcsave fish_mode_prompt
fish_mode_prompt will be executed when the vi mode changes. If it produces any output, it is displayed
and used. If it does not, the other prompt functions (fish_prompt and fish_right_prompt) will be executed
as well in case they contain a mode display.
Example
function fish_mode_prompt
switch $fish_bind_mode
case default
set_color --bold red
echo 'N'
case insert
set_color --bold green
echo 'I'
case replace_one
set_color --bold green
echo 'R'
case visual
set_color --bold brmagenta
echo 'V'
case '*'
set_color --bold red
echo '?'
end
set_color normal
end
Outputting multiple lines is not supported in fish_mode_prompt.
fish_opt - create an option specification for the argparse command
Synopsis
fish_opt [(-slor | --multiple-vals=) OPTNAME]
fish_opt --help
Description
This command provides a way to produce option specifications suitable for use with the argparse command.
You can, of course, write the option specifications by hand without using this command. But you might
prefer to use this for the clarity it provides.
The following argparse options are available:
-s or --short
Takes a single letter that is used as the short flag in the option being defined. This option is
mandatory.
-l or --long
Takes a string that is used as the long flag in the option being defined. This option is optional
and has no default. If no long flag is defined then only the short flag will be allowed when
parsing arguments using the option specification.
--long-only
The option being defined will only allow the long flag name to be used. The short flag name must
still be defined (i.e., --short must be specified) but it cannot be used when parsing arguments
using this option specification.
-o or --optional-val
The option being defined can take a value, but it is optional rather than required. If the option
is seen more than once when parsing arguments, only the last value seen is saved. This means the
resulting flag variable created by argparse will zero elements if no value was given with the
option else it will have exactly one element.
-r or --required-val
The option being defined requires a value. If the option is seen more than once when parsing
arguments, only the last value seen is saved. This means the resulting flag variable created by
argparse will have exactly one element.
--multiple-vals
The option being defined requires a value each time it is seen. Each instance is stored. This
means the resulting flag variable created by argparse will have one element for each instance of
this option in the arguments.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Examples
Define a single option specification for the boolean help flag:
set -l options (fish_opt -s h -l help)
argparse $options -- $argv
Same as above but with a second flag that requires a value:
set -l options (fish_opt -s h -l help)
set options $options (fish_opt -s m -l max --required-val)
argparse $options -- $argv
Same as above but with a third flag that can be given multiple times saving the value of each instance
seen and only the long flag name (--token) can be used:
set -l options (fish_opt --short=h --long=help)
set options $options (fish_opt --short=m --long=max --required-val)
set options $options (fish_opt --short=t --long=token --multiple-vals --long-only)
argparse $options -- $argv
fish_prompt - define the appearance of the command line prompt
Synopsis
fish_prompt
function fish_prompt
...
end
Description
The fish_prompt function is executed when the prompt is to be shown, and the output is used as a prompt.
The exit status of commands within fish_prompt will not modify the value of $status outside of the
fish_prompt function.
fish ships with a number of example prompts that can be chosen with the fish_config command.
Example
A simple prompt:
function fish_prompt -d "Write out the prompt"
# This shows up as USER@HOST /home/user/ >, with the directory colored
# $USER and $hostname are set by fish, so you can just use them
# instead of using `whoami` and `hostname`
printf '%s@%s %s%s%s > ' $USER $hostname \
(set_color $fish_color_cwd) (prompt_pwd) (set_color normal)
end
fish_right_prompt - define the appearance of the right-side command line prompt
Synopsis
function fish_right_prompt
...
end
Description
fish_right_prompt is similar to fish_prompt, except that it appears on the right side of the terminal
window.
Multiple lines are not supported in fish_right_prompt.
Example
A simple right prompt:
function fish_right_prompt -d "Write out the right prompt"
date '+%m/%d/%y'
end
fish_should_add_to_history - decide whether a command should be added to the history
Synopsis
fish_should_add_to_history
function fish_should_add_to_history
...
end
Description
The fish_should_add_to_history function is executed before fish adds a command to history, and its return
status decides whether that is done.
If it returns 0, the command is stored in history, when it returns anything else, it is not. In the
latter case the command can still be recalled for one command.
The first argument to fish_should_add_to_history is the commandline. History is added before a command is
run, so e.g. status can't be checked. This is so commands that don't finish like exec - execute command
in current process and long-running commands are available in new sessions immediately.
If fish_should_add_to_history doesn't exist, fish will save a command to history unless it starts with a
space. If it does exist, this function takes over all of the duties, so commands starting with space are
saved unless fish_should_add_to_history says otherwise.
Example
A simple example:
function fish_should_add_to_history
for cmd in vault mysql ls
string match -qr "^$cmd" -- $argv; and return 1
end
return 0
end
This refuses to store any immediate "vault", "mysql" or "ls" calls. Commands starting with space would be
stored.
function fish_should_add_to_history
# I don't want `git pull`s in my history when I'm in a specific repository
if string match -qr '^git pull'
and string match -qr "^/home/me/my-secret-project/" -- (pwd -P)
return 1
end
return 0
end
fish_status_to_signal - convert exit codes to human-friendly signals
Synopsis
fish_status_to_signal NUM
function fish_prompt
echo -n (fish_status_to_signal $pipestatus | string join '|') (prompt_pwd) '$ '
end
Description
fish_status_to_signal converts exit codes to their corresponding human-friendly signals if one exists.
This is likely to be useful for prompts in conjunction with the $status and $pipestatus variables.
Example
>_ sleep 5
^C⏎
>_ fish_status_to_signal $status
SIGINT
fish_svn_prompt - output Subversion information for use in a prompt
Synopsis
fish_svn_prompt
function fish_prompt
printf '%s' $PWD (fish_svn_prompt) ' $ '
end
Description
The fish_svn_prompt function displays information about the current Subversion repository, if any.
Subversion <https://subversion.apache.org/> (svn) must be installed.
There are numerous customization options, which can be controlled with fish variables.
•
__fish_svn_prompt_color_revision
the colour of the revision number to display in the prompt
•
__fish_svn_prompt_char_separator
the separator between status characters
A number of variables control the symbol ("display") and color ("color") for the different status
indicators:
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_added_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_added_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_conflicted_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_conflicted_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_deleted_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_deleted_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_ignored_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_ignored_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_modified_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_modified_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_replaced_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_replaced_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_unversioned_external_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_unversioned_external_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_unversioned_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_unversioned_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_missing_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_missing_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_versioned_obstructed_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_versioned_obstructed_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_locked_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_locked_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_scheduled_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_scheduled_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_switched_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_switched_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_present_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_present_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_other_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_other_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_stolen_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_stolen_color
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_broken_display
• __fish_svn_prompt_char_token_broken_color
See also fish_vcs_prompt, which will call all supported version control prompt functions, including git,
Mercurial and Subversion.
Example
A simple prompt that displays svn info:
function fish_prompt
...
printf '%s %s$' $PWD (fish_svn_prompt)
end
fish_title - define the terminal's title
Synopsis
fish_title
function fish_title
...
end
Description
The fish_title function is executed before and after a new command is executed or put into the foreground
and the output is used as a titlebar message.
The first argument to fish_title contains the most recently executed foreground command as a string, if
any.
This requires that your terminal supports programmable titles and the feature is turned on.
To disable setting the title, use an empty function (see below).
Example
A simple title:
function fish_title
set -q argv[1]; or set argv fish
# Looks like ~/d/fish: git log
# or /e/apt: fish
echo (fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length=1 prompt_pwd): $argv;
end
Do not change the title:
function fish_title
end
fish_update_completions - update completions using manual pages
Synopsis
fish_update_completions
Description
fish_update_completions parses manual pages installed on the system, and attempts to create completion
files in the fish configuration directory.
This does not overwrite custom completions.
There are no parameters for fish_update_completions.
fish_vcs_prompt - output version control system information for use in a prompt
Synopsis
fish_vcs_prompt
function fish_prompt
printf '%s' $PWD (fish_vcs_prompt) ' $ '
end
Description
The fish_vcs_prompt function displays information about the current version control system (VCS)
repository, if any.
It calls out to VCS-specific functions. The currently supported systems are:
• fish_git_prompt
• fish_hg_prompt
• fish_svn_prompt
If a VCS isn't installed, the respective function does nothing.
The Subversion prompt is disabled by default, because it's slow on large repositories. To enable it,
modify fish_vcs_prompt to uncomment it. See funced.
For more information, see the documentation for each of the functions above.
Example
A simple prompt that displays all known VCS info:
function fish_prompt
...
set -g __fish_git_prompt_showupstream auto
printf '%s %s$' $PWD (fish_vcs_prompt)
end
fish_vi_key_bindings - set vi key bindings for fish
Synopsis
fish_vi_key_bindings
fish_vi_key_bindings [--no-erase] [INIT_MODE]
Description
fish_vi_key_bindings sets the vi key bindings for fish shell.
If a valid INIT_MODE is provided (insert, default, visual), then that mode will become the default . If
no INIT_MODE is given, the mode defaults to insert mode.
The following parameters are available:
--no-erase
Does not clear previous set bindings
Further information on how to use vi mode.
Examples
To start using vi key bindings:
fish_vi_key_bindings
or set -g fish_key_bindings fish_vi_key_bindings in config.fish.
for - perform a set of commands multiple times
Synopsis
for VARNAME in [VALUES ...]; COMMANDS ...; end
Description
for is a loop construct. It will perform the commands specified by COMMANDS multiple times. On each
iteration, the local variable specified by VARNAME is assigned a new value from VALUES. If VALUES is
empty, COMMANDS will not be executed at all. The VARNAME is visible when the loop terminates and will
contain the last value assigned to it. If VARNAME does not already exist it will be set in the local
scope. For our purposes if the for block is inside a function there must be a local variable with the
same name. If the for block is not nested inside a function then global and universal variables of the
same name will be used if they exist.
Much like set, for does not modify $status, but the evaluation of its subordinate commands can.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
for i in foo bar baz; echo $i; end
# would output:
foo
bar
baz
Notes
The VARNAME was local to the for block in releases prior to 3.0.0. This means that if you did something
like this:
for var in a b c
if break_from_loop
break
end
end
echo $var
The last value assigned to var when the loop terminated would not be available outside the loop. What
echo $var would write depended on what it was set to before the loop was run. Likely nothing.
funced - edit a function interactively
Synopsis
funced [OPTIONS] NAME
Description
funced provides an interface to edit the definition of the function NAME.
If the $VISUAL environment variable is set, it will be used as the program to edit the function. If
$VISUAL is unset but $EDITOR is set, that will be used. Otherwise, a built-in editor will be used. Note
that to enter a literal newline using the built-in editor you should press alt-enter. Pressing enter
signals that you are done editing the function. This does not apply to an external editor like emacs or
vim.
funced will try to edit the original file that a function is defined in, which might include variable
definitions or helper functions as well. If changes cannot be saved to the original file, a copy will be
created in the user's function directory.
If there is no function called NAME, a new function will be created with the specified name.
-e command or --editor command
Open the function body inside the text editor given by the command (for example, -e vi). The
special command fish will use the built-in editor (same as specifying -i).
-i or --interactive
Force opening the function body in the built-in editor even if $VISUAL or $EDITOR is defined.
-s or --save
Automatically save the function after successfully editing it.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Example
Say you want to modify your prompt.
Run:
>_ funced fish_prompt
This will open up your editor, allowing you to modify the function. When you're done, save and quit. Fish
will reload the function, so you should see the changes right away.
When you're done, use:
>_ funcsave fish_prompt
For more, see funcsave. To view a function's current definition, use functions or type.
funcsave - save the definition of a function to the user's autoload directory
Synopsis
funcsave FUNCTION_NAME
funcsave [-q | --quiet] [(-d | --directory) DIR] FUNCTION_NAME
Description
funcsave saves a function to a file in the fish configuration directory. This function will be
automatically loaded by current and future fish sessions. This can be useful to commit functions created
interactively for permanent use.
If you have erased a function using functions's --erase option, funcsave will remove the saved function
definition.
Because fish loads functions on-demand, saved functions cannot serve as event handlers until they are run
or otherwise sourced. To activate an event handler for every new shell, add the function to the
configuration file instead of using funcsave.
This is often used after funced, which opens the function in $EDITOR or $VISUAL and loads it into the
current session afterwards.
To view a function's current definition, use functions or type.
function - create a function
Synopsis
function NAME [OPTIONS]; BODY; end
Description
function creates a new function NAME with the body BODY.
A function is a list of commands that will be executed when the name of the function is given as a
command.
The following options are available:
-a NAMES or --argument-names NAMES
Has to be the last option. Assigns the value of successive command-line arguments to the names
given in NAMES (separated by space). These are the same arguments given in argv, and are still
available there. See also Argument Handling.
-d DESCRIPTION or --description DESCRIPTION
A description of what the function does, suitable as a completion description.
-w WRAPPED_COMMAND or --wraps WRAPPED_COMMAND
Inherit completions from the given WRAPPED_COMMAND. See the documentation for complete for more
information.
-e EVENT_NAME or --on-event EVENT_NAME
Run this function when the specified named event is emitted. Fish internally generates named
events, for example, when showing the prompt. Custom events can be emitted using the emit command.
-v VARIABLE_NAME or --on-variable VARIABLE_NAME
Run this function when the variable VARIABLE_NAME changes value. Note that fish makes no
guarantees on any particular timing or even that the function will be run for every single set.
Rather it will be run when the variable has been set at least once, possibly skipping some values
or being run when the variable has been set to the same value (except for universal variables set
in other shells - only changes in the value will be picked up for those).
-j PID or --on-job-exit PID
Run this function when the job containing a child process with the given process identifier PID
exits. Instead of a PID, the string 'caller' can be specified. This is only allowed when in a
command substitution, and will result in the handler being triggered by the exit of the job which
created this command substitution. This will not trigger for disowned jobs.
-p PID or --on-process-exit PID
Run this function when the fish child process with process ID PID exits. Instead of a PID, for
backward compatibility, "%self" can be specified as an alias for $fish_pid, and the function will
be run when the current fish instance exits. This will not trigger for disowned jobs.
-s SIGSPEC or --on-signal SIGSPEC
Run this function when the signal SIGSPEC is delivered. SIGSPEC can be a signal number, or the
signal name, such as SIGHUP (or just HUP). Note that the signal must have been delivered to fish;
for example, ctrl-c sends SIGINT to the foreground process group, which will not be fish if you
are running another command at the time. Observing a signal will prevent fish from exiting in
response to that signal.
-S or --no-scope-shadowing
Allows the function to access the variables of calling functions. Normally, any variables inside
the function that have the same name as variables from the calling function are "shadowed", and
their contents are independent of the calling function.
It's important to note that this does not capture referenced variables or the scope at the time of
function declaration! At this time, fish does not have any concept of closures, and variable
lifetimes are never extended. In other words, by using --no-scope-shadowing the scope of the
function each time it is run is shared with the scope it was called from rather than the scope it
was defined in.
-V or --inherit-variable NAME
Snapshots the value of the variable NAME and defines a local variable with that same name and
value when the function is defined. This is similar to a closure in other languages like Python
but a bit different. Note the word "snapshot" in the first sentence. If you change the value of
the variable after defining the function, even if you do so in the same scope (typically another
function) the new value will not be used by the function you just created using this option. See
the function notify example below for how this might be used.
The event handler switches (on-event, on-variable, on-job-exit, on-process-exit and on-signal) cause a
function to run automatically at specific events. New named events for --on-event can be fired using the
emit builtin. Fish already generates a few events, see Event handlers for more.
Functions names cannot be reserved words. These are elements of fish syntax or builtin commands which are
essential for the operations of the shell. Current reserved words are [, _, and, argparse, begin, break,
builtin, case, command, continue, else, end, eval, exec, for, function, if, not, or, read, return, set,
status, string, switch, test, time, and while.
Example
function ll
ls -l $argv
end
will run the ls command, using the -l option, while passing on any additional files and switches to ls.
function debug -a name val
echo [DEBUG] $name: $val >&2
end
set foo bar
debug foo bar
# prints: [DEBUG] foo: bar
# OR
function debug2 -a var
echo [DEBUG] $var: $$var >&2
end
set foo bar
debug2 foo
# prints: [DEBUG] foo: bar
will create a debug command to print chosen variables to stderr.
function mkdir -d "Create a directory and set CWD"
command mkdir $argv
if test $status = 0
switch $argv[(count $argv)]
case '-*'
case '*'
cd $argv[(count $argv)]
return
end
end
end
This will run the mkdir command, and if it is successful, change the current working directory to the one
just created.
function notify
set -l job (jobs -l -g)
or begin; echo "There are no jobs" >&2; return 1; end
function _notify_job_$job --on-job-exit $job --inherit-variable job
echo -n \a # beep
functions -e _notify_job_$job
end
end
This will beep when the most recent job completes.
Notes
Events are only received from the current fish process as there is no way to send events from one fish
process to another.
See more
For more explanation of how functions fit into fish, see Functions.
functions - print or erase functions
Synopsis
functions [-a | --all] [-n | --names]
functions [-D | --details] [-v] FUNCTION
functions -c OLDNAME NEWNAME
functions -d DESCRIPTION FUNCTION
functions [-e | -q] FUNCTION ...
Description
functions prints or erases functions.
The following options are available:
-a or --all
Lists all functions, even those whose name starts with an underscore.
-c or --copy OLDNAME NEWNAME
Creates a new function named NEWNAME, using the definition of the OLDNAME function.
-d or --description DESCRIPTION
Changes the description of this function.
-e or --erase
Causes the specified functions to be erased. This also means that it is prevented from autoloading
in the current session. Use funcsave to remove the saved copy.
-D or --details
Reports the path name where the specified function is defined or could be autoloaded, stdin if the
function was defined interactively or on the command line or by reading standard input, - if the
function was created via source, and n/a if the function isn't available. (Functions created via
alias will return -, because alias uses source internally. Copied functions will return where the
function was copied.) If the --verbose option is also specified then five lines are written:
• the path name as already described,
• if the function was copied, the path name to where the function was originally defined,
otherwise autoloaded, not-autoloaded or n/a,
• the line number within the file or zero if not applicable,
• scope-shadowing if the function shadows the vars in the calling function (the normal case if it
wasn't defined with --no-scope-shadowing), else no-scope-shadowing, or n/a if the function isn't
defined,
• the function description minimally escaped so it is a single line, or n/a if the function isn't
defined or has no description.
You should not assume that only five lines will be written since we may add additional information
to the output in the future.
--no-details
Turns off function path reporting, so just the definition will be printed.
-n or --names
Lists the names of all defined functions.
-q or --query
Tests if the specified functions exist.
-v or --verbose
Make some output more verbose.
-H or --handlers
Show all event handlers.
-t or --handlers-type TYPE
Show all event handlers matching the given TYPE.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
The default behavior of functions, when called with no arguments, is to print the names of all defined
functions. Unless the -a option is given, no functions starting with underscores are included in the
output.
If any non-option parameters are given, the definition of the specified functions are printed.
Copying a function using -c copies only the body of the function, and does not attach any event
notifications from the original function.
Only one function's description can be changed in a single invocation of functions -d.
The exit status of functions is the number of functions specified in the argument list that do not exist,
which can be used in concert with the -q option.
Examples
functions -n
# Displays a list of currently-defined functions
functions -c foo bar
# Copies the 'foo' function to a new function called 'bar'
functions -e bar
# Erases the function ``bar``
See more
For more explanation of how functions fit into fish, see Functions.
help - display fish documentation
Synopsis
help [SECTION]
Description
help displays the fish help documentation.
If a SECTION is specified, the help for that command is shown.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
If the BROWSER environment variable is set, it will be used to display the documentation. Otherwise,
fish will search for a suitable browser. To use a different browser than as described above, you can set
$fish_help_browser This variable may be set as a list, where the first element is the browser command and
the rest are browser options.
Example
help fg shows the documentation for the fg builtin.
Notes
Most builtin commands, including this one, display their help in the terminal when given the --help
option.
history - show and manipulate command history
Synopsis
history [search] [--show-time] [--case-sensitive]
[--exact | --prefix | --contains] [--max N] [--null] [--reverse]
[SEARCH_STRING ...]
history delete [--case-sensitive]
[--exact | --prefix | --contains] SEARCH_STRING ...
history merge
history save
history clear
history clear-session
history append COMMAND ...
Description
history is used to search, delete, and otherwise manipulate the history of interactive commands.
The following operations (sub-commands) are available:
search Returns history items matching the search string. If no search string is provided it returns all
history items. This is the default operation if no other operation is specified. You only have to
explicitly say history search if you wish to search for one of the subcommands. The --contains
search option will be used if you don't specify a different search option. Entries are ordered
newest to oldest unless you use the --reverse flag. If stdout is attached to a tty the output will
be piped through your pager by the history function. The history builtin simply writes the results
to stdout.
delete Deletes history items. The --contains search option will be used if you don't specify a different
search option. If you don't specify --exact a prompt will be displayed before any items are
deleted asking you which entries are to be deleted. You can enter the word "all" to delete all
matching entries. You can enter a single ID (the number in square brackets) to delete just that
single entry. You can enter more than one ID, or an ID range separated by a space to delete
multiple entries. Just press [enter] to not delete anything. Note that the interactive delete
behavior is a feature of the history function. The history builtin only supports --exact
--case-sensitive deletion.
merge Immediately incorporates history changes from other sessions. Ordinarily fish ignores history
changes from sessions started after the current one. This command applies those changes
immediately.
save Immediately writes all changes to the history file. The shell automatically saves the history
file; this option is provided for internal use and should not normally need to be used by the
user.
clear Clears the history file. A prompt is displayed before the history is erased asking you to confirm
you really want to clear all history unless builtin history is used.
clear-session
Clears the history file from all activity of the current session. Note: If history merge or
builtin history merge is run in a session, only the history after this will be erased.
append Appends commands to the history without needing to execute them.
The following options are available:
These flags can appear before or immediately after one of the sub-commands listed above.
-C or --case-sensitive
Does a case-sensitive search. The default is case-insensitive. Note that prior to fish 2.4.0 the
default was case-sensitive.
-c or --contains
Searches items in the history that contain the specified text string. This is the default for the
--search flag. This is not currently supported by the delete subcommand.
-e or --exact
Searches or deletes items in the history that exactly match the specified text string. This is the
default for the delete subcommand. Note that the match is case-insensitive by default. If you
really want an exact match, including letter case, you must use the -C or --case-sensitive flag.
-p or --prefix
Searches items in the history that begin with the specified text string. This is not currently
supported by the delete subcommand.
-t or --show-time
Prepends each history entry with the date and time the entry was recorded. By default it uses the
strftime format # %c%n. You can specify another format; e.g., --show-time="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S " or
--show-time="%a%I%p". The short option, -t, doesn't accept a strftime format string; it only uses
the default format. Any strftime format is allowed, including %s to get the raw UNIX seconds since
the epoch.
-z or --null
Causes history entries written by the search operations to be terminated by a NUL character rather
than a newline. This allows the output to be processed by read -z to correctly handle multiline
history entries.
-*NUMBER* -n NUMBER or --max NUMBER
Limits the matched history items to the first NUMBER matching entries. This is only valid for
history search.
-R or --reverse
Causes the history search results to be ordered oldest to newest. Which is the order used by most
shells. The default is newest to oldest.
-h or --help
Displays help for this command.
Example
history clear
# Deletes all history items
history search --contains "foo"
# Outputs a list of all previous commands containing the string "foo".
history delete --prefix "foo"
# Interactively deletes commands which start with "foo" from the history.
# You can select more than one entry by entering their IDs separated by a space.
Customizing the name of the history file
By default interactive commands are logged to $XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history (typically
~/.local/share/fish/fish_history).
You can set the fish_history variable to another name for the current shell session. The default value
(when the variable is unset) is fish which corresponds to $XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history. If you set it
to e.g. fun, the history would be written to $XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fun_history. An empty string means
history will not be stored at all. This is similar to the private session features in web browsers.
You can change fish_history at any time (by using set -x fish_history "session_name") and it will take
effect right away. If you set it to "default", it will use the default session name (which is "fish").
Other shells such as bash and zsh use a variable named HISTFILE for a similar purpose. Fish uses a
different name to avoid conflicts and signal that the behavior is different (session name instead of a
file path). Also, if you set the var to anything other than fish or default it will inhibit importing the
bash history. That's because the most common use case for this feature is to avoid leaking private or
sensitive history when giving a presentation.
Notes
If you specify both --prefix and --contains the last flag seen is used.
Note that for backwards compatibility each subcommand can also be specified as a long option. For
example, rather than history search you can type history --search. Those long options are deprecated and
will be removed in a future release.
if - conditionally execute a command
Synopsis
if CONDITION; COMMANDS_TRUE ...;
[else if CONDITION2; COMMANDS_TRUE2 ...;]
[else; COMMANDS_FALSE ...;]
end
Description
if will execute the command CONDITION. If the condition's exit status is 0, the commands COMMANDS_TRUE
will execute. If the exit status is not 0 and else is given, COMMANDS_FALSE will be executed.
You can use and or or in the condition. See the second example below.
The exit status of the last foreground command to exit can always be accessed using the $status variable.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
The following code will print foo.txt exists if the file foo.txt exists and is a regular file, otherwise
it will print bar.txt exists if the file bar.txt exists and is a regular file, otherwise it will print
foo.txt and bar.txt do not exist.
if test -f foo.txt
echo foo.txt exists
else if test -f bar.txt
echo bar.txt exists
else
echo foo.txt and bar.txt do not exist
end
The following code will print "foo.txt exists and is readable" if foo.txt is a regular file and readable
if test -f foo.txt
and test -r foo.txt
echo "foo.txt exists and is readable"
end
See also
if is only as useful as the command used as the condition.
Fish ships a few:
• test - perform tests on files and text can compare numbers, strings and check paths
• string - manipulate strings can perform string operations including wildcard and regular expression
matches
• path - manipulate and check paths can check paths for permissions, existence or type
• contains - test if a word is present in a list can check if an element is in a list
isatty - test if a file descriptor is a terminal
Synopsis
isatty [FILE_DESCRIPTOR]
Description
isatty tests if a file descriptor is a terminal (as opposed to a file). The name is derived from the
system call of the same name, which for historical reasons refers to a teletypewriter (TTY).
FILE DESCRIPTOR may be either the number of a file descriptor, or one of the strings stdin, stdout, or
stderr. If not specified, zero is assumed.
If the specified file descriptor is a terminal device, the exit status of the command is zero. Otherwise,
the exit status is non-zero. No messages are printed to standard error.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Examples
From an interactive shell, the commands below exit with a return value of zero:
isatty
isatty stdout
isatty 2
echo | isatty 1
And these will exit non-zero:
echo | isatty
isatty 9
isatty stdout > file
isatty 2 2> file
jobs - print currently running jobs
Synopsis
jobs [OPTIONS] [PID | %JOBID]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin jobs. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man jobs.
jobs prints a list of the currently running jobs and their status.
jobs accepts the following options:
-c or --command
Prints the command name for each process in jobs.
-g or --group
Only prints the group ID of each job.
-l or --last
Prints only the last job to be started.
-p or --pid
Prints the process ID for each process in all jobs.
-q or --query
Prints no output for evaluation of jobs by exit status only. For compatibility with old fish
versions this is also --quiet (but this is deprecated).
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
On systems that support this feature, jobs will print the CPU usage of each job since the last command
was executed. The CPU usage is expressed as a percentage of full CPU activity. Note that on
multiprocessor systems, the total activity may be more than 100%.
Arguments of the form PID or %JOBID restrict the output to jobs with the selected process identifiers or
job numbers respectively.
If the output of jobs is redirected or if it is part of a command substitution, the column header that is
usually printed is omitted, making it easier to parse.
The exit status of jobs is 0 if there are running background jobs and 1 otherwise.
Example
jobs outputs a summary of the current jobs, such as two long-running tasks in this example:
Job Group State Command
2 26012 running nc -l 55232 < /dev/random &
1 26011 running python tests/test_11.py &
math - perform mathematics calculations
Synopsis
math [(-s | --scale) N] [(-b | --base) BASE] [(-m | --scale-mode) MODE] EXPRESSION ...
Description
math performs mathematical calculations. It supports simple operations such as addition, subtraction,
and so on, as well as functions like abs(), sqrt() and ln().
By default, the output shows up to 6 decimal places. To change the number of decimal places, use the
--scale option, including --scale=0 for integer output.
Keep in mind that parameter expansion happens before expressions are evaluated. This can be very useful
in order to perform calculations involving shell variables or the output of command substitutions, but it
also means that parenthesis (()) and the asterisk (*) glob character have to be escaped or quoted. x can
also be used to denote multiplication, but it needs to be followed by whitespace to distinguish it from
hexadecimal numbers.
Parentheses for functions are optional - math sin pi prints 0. However, a comma will bind to the inner
function, so math pow sin 3, 5 is an error because it tries to give sin the arguments 3 and 5. When in
doubt, use parentheses.
math ignores whitespace between arguments and takes its input as multiple arguments (internally joined
with a space), so math 2 +2 and math "2 + 2" work the same. math 2 2 is an error.
The following options are available:
-s N or --scale N
Sets the scale of the result. N must be an integer or the word "max" for the maximum scale. A
scale of zero causes results to be truncated by default. Any non-integer component is thrown away.
So 3/2 returns 1 by default, rather than 2 which 1.5 would normally round to. This is for
compatibility with bc which was the basis for this command prior to fish 3.0.0. Scale values
greater than zero causes the result to be rounded using the usual rules to the specified number of
decimal places.
-b BASE or --base BASE
Sets the numeric base used for output (math always understands hexadecimal numbers as input). It
currently understands "hex" or "16" for hexadecimal and "octal" or "8" for octal and implies a
scale of 0 (other scales cause an error), so it will truncate the result down to an integer. This
might change in the future. Hex numbers will be printed with a 0x prefix. Octal numbers will
have a prefix of 0 but aren't understood by math as input.
-m MODE or --scale-mode MODE
Sets scale behavior. The MODE can be truncate, round, floor, ceiling. The default value of scale
mode is round with non zero scale and truncate with zero scale.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Return Values
If the expression is successfully evaluated and doesn't over/underflow or return NaN the return status is
zero (success) else one.
Syntax
math knows some operators, constants, functions and can (obviously) read numbers.
For numbers, . is always the radix character regardless of locale - 2.5, not 2,5. Scientific notation
(10e5) and hexadecimal (0xFF) are also available.
math allows you to use underscores as visual separators for digit grouping. For example, you can write
1_000_000, 0x_89_AB_CD_EF, and 1.234_567_e89.
Operators
math knows the following operators:
+ for addition
- for subtraction
* or x for multiplication. * is the glob character and needs to be quoted or escaped, x needs to be
followed by whitespace or it looks like 0x hexadecimal notation.
/ for division
^ for exponentiation
% for modulo
( or ) for grouping. These need to be quoted or escaped because () denotes a command substitution.
They are all used in an infix manner - 5 + 2, not + 5 2.
Constants
math knows the following constants:
e Euler's number
pi π, you know this one. Half of Tau
tau Equivalent to 2π, or the number of radians in a circle
Use them without a leading $ - pi - 3 should be about 0.
Functions
math supports the following functions:
abs the absolute value, with positive sign
acos arc cosine
asin arc sine
atan arc tangent
atan2 arc tangent of two variables
bitand, bitor and bitxor
perform bitwise operations. These will throw away any non-integer parts and interpret the rest as
an int.
Note: bitnot and bitnand don't exist. This is because numbers in math don't really have a width in
terms of bits, and these operations necessarily care about leading zeroes.
If you need to negate a specific number you can do it with an xor with a mask, e.g.:
> math --base=hex bitxor 0x0F, 0xFF
0xF0
> math --base=hex bitxor 0x2, 0x3
# Here we mask with 0x3 == 0b111, so our number is 3 bits wide
# Only the 1 bit isn't set.
0x1
ceil round number up to the nearest integer
cos the cosine
cosh hyperbolic cosine
exp the base-e exponential function
fac factorial - also known as x! (x * (x - 1) * (x - 2) * ... * 1)
floor round number down to the nearest integer
ln the base-e logarithm
log or log10
the base-10 logarithm
log2 the base-2 logarithm
max returns the largest of the given numbers - this takes an arbitrary number of arguments (but at
least one)
min returns the smallest of the given numbers - this takes an arbitrary number of arguments (but at
least one)
ncr "from n choose r" combination function - how many subsets of size r can be taken from n (order
doesn't matter)
npr the number of subsets of size r that can be taken from a set of n elements (including different
order)
pow(x,y)
returns x to the y (and can be written as x ^ y)
round rounds to the nearest integer, away from 0
sin the sine function
sinh the hyperbolic sine
sqrt the square root - (can also be written as x ^ 0.5)
tan the tangent
tanh the hyperbolic tangent
All of the trigonometric functions use radians (the pi-based scale, not 360°).
Examples
math 1+1 outputs 2.
math $status - 128 outputs the numerical exit status of the last command minus 128.
math 10 / 6 outputs 1.666667.
math -s0 10.0 / 6.0 outputs 1.
math -s3 10 / 6 outputs 1.667.
math "sin(pi)" outputs 0.
math 5 \* 2 or math "5 * 2" or math 5 "*" 2 all output 10.
math 0xFF outputs 255, math 0 x 3 outputs 0 (because it computes 0 multiplied by 3).
math bitand 0xFE, 0x2e outputs 46.
math "bitor(9,2)" outputs 11.
math --base=hex 192 prints 0xc0.
math 'ncr(49,6)' prints 13983816 - that's the number of possible picks in 6-from-49 lotto.
math max 5,2,3,1 prints 5.
Compatibility notes
Fish 1.x and 2.x releases relied on the bc command for handling math expressions. Starting with fish
3.0.0 fish uses the tinyexpr library and evaluates the expression without the involvement of any external
commands.
You don't need to use -- before the expression, even if it begins with a minus sign which might otherwise
be interpreted as an invalid option. If you do insert -- before the expression, it will cause option
scanning to stop just like for every other command and it won't be part of the expression.
nextd - move forward through directory history
Synopsis
nextd [-l | --list] [POS]
Description
nextd moves forwards POS positions in the history of visited directories; if the end of the history has
been hit, a warning is printed.
If the -l or --list option is specified, the current directory history is also displayed.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Note that the cd command limits directory history to the 25 most recently visited directories. The
history is stored in the dirprev and dirnext variables which this command manipulates.
Example
cd /usr/src
# Working directory is now /usr/src
cd /usr/src/fish-shell
# Working directory is now /usr/src/fish-shell
prevd
# Working directory is now /usr/src
nextd
# Working directory is now /usr/src/fish-shell
See Also
• the cdh command to display a prompt to quickly navigate the history
• the dirh command to print the directory history
• the prevd command to move backward
not - negate the exit status of a job
Synopsis
not COMMAND [OPTIONS ...]
! COMMAND [OPTIONS ...]
Description
not negates the exit status of another command. If the exit status is zero, not returns 1. Otherwise, not
returns 0.
Some other shells only support the ! alias.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
The following code reports an error and exits if no file named spoon can be found.
if not test -f spoon
echo There is no spoon
exit 1
end
open - open file in its default application
Synopsis
open FILES ...
Description
open opens a file in its default application, using the appropriate tool for the operating system. On
GNU/Linux, this requires the common but optional xdg-open utility, from the xdg-utils package.
Note that this function will not be used if a command by this name exists (which is the case on macOS or
Haiku).
Example
open *.txt opens all the text files in the current directory using your system's default text editor.
or - conditionally execute a command
Synopsis
COMMAND1; or COMMAND2
Description
or is used to execute a command if the previous command was not successful (returned a status of
something other than 0).
or statements may be used as part of the condition in an if or while block.
or does not change the current exit status itself, but the command it runs most likely will. The exit
status of the last foreground command to exit can always be accessed using the $status variable.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
The following code runs the make command to build a program. If the build succeeds, the program is
installed. If either step fails, make clean is run, which removes the files created by the build process.
make; and make install; or make clean
See Also
• and command
path - manipulate and check paths
Synopsis
path basename GENERAL_OPTIONS [(-E | --no-extension)] [PATH ...]
path dirname GENERAL_OPTIONS [PATH ...]
path extension GENERAL_OPTIONS [PATH ...]
path filter GENERAL_OPTIONS [-v | --invert]
[-d] [-f] [-l] [-r] [-w] [-x]
[(-t | --type) TYPE] [(-p | --perm) PERMISSION] [PATH ...]
path is GENERAL_OPTIONS [(-v | --invert)] [(-t | --type) TYPE]
[-d] [-f] [-l] [-r] [-w] [-x]
[(-p | --perm) PERMISSION] [PATH ...]
path mtime GENERAL_OPTIONS [(-R | --relative)] [PATH ...]
path normalize GENERAL_OPTIONS [PATH ...]
path resolve GENERAL_OPTIONS [PATH ...]
path change-extension GENERAL_OPTIONS EXTENSION [PATH ...]
path sort GENERAL_OPTIONS [-r | --reverse]
[-u | --unique] [--key=basename|dirname|path] [PATH ...]
GENERAL_OPTIONS
[-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet]
Description
path performs operations on paths.
PATH arguments are taken from the command line unless standard input is connected to a pipe or a file, in
which case they are read from standard input, one PATH per line. It is an error to supply PATH arguments
on both the command line and on standard input.
Arguments starting with - are normally interpreted as switches; -- causes the following arguments not to
be treated as switches even if they begin with -. Switches and required arguments are recognized only on
the command line.
When a path starts with -, path filter and path normalize will prepend ./ on output to avoid it being
interpreted as an option otherwise, so it's safe to pass path's output to other commands that can handle
relative paths.
All subcommands accept a -q or --quiet switch, which suppresses the usual output but exits with the
documented status. In this case these commands will quit early, without reading all of the available
input.
All subcommands also accept a -Z or --null-out switch, which makes them print output separated with NUL
instead of newlines. This is for further processing, e.g. passing to another path, or xargs -0. This is
not recommended when the output goes to the terminal or a command substitution.
All subcommands also accept a -z or --null-in switch, which makes them accept arguments from stdin
separated with NULL-bytes. Since Unix paths can't contain NULL, that makes it possible to handle all
possible paths and read input from e.g. find -print0. If arguments are given on the commandline this has
no effect. This should mostly be unnecessary since path automatically starts splitting on NULL if one
appears in the first PATH_MAX bytes, PATH_MAX being the operating system's maximum length for a path plus
a NULL byte.
Some subcommands operate on the paths as strings and so work on nonexistent paths, while others need to
access the paths themselves and so filter out nonexistent paths.
The following subcommands are available.
"basename" subcommand
path basename [-E | --no-extension] [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] [PATH ...]
path basename returns the last path component of the given path, by removing the directory prefix and
removing trailing slashes. In other words, it is the part that is not the dirname. For files you might
call it the "filename".
If the -E or ---no-extension option is used and the base name contained a period, the path is returned
with the extension (or the last extension) removed, i.e. the "filename" without an extension (akin to
calling path change-extension "" (path basename $path)).
It returns 0 if there was a basename, i.e. if the path wasn't empty or just slashes.
Examples
>_ path basename ./foo.mp4
foo.mp4
>_ path basename ../banana
banana
>_ path basename /usr/bin/
bin
>_ path basename /usr/bin/*
# This prints all files in /usr/bin/
# A selection:
cp
fish
grep
rm
"dirname" subcommand
path dirname [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] [PATH ...]
path dirname returns the dirname for the given path. This is the part before the last "/", discounting
trailing slashes. In other words, it is the part that is not the basename (discounting superfluous
slashes).
It returns 0 if there was a dirname, i.e. if the path wasn't empty or just slashes.
Examples
>_ path dirname ./foo.mp4
.
>_ path dirname ../banana
..
>_ path dirname /usr/bin/
/usr
"extension" subcommand
path extension [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] [PATH ...]
path extension returns the extension of the given path. This is the part after (and including) the last
".", unless that "." followed a "/" or the basename is "." or "..", in which case there is no extension
and an empty line is printed.
If the filename ends in a ".", only a "." is printed.
It returns 0 if there was an extension.
Examples
>_ path extension ./foo.mp4
.mp4
>_ path extension ../banana
# an empty line, status 1
>_ path extension ~/.config
# an empty line, status 1
>_ path extension ~/.config.d
.d
>_ path extension ~/.config.
.
>_ set -l path (path change-extension '' ./foo.mp4)
>_ set -l extension (path extension ./foo.mp4)
> echo $path$extension
# reconstructs the original path again.
./foo.mp4
"filter" subcommand
path filter [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] \
[-d] [-f] [-l] [-r] [-w] [-x] \
[-v | --invert] [(-t | --type) TYPE] [(-p | --perm) PERMISSION] [PATH ...]
path filter returns all of the given paths that match the given checks. In all cases, the paths need to
exist, nonexistent paths are always filtered.
The available filters are:
• -t or --type with the options: "dir", "file", "link", "block", "char", "fifo" and "socket", in which
case the path needs to be a directory, file, link, block device, character device, named pipe or
socket, respectively.
• -d, -f and -l are short for --type=dir, --type=file and --type=link, respectively. There are no
shortcuts for the other types.
• -p or --perm with the options: "read", "write", and "exec", as well as "suid", "sgid", "user"
(referring to the path owner) and "group" (referring to the path's group), in which case the path needs
to have all of the given permissions for the current user.
• -r, -w and -x are short for --perm=read, --perm=write and --perm=exec, respectively. There are no
shortcuts for the other permissions.
Note that the path needs to be any of the given types, but have all of the given permissions. This is
because having a path that is both writable and executable makes sense, but having a path that is both a
directory and a file doesn't. Links will count as the type of the linked-to file, so links to files count
as files, links to directories count as directories.
The filter options can either be given as multiple options, or comma-separated - path filter -t dir,file
or path filter --type dir --type file are equivalent.
With --invert, the meaning of the filtering is inverted - any path that wouldn't pass (including by not
existing) passes, and any path that would pass fails.
When a path starts with -, path filter will prepend ./ to avoid it being interpreted as an option
otherwise.
It returns 0 if at least one path passed the filter.
path is is shorthand for path filter -q, i.e. just checking without producing output, see The is
subcommand.
Examples
>_ path filter /usr/bin /usr/argagagji
# The (hopefully) nonexistent argagagji is filtered implicitly:
/usr/bin
>_ path filter --type file /usr/bin /usr/bin/fish
# Only fish is a file
/usr/bin/fish
>_ path filter --type file,dir --perm exec,write /usr/bin/fish /home/me
# fish is a file, which passes, and executable, which passes,
# but probably not writable, which fails.
#
# $HOME is a directory and both writable and executable, typically.
# So it passes.
/home/me
>_ path filter -fdxw /usr/bin/fish /home/me
# This is the same as above: "-f" is "--type=file", "-d" is "--type=dir",
# "-x" is short for "--perm=exec" and "-w" short for "--perm=write"!
/home/me
>_ path filter -fx $PATH/*
# Prints all possible commands - the first entry of each name is what fish would execute!
"is" subcommand
path is [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] \
[-d] [-f] [-l] [-r] [-w] [-x] \
[-v | --invert] [(-t | --type) TYPE] [(-p | --perm) PERMISSION] [PATH ...]
path is is short for path filter -q. It returns true if any of the given files passes the filter, but
does not produce any output.
--quiet can still be passed for compatibility but is redundant. The options are the same as for path
filter.
Examples
>_ path is /usr/bin /usr/argagagji
# /usr/bin exists, so this returns a status of 0 (true). It prints nothing.
>_ path is /usr/argagagji
# /usr/argagagji does not, so this returns a status of 1 (false). It also prints nothing.
>_ path is -fx /bin/sh
# /bin/sh is usually an executable file, so this returns true.
"mtime" subcommand
path mtime [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] [-R | --relative] [PATH ...]
path mtime returns the last modification time ("mtime" in unix jargon) of the given paths, in seconds
since the unix epoch (the beginning of the 1st of January 1970).
With --relative (or -R), it prints the number of seconds since the modification time. It only reads the
current time once at start, so in case multiple paths are given the times are all relative to the start
of path mtime -R running.
If you want to know if a file is newer or older than another file, consider using test -nt instead. See
the test documentation.
It returns 0 if reading mtime for any path succeeded.
Examples
>_ date +%s
# This prints the current time as seconds since the epoch
1657217847
>_ path mtime /etc/
1657213796
>_ path mtime -R /etc/
4078
# So /etc/ on this system was last modified a little over an hour ago
# This is the same as
>_ math (date +%s) - (path mtime /etc/)
"normalize" subcommand
path normalize [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] [PATH ...]
path normalize returns the normalized versions of all paths. That means it squashes duplicate "/",
collapses "../" with earlier components and removes "." components.
Unlike realpath or path resolve, it does not make the paths absolute. It also does not resolve any
symlinks. As such it can operate on non-existent paths.
Because it operates on paths as strings and doesn't resolve symlinks, it works sort of like pwd -L and
cd. E.g. path normalize link/.. will return ., just like cd link; cd .. would return to the current
directory. For a physical view of the filesystem, see path resolve.
Leading "./" components are usually removed. But when a path starts with -, path normalize will add it
instead to avoid confusion with options.
It returns 0 if any normalization was done, i.e. any given path wasn't in canonical form.
Examples
>_ path normalize /usr/bin//../../etc/fish
# The "//" is squashed and the ".." components neutralize the components before
/etc/fish
>_ path normalize /bin//bash
# The "//" is squashed, but /bin isn't resolved even if your system links it to /usr/bin.
/bin/bash
>_ path normalize ./my/subdirs/../sub2
my/sub2
>_ path normalize -- -/foo
./-/foo
"resolve" subcommand
path resolve [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] [-q | --quiet] [PATH ...]
path resolve returns the normalized, physical and absolute versions of all paths. That means it resolves
symlinks and does what path normalize does: it squashes duplicate "/", collapses "../" with earlier
components and removes "." components. Then it turns that path into the absolute path starting from the
filesystem root "/".
It is similar to realpath, as it creates the "real", canonical version of the path. However, for paths
that can't be resolved, e.g. if they don't exist or form a symlink loop, it will resolve as far as it can
and normalize the rest.
Because it resolves symlinks, it works sort of like pwd -P. E.g. path resolve link/.. will return the
parent directory of what the link points to, just like cd link; cd (pwd -P)/.. would go to it. For a
logical view of the filesystem, see path normalize.
It returns 0 if any normalization or resolution was done, i.e. any given path wasn't in canonical form.
Examples
>_ path resolve /bin//sh
# The "//" is squashed, and /bin is resolved if your system links it to /usr/bin.
# sh here is bash (this is common on linux systems)
/usr/bin/bash
>_ path resolve /bin/foo///bar/../baz
# Assuming /bin exists and is a symlink to /usr/bin, but /bin/foo doesn't.
# This resolves the /bin/ and normalizes the nonexistent rest:
/usr/bin/foo/baz
"change-extension" subcommand
path change-extension [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] \
[-q | --quiet] EXTENSION [PATH ...]
path change-extension returns the given paths, with their extension changed to the given new extension.
The extension is the part after (and including) the last ".", unless that "." followed a "/" or the
basename is "." or "..", in which case there is no previous extension and the new one is simply added.
If the extension is empty, any previous extension is stripped, along with the ".". This is, of course,
the inverse of path extension.
One leading dot on the extension is ignored, so ".mp3" and "mp3" are treated the same.
It returns 0 if it was given any paths.
Examples
>_ path change-extension mp4 ./foo.wmv
./foo.mp4
>_ path change-extension .mp4 ./foo.wmv
./foo.mp4
>_ path change-extension '' ../banana
../banana
>_ path change-extension '' ~/.config
/home/alfa/.config
>_ path change-extension '' ~/.config.d
/home/alfa/.config
>_ path change-extension '' ~/.config.
/home/alfa/.config
"sort" subcommand
path sort [-z | --null-in] [-Z | --null-out] \
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --reverse] \
[--key=basename|dirname|path] [PATH ...]
path sort returns the given paths in sorted order. They are sorted in the same order as globs -
alphabetically, but with runs of numerical digits compared numerically.
With --reverse or -r the sort is reversed.
With --key= only the given part of the path is compared, e.g. --key=dirname causes only the dirname to be
compared, --key=basename only the basename and --key=path causes the entire path to be compared (this is
the default).
With --unique or -u the sort is deduplicated, meaning only the first of a run that have the same key is
kept. So if you are sorting by basename, then only the first of each basename is used.
The sort used is stable, so sorting first by basename and then by dirname works and causes the files to
be grouped according to directory.
It currently returns 0 if it was given any paths.
Examples
>_ path sort 10-foo 2-bar
2-bar
10-foo
>_ path sort --reverse 10-foo 2-bar
10-foo
2-bar
>_ path sort --unique --key=basename $fish_function_path/*.fish
# prints a list of all function files fish would use, sorted by name.
Combining path
path is meant to be easy to combine with itself, other tools and fish.
This is why
• path's output is automatically split by fish if it goes into a command substitution, so just doing
(path ...) handles all paths, even those containing newlines, correctly
• path has --null-in to handle null-delimited input (typically automatically detected!), and --null-out
to pass on null-delimited output
Some examples of combining path:
# Expand all paths in the current directory, leave only executable files, and print their resolved path
path filter -zZ -xf -- * | path resolve -z
# The same thing, but using find (note -maxdepth needs to come first or find will scream)
# (this also depends on your particular version of find)
# Note the `-z` is unnecessary for any sensible version of find - if `path` sees a NULL,
# it will split on NULL automatically.
find . -maxdepth 1 -type f -executable -print0 | path resolve -z
set -l paths (path filter -p exec $PATH/fish -Z | path resolve)
popd - move through directory stack
Synopsis
popd
Description
popd removes the top directory from the directory stack and changes the working directory to the new top
directory. Use pushd to add directories to the stack.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
pushd /usr/src
# Working directory is now /usr/src
# Directory stack contains /usr/src
pushd /usr/src/fish-shell
# Working directory is now /usr/src/fish-shell
# Directory stack contains /usr/src /usr/src/fish-shell
popd
# Working directory is now /usr/src
# Directory stack contains /usr/src
See Also
• the dirs command to print the directory stack
• the cdh command which provides a more intuitive way to navigate to recently visited directories.
prevd - move backward through directory history
Synopsis
prevd [-l | --list] [POS]
Description
prevd moves backwards POS positions in the history of visited directories; if the beginning of the
history has been hit, a warning is printed.
If the -l or --list flag is specified, the current history is also displayed.
Note that the cd command limits directory history to the 25 most recently visited directories. The
history is stored in the dirprev and dirnext variables which this command manipulates.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
cd /usr/src
# Working directory is now /usr/src
cd /usr/src/fish-shell
# Working directory is now /usr/src/fish-shell
prevd
# Working directory is now /usr/src
nextd
# Working directory is now /usr/src/fish-shell
See Also
• the cdh command to display a prompt to quickly navigate the history
• the dirh command to print the directory history
• the nextd command to move forward
printf - display text according to a format string
Synopsis
printf FORMAT [ARGUMENT ...]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin printf. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions,
use command man printf.
printf uses the format string FORMAT to print the ARGUMENT arguments. This means that it takes format
specifiers in the format string and replaces each with an argument.
The FORMAT argument is re-used as many times as necessary to convert all of the given arguments. So
printf %s\n flounder catfish clownfish shark will print four lines.
Unlike echo, printf does not append a new line unless it is specified as part of the string.
It doesn't support any options, so there is no need for a -- separator, which makes it easier to use for
arbitrary input than echo. [1]
Format Specifiers
Valid format specifiers are taken from the C library function printf(3):
• %d or %i: Argument will be used as decimal integer (signed or unsigned)
• %o: An octal unsigned integer
• %u: An unsigned decimal integer - this means negative numbers will wrap around
• %x or %X: An unsigned hexadecimal integer
• %f, %g or %G: A floating-point number. %f defaults to 6 places after the decimal point (which is
locale-dependent - e.g. in de_DE it will be a ,). %g and %G will trim trailing zeroes and switch to
scientific notation (like %e) if the numbers get small or large enough.
• %e or %E: A floating-point number in scientific (XXXeYY) notation
• %s: A string
• %b: As a string, interpreting backslash escapes, except that octal escapes are of the form 0 or 0ooo.
%% signifies a literal "%".
Conversion can fail, e.g. "102.234" can't losslessly convert to an integer, causing printf to print an
error. If you are okay with losing information, silence errors with 2>/dev/null.
A number between the % and the format letter specifies the width. The result will be left-padded with
spaces.
Backslash Escapes
printf also knows a number of backslash escapes:
• \" double quote
• \\ backslash
• \a alert (bell)
• \b backspace
• \c produce no further output
• \e escape
• \f form feed
• \n new line
• \r carriage return
• \t horizontal tab
• \v vertical tab
• \ooo octal number (ooo is 1 to 3 digits)
• \xhh hexadecimal number (hhh is 1 to 2 digits)
• \uhhhh 16-bit Unicode character (hhhh is 4 digits)
• \Uhhhhhhhh 32-bit Unicode character (hhhhhhhh is 8 digits)
Errors and Return Status
If the given argument doesn't work for the given format (like when you try to convert a number like
3.141592 to an integer), printf prints an error, to stderr. printf will then also return non-zero, but
will still try to print as much as it can.
It will also return non-zero if no argument at all was given, in which case it will print nothing.
This printf has been imported from the printf in GNU Coreutils version 6.9. If you would like to use a
newer version of printf, for example the one shipped with your OS, try command printf.
Example
printf '%s\t%s\n' flounder fish
Will print "flounder fish" (separated with a tab character), followed by a newline character. This is
useful for writing completions, as fish expects completion scripts to output the option followed by the
description, separated with a tab character.
printf '%s: %d' "Number of bananas in my pocket" 42
Will print "Number of bananas in my pocket: 42", without a newline.
See Also
• the echo command, for simpler output
Footnotes
[1] In fact, while fish's echo supports --, POSIX forbids it, so other implementations can't be used if
the input contains anything starting with -.
prompt_hostname - print the hostname, shortened for use in the prompt
Synopsis
prompt_hostname
Description
prompt_hostname prints a shortened version the current hostname for use in the prompt. It will print just
the first component of the hostname, everything up to the first dot.
Examples
function fish_prompt
echo -n (whoami)@(prompt_hostname) (prompt_pwd) '$ '
end
# The machine's full hostname is foo.bar.com
>_ prompt_hostname
foo
prompt_login - describe the login suitable for prompt
Synopsis
prompt_login
Description
prompt_login is a function to describe the current login. It will show the user, the host and also
whether the shell is running in a chroot (currently Debian's debian_chroot file is supported).
Examples
function fish_prompt
echo -n (prompt_login) (prompt_pwd) '$ '
end
>_ prompt_login
root@bananablaster
prompt_pwd - print pwd suitable for prompt
Synopsis
prompt_pwd
Description
prompt_pwd is a function to print the current working directory in a way suitable for prompts. It will
replace the home directory with "~" and shorten every path component but the last to a default of one
character.
To change the number of characters per path component, pass --dir-length= or set
fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length to the number of characters. Setting it to 0 or an invalid value will disable
shortening entirely. This defaults to 1.
To keep some components unshortened, pass --full-length-dirs= or set fish_prompt_pwd_full_dirs to the
number of components. This defaults to 1, keeping the last component.
If any positional arguments are given, prompt_pwd shortens them instead of PWD.
Options
-d or --dir-length MAX
Causes the components to be shortened to MAX characters each. This overrides
fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length.
-D or --full-length-dirs NUM
Keeps NUM components (counted from the right) as full length without shortening. This overrides
fish_prompt_pwd_full_dirs.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Examples
>_ cd ~/
>_ echo $PWD
/home/alfa
>_ prompt_pwd
~
>_ cd /tmp/banana/sausage/with/mustard
>_ prompt_pwd
/t/b/s/w/mustard
>_ set -g fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length 3
>_ prompt_pwd
/tmp/ban/sau/wit/mustard
>_ prompt_pwd --full-length-dirs=2 --dir-length=1
/t/b/s/with/mustard
psub - perform process substitution
Synopsis
COMMAND1 ( COMMAND2 | psub [-F | --fifo] [-f | --file] [(-s | --suffix) SUFFIX] )
Description
Some shells (e.g., ksh, bash) feature a syntax that is a mix between command substitution and piping,
called process substitution. It is used to send the output of a command into the calling command, much
like command substitution, but with the difference that the output is not sent through commandline
arguments but through a named pipe, with the filename of the named pipe sent as an argument to the
calling program. psub combined with a regular command substitution provides the same functionality.
The following options are available:
-f or --file
Use a regular file instead of a named pipe to communicate with the calling process. This will
cause psub to be significantly slower when large amounts of data are involved, but has the
advantage that the reading process can seek in the stream. This is the default.
-F or --fifo
Use a named pipe rather than a file. You should only use this if the command produces no more than
8 KiB of output. The limit on the amount of data a FIFO can buffer varies with the OS but is
typically 8 KiB, 16 KiB or 64 KiB. If you use this option and the command on the left of the psub
pipeline produces more output a deadlock is likely to occur.
-s or --suffix SUFFIX
Append SUFFIX to the filename.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Example
diff (sort a.txt | psub) (sort b.txt | psub)
# shows the difference between the sorted versions of files ``a.txt`` and ``b.txt``.
source-highlight -f esc (cpp main.c | psub -f -s .c)
# highlights ``main.c`` after preprocessing as a C source.
pushd - push directory to directory stack
Synopsis
pushd DIRECTORY
Description
The pushd function adds DIRECTORY to the top of the directory stack and makes it the current working
directory. popd will pop it off and return to the original directory.
Without arguments, it exchanges the top two directories in the stack.
pushd +NUMBER rotates the stack counter-clockwise i.e. from bottom to top
pushd -NUMBER rotates clockwise i.e. top to bottom.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
cd ~/dir1
pushd ~/dir2
pushd ~/dir3
# Working directory is now ~/dir3
# Directory stack contains ~/dir2 ~/dir1
pushd /tmp
# Working directory is now /tmp
# Directory stack contains ~/dir3 ~/dir2 ~/dir1
pushd +1
# Working directory is now ~/dir3
# Directory stack contains ~/dir2 ~/dir1 /tmp
popd
# Working directory is now ~/dir2
# Directory stack contains ~/dir1 /tmp
See Also
• the dirs command to print the directory stack
• the cdh command which provides a more intuitive way to navigate to recently visited directories.
pwd - output the current working directory
Synopsis
pwd [-P | --physical]
pwd [-L | --logical]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin pwd. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man pwd.
pwd outputs (prints) the current working directory.
The following options are available:
-L or --logical
Output the logical working directory, without resolving symlinks (default behavior).
-P or --physical
Output the physical working directory, with symlinks resolved.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
See Also
Navigate directories using the directory history or the directory stack
random - generate random number
Synopsis
random
random SEED
random START END
random START STEP END
random choice [ITEMS ...]
Description
random generates a pseudo-random integer from a uniform distribution. The range (inclusive) depends on
the arguments.
No arguments indicate a range of 0 to 32767 (inclusive).
If one argument is specified, the internal engine will be seeded with the argument for future invocations
of random and no output will be produced.
Two arguments indicate a range from START to END (both START and END included).
Three arguments indicate a range from START to END with a spacing of STEP between possible outputs.
random choice will select one random item from the succeeding arguments.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Note that seeding the engine will NOT give the same result across different systems.
You should not consider random cryptographically secure, or even statistically accurate.
Example
The following code will count down from a random even number between 10 and 20 to 1:
for i in (seq (random 10 2 20) -1 1)
echo $i
end
And this will open a random picture from any of the subdirectories:
open (random choice **.jpg)
Or, to only get even numbers from 2 to 20:
random 2 2 20
Or odd numbers from 1 to 3:
random 1 2 3 # or 1 2 4
read - read line of input into variables
Synopsis
read [OPTIONS] [VARIABLE ...]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin read. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man read.
read reads from standard input and stores the result in shell variables. In an alternative mode, it can
also print to its own standard output, for example for use in command substitutions.
By default, read reads a single line and splits it into variables on spaces or tabs. Alternatively, a
null character or a maximum number of characters can be used to terminate the input, and other delimiters
can be given.
Unlike other shells, there is no default variable (such as REPLY) for storing the result - instead, it is
printed on standard output.
When read reaches the end-of-file (EOF) instead of the terminator, the exit status is set to 1.
Otherwise, it is set to 0.
If read sets a variable and you don't specify a scope, it will use the same rules that set - display and
change shell variables does - if the variable exists, it will use it (in the lowest scope). If it
doesn't, it will use an unexported function-scoped variable.
The following options, like the corresponding ones in set - display and change shell variables, control
variable scope or attributes:
-U or --universal
Sets a universal variable. The variable will be immediately available to all the user's fish
instances on the machine, and will be persisted across restarts of the shell.
-f or --function
Sets a variable scoped to the executing function. It is erased when the function ends.
-l or --local
Sets a locally-scoped variable in this block. It is erased when the block ends. Outside of a
block, this is the same as --function.
-g or --global
Sets a globally-scoped variable. Global variables are available to all functions running in the
same shell. They can be modified or erased.
-u or --unexport
Prevents the variables from being exported to child processes (default behaviour).
-x or --export
Exports the variables to child processes.
The following options control the interactive mode:
-c CMD or --command CMD
Sets the initial string in the interactive mode command buffer to CMD.
-s or --silent
Masks characters written to the terminal, replacing them with asterisks. This is useful for
reading things like passwords or other sensitive information.
-p or --prompt PROMPT_CMD
Uses the output of the shell command PROMPT_CMD as the prompt for the interactive mode. The
default prompt command is set_color green; echo -n read; set_color normal; echo -n "> "
-P or --prompt-str PROMPT_STR
Uses the literal PROMPT_STR as the prompt for the interactive mode.
-R or --right-prompt RIGHT_PROMPT_CMD
Uses the output of the shell command RIGHT_PROMPT_CMD as the right prompt for the interactive
mode. There is no default right prompt command.
-S or --shell
Enables syntax highlighting, tab completions and command termination suitable for entering
shellscript code in the interactive mode. NOTE: Prior to fish 3.0, the short opt for --shell was
-s, but it has been changed for compatibility with bash's -s short opt for --silent.
The following options control how much is read and how it is stored:
-d or --delimiter DELIMITER
Splits on DELIMITER. DELIMITER will be used as an entire string to split on, not a set of
characters.
-n or --nchars NCHARS
Makes read return after reading NCHARS characters or the end of the line, whichever comes first.
-t -or --tokenize
Causes read to split the input into variables by the shell's tokenization rules. This means it
will honor quotes and escaping. This option is of course incompatible with other options to
control splitting like --delimiter and does not honor IFS (like fish's tokenizer). It saves the
tokens in the manner they'd be passed to commands on the commandline, so e.g. a\ b is stored as a
b. Note that currently it leaves command substitutions intact along with the parentheses.
-a or --list
Stores the result as a list in a single variable. This option is also available as --array for
backwards compatibility.
-z or --null
Marks the end of the line with the NUL character, instead of newline. This also disables
interactive mode.
-L or --line
Reads each line into successive variables, and stops after each variable has been filled. This
cannot be combined with the --delimiter option.
Without the --line option, read reads a single line of input from standard input, breaks it into tokens,
and then assigns one token to each variable specified in VARIABLES. If there are more tokens than
variables, the complete remainder is assigned to the last variable.
If no option to determine how to split like --delimiter, --line or --tokenize is given, the variable IFS
is used as a list of characters to split on. Relying on the use of IFS is deprecated and this behaviour
will be removed in future versions. The default value of IFS contains space, tab and newline characters.
As a special case, if IFS is set to the empty string, each character of the input is considered a
separate token.
With the --line option, read reads a line of input from standard input into each provided variable,
stopping when each variable has been filled. The line is not tokenized.
If no variable names are provided, read enters a special case that simply provides redirection from
standard input to standard output, useful for command substitution. For instance, the fish shell command
below can be used to read a password from the console instead of hardcoding it in the command itself,
which prevents it from showing up in fish's history:
mysql -uuser -p(read)
When running in this mode, read does not split the input in any way and text is redirected to standard
output without any further processing or manipulation.
If -l or --list is provided, only one variable name is allowed and the tokens are stored as a list in
this variable.
In order to protect the shell from consuming too many system resources, read will only consume a maximum
of 100 MiB (104857600 bytes); if the terminator is not reached before this limit then VARIABLE is set to
empty and the exit status is set to 122. This limit can be altered with the fish_read_limit variable. If
set to 0 (zero), the limit is removed.
Example
read has a few separate uses.
The following code stores the value 'hello' in the shell variable foo.
echo hello | read foo
The while command is a neat way to handle command output line-by-line:
printf '%s\n' line1 line2 line3 line4 | while read -l foo
echo "This is another line: $foo"
end
Delimiters given via "-d" are taken as one string:
echo a==b==c | read -d == -l a b c
echo $a # a
echo $b # b
echo $c # c
--tokenize honors quotes and escaping like the shell's argument passing:
echo 'a\ b' | read -t first second
echo $first # outputs "a b", $second is empty
echo 'a"foo bar"b (command echo wurst)*" "{a,b}' | read -lt -l a b c
echo $a # outputs 'afoo barb' (without the quotes)
echo $b # outputs '(command echo wurst)* {a,b}' (without the quotes)
echo $c # nothing
For an example on interactive use, see Querying for user input.
realpath - convert a path to an absolute path without symlinks
Synopsis
realpath [OPTIONS] PATH
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin realpath. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions,
use command man realpath.
realpath follows all symbolic links encountered for the provided PATH, printing the absolute path
resolved. fish provides a realpath-alike builtin intended to enrich systems where no such command is
installed by default.
If a realpath command exists, that will be preferred. builtin realpath will explicitly use the fish
implementation of realpath.
The following options are available:
-s or --no-symlinks
Don't resolve symlinks, only make paths absolute, squash multiple slashes and remove trailing
slashes.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
return - stop the current inner function
Synopsis
return [N]
Description
return halts a currently running function. The exit status is set to N if it is given. If return is
invoked outside of a function or dot script it is equivalent to exit.
It is often added inside of a conditional block such as an if statement or a switch statement to
conditionally stop the executing function and return to the caller; it can also be used to specify the
exit status of a function.
If at the top level of a script, it exits with the given status, like exit. If at the top level in an
interactive session, it will set status, but not exit the shell.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
An implementation of the false command as a fish function:
function false
return 1
end
set - display and change shell variables
Synopsis
set
set (-f | --function) (-l | --local) (-g | --global) (-U | --universal) [--no-event]
set [-Uflg] NAME [VALUE ...]
set [-Uflg] NAME[[INDEX ...]] [VALUE ...]
set (-x | --export) (-u | --unexport) [-Uflg] NAME [VALUE ...]
set (-a | --append) (-p | --prepend) [-Uflg] NAME VALUE ...
set (-q | --query) (-e | --erase) [-Uflg] [NAME][[INDEX]] ...]
set (-S | --show) (-L | --long) [NAME ...]
Description
set manipulates shell variables.
If both NAME and VALUE are provided, set assigns any values to variable NAME. Variables in fish are
lists, multiple values are allowed. One or more variable INDEX can be specified including ranges (not
for all options.)
If no VALUE is given, the variable will be set to the empty list.
If set is ran without arguments, it prints the names and values of all shell variables in sorted order.
Passing scope or export flags allows filtering this to only matching variables, so set --local would only
show local variables.
With --erase and optionally a scope flag set will erase the matching variable (or the variable of that
name in the smallest possible scope).
With --show, set will describe the given variable names, explaining how they have been defined - in which
scope with which values and options.
The following options control variable scope:
-U or --universal
Sets a universal variable. The variable will be immediately available to all the user's fish
instances on the machine, and will be persisted across restarts of the shell.
-f or --function
Sets a variable scoped to the executing function. It is erased when the function ends.
-l or --local
Sets a locally-scoped variable in this block. It is erased when the block ends. Outside of a
block, this is the same as --function.
-g or --global
Sets a globally-scoped variable. Global variables are available to all functions running in the
same shell. They can be modified or erased.
These options modify how variables operate:
--export or -x
Causes the specified shell variable to be exported to child processes (making it an "environment
variable").
--unexport or -u
Causes the specified shell variable to NOT be exported to child processes.
--path Treat specified variable as a path variable; variable will be split on colons (:) and will be
displayed joined by colons when quoted (echo "$PATH") or exported.
--unpath
Causes variable to no longer be treated as a path variable. Note: variables ending in "PATH" are
automatically path variables.
Further options:
-a or --append NAME VALUE ...
Appends VALUES to the current set of values for variable NAME. Can be used with --prepend to both
append and prepend at the same time. This cannot be used when assigning to a variable slice.
-p or --prepend NAME VALUE ...
Prepends VALUES to the current set of values for variable NAME. This can be used with --append to
both append and prepend at the same time. This cannot be used when assigning to a variable slice.
-e or --erase NAME[INDEX]
Causes the specified shell variables to be erased. Supports erasing from multiple scopes at once.
Individual items in a variable at INDEX in brackets can be specified.
-q or --query NAME[INDEX]
Test if the specified variable names are defined. If an INDEX is provided, check for items at
that slot. Does not output anything, but the shell status is set to the number of variables
specified that were not defined, up to a maximum of 255. If no variable was given, it also
returns 255.
-n or --names
List only the names of all defined variables, not their value. The names are guaranteed to be
sorted.
-S or --show
Shows information about the given variables. If no variable names are given then all variables
are shown in sorted order. It shows the scopes the given variables are set in, along with the
values in each and whether or not it is exported. No other flags can be used with this option.
--no-event
Don't generate a variable change event when setting or erasing a variable. We recommend using
this carefully because the event handlers are usually set up for a reason. Possible uses include
modifying the variable inside a variable handler.
-L or --long
Do not abbreviate long values when printing set variables.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
If a variable is set to more than one value, the variable will be a list with the specified elements. If
a variable is set to zero elements, it will become a list with zero elements.
If the variable name is one or more list elements, such as PATH[1 3 7], only those list elements
specified will be changed. If you specify a negative index when expanding or assigning to a list
variable, the index will be calculated from the end of the list. For example, the index -1 means the
last index of a list.
The scoping rules when creating or updating a variable are:
• Variables may be explicitly set as universal, global, function, or local. Variables with the same name
but in a different scope will not be changed.
• If the scope of a variable is not explicitly set but a variable by that name has been previously
defined, the scope of the existing variable is used. If the variable is already defined in multiple
scopes, the variable with the narrowest scope will be updated.
• If a variable's scope is not explicitly set and there is no existing variable by that name, the
variable will be local to the currently executing function. Note that this is different from using the
-l or --local flag, in which case the variable will be local to the most-inner currently executing
block, while without them the variable will be local to the function as a whole. If no function is
executing, the variable will be set in the global scope.
The exporting rules when creating or updating a variable are identical to the scoping rules for
variables:
• Variables may be explicitly set to either exported or not exported. When an exported variable goes out
of scope, it is unexported.
• If a variable is not explicitly set to be exported or not exported, but has been previously defined,
the previous exporting rule for the variable is kept.
• If a variable is not explicitly set to be either exported or unexported and has never before been
defined, the variable will not be exported.
In query mode, the scope to be examined can be specified. Whether the variable has to be a path variable
or exported can also be specified.
In erase mode, if variable indices are specified, only the specified slices of the list variable will be
erased.
set requires all options to come before any other arguments. For example, set flags -l will have the
effect of setting the value of the variable flags to '-l', not making the variable local.
Exit status
In assignment mode, set does not modify the exit status, but passes along whatever status was set,
including by command substitutions. This allows capturing the output and exit status of a subcommand,
like in if set output (command).
In query mode, the exit status is the number of variables that were not found.
In erase mode, set exits with a zero exit status in case of success, with a non-zero exit status if the
commandline was invalid, if any of the variables did not exist or was a special read-only variable.
Examples
Print all global, exported variables:
> set -gx
Set the value of the variable _$foo_ to be 'hi'.:
> set foo hi
Append the value "there" to the variable $foo:
> set -a foo there
Remove _$smurf_ from the scope:
> set -e smurf
Remove _$smurf_ from the global and universal scopes:
> set -e -Ug smurf
Change the fourth element of the $PATH list to ~/bin:
> set PATH[4] ~/bin
Outputs the path to Python if type -p returns true:
if set python_path (type -p python)
echo "Python is at $python_path"
end
Setting a variable doesn't modify $status; a command substitution still will, though:
> echo $status
0
> false
> set foo bar
> echo $status
1
> true
> set foo banana (false)
> echo $status
1
VAR=VALUE command sets a variable for just one command, like other shells. This runs fish with a
temporary home directory:
> HOME=(mktemp -d) fish
(which is essentially the same as):
> begin; set -lx HOME (mktemp -d); fish; end
Notes
• Fish versions prior to 3.0 supported the syntax set PATH[1] PATH[4] /bin /sbin, which worked like set
PATH[1 4] /bin /sbin.
set_color - set the terminal color
Synopsis
set_color [OPTIONS] VALUE
Description
set_color is used to control the color and styling of text in the terminal. VALUE describes that styling.
VALUE can be a reserved color name like red or an RGB color value given as 3 or 6 hexadecimal digits
("F27" or "FF2277"). A special keyword normal resets text formatting to terminal defaults.
Valid colors include:
• black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan, white
• brblack, brred, brgreen, bryellow, brblue, brmagenta, brcyan, brwhite
The br- (as in 'bright') forms are full-brightness variants of the 8 standard-brightness colors on many
terminals. brblack has higher brightness than black - towards gray.
An RGB value with three or six hex digits, such as A0FF33 or f2f can be used. Fish will choose the
closest supported color. A three digit value is equivalent to specifying each digit twice; e.g.,
set_color 2BC is the same as set_color 22BBCC. Hexadecimal RGB values can be in lower or uppercase.
Depending on the capabilities of your terminal (and the level of support set_color has for it) the actual
color may be approximated by a nearby matching reserved color name or set_color may not have an effect on
color.
A second color may be given as a desired fallback color. e.g. set_color 124212 brblue will instruct
set_color to use brblue if a terminal is not capable of the exact shade of grey desired. This is very
useful when an 8 or 16 color terminal might otherwise not use a color.
The following options are available:
-b or --background COLOR
Sets the background color.
-c or --print-colors
Prints the given colors or a colored list of the 16 named colors.
-o or --bold
Sets bold mode.
-d or --dim
Sets dim mode.
-i or --italics
Sets italics mode.
-r or --reverse
Sets reverse mode.
-u or --underline
Sets underlined mode.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
Using the normal keyword will reset foreground, background, and all formatting back to default.
Notes
1. Using the normal keyword will reset both background and foreground colors to whatever is the default
for the terminal.
2. Setting the background color only affects subsequently written characters. Fish provides no way to set
the background color for the entire terminal window. Configuring the window background color (and
other attributes such as its opacity) has to be done using whatever mechanisms the terminal provides.
Look for a config option.
3. Some terminals use the --bold escape sequence to switch to a brighter color set rather than increasing
the weight of text.
4. set_color works by printing sequences of characters to standard output. If used in command
substitution or a pipe, these characters will also be captured. This may or may not be desirable.
Checking the exit status of isatty stdout before using set_color can be useful to decide not to
colorize output in a script.
Examples
set_color red; echo "Roses are red"
set_color blue; echo "Violets are blue"
set_color 62A; echo "Eggplants are dark purple"
set_color normal; echo "Normal is nice" # Resets the background too
Terminal Capability Detection
Fish uses some heuristics to determine what colors a terminal supports to avoid sending sequences that it
won't understand.
In particular it will:
• Enable 256 colors if TERM contains "xterm", except for known exceptions (like MacOS 10.6 Terminal.app)
• Enable 24-bit ("true-color") even if the $TERM entry only reports 256 colors. This includes modern
xterm, VTE-based terminals like Gnome Terminal, Konsole and iTerm2.
• Detect support for italics, dim, reverse and other modes.
If terminfo reports 256 color support for a terminal, 256 color support will always be enabled.
To force true-color support on or off, set fish_term24bit to "1" for on and 0 for off - set -g
fish_term24bit 1.
To debug color palette problems, tput colors may be useful to see the number of colors in terminfo for a
terminal. Fish launched as fish -d term_support will include diagnostic messages that indicate the color
support mode in use.
The set_color command uses the terminfo database to look up how to change terminal colors on whatever
terminal is in use. Some systems have old and incomplete terminfo databases, and lack color information
for terminals that support it. Fish assumes that all terminals can use the ANSI X3.64
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code> escape sequences if the terminfo definition indicates a
color below 16 is not supported.
source - evaluate contents of file
Synopsis
source FILE [ARGUMENTS ...]
SOMECOMMAND | source
. FILE [ARGUMENTS ...]
Description
source evaluates the commands of the specified FILE in the current shell as a new block of code. This is
different from starting a new process to perform the commands (i.e. fish < FILE) since the commands will
be evaluated by the current shell, which means that changes in shell variables will affect the current
shell. If additional arguments are specified after the file name, they will be inserted into the argv
variable. The argv variable will not include the name of the sourced file.
fish will search the working directory to resolve relative paths but will not search PATH .
If no file is specified and a file or pipeline is connected to standard input, or if the file name - is
used, source will read from standard input. If no file is specified and there is no redirected file or
pipeline on standard input, an error will be printed.
The exit status of source is the exit status of the last job to execute. If something goes wrong while
opening or reading the file, source exits with a non-zero status.
Some other shells only support the . alias (a single period). The use of . is deprecated in favour of
source, and . will be removed in a future version of fish.
source creates a new local scope; set --local within a sourced block will not affect variables in the
enclosing scope.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
source ~/.config/fish/config.fish
# Causes fish to re-read its initialization file.
Caveats
In fish versions prior to 2.3.0, the argv variable would have a single element (the name of the sourced
file) if no arguments are present. Otherwise, it would contain arguments without the name of the sourced
file. That behavior was very confusing and unlike other shells such as bash and zsh.
status - query fish runtime information
Synopsis
status
status is-login
status is-interactive
status is-interactive-read
status is-block
status is-breakpoint
status is-command-substitution
status is-no-job-control
status is-full-job-control
status is-interactive-job-control
status current-command
status current-commandline
status filename
status basename
status dirname
status fish-path
status function
status line-number
status stack-trace
status job-control CONTROL_TYPE
status features
status test-feature FEATURE
status buildinfo
Description
With no arguments, status displays a summary of the current login and job control status of the shell.
The following operations (subcommands) are available:
is-command-substitution, -c or --is-command-substitution
Returns 0 if fish is currently executing a command substitution.
is-block, -b or --is-block
Returns 0 if fish is currently executing a block of code.
is-breakpoint
Returns 0 if fish is currently showing a prompt in the context of a breakpoint command. See also
the fish_breakpoint_prompt function.
is-interactive, -i or --is-interactive
Returns 0 if fish is interactive - that is, connected to a keyboard.
is-interactive-read or --is-interactive-read
Returns 0 if fish is running an interactive read builtin which is connected to a keyboard.
is-login, -l or --is-login
Returns 0 if fish is a login shell - that is, if fish should perform login tasks such as setting
up PATH.
is-full-job-control or --is-full-job-control
Returns 0 if full job control is enabled.
is-interactive-job-control or --is-interactive-job-control
Returns 0 if interactive job control is enabled.
is-no-job-control or --is-no-job-control
Returns 0 if no job control is enabled.
current-command
Prints the name of the currently-running function or command, like the deprecated _ variable.
current-commandline
Prints the entirety of the currently-running commandline, inclusive of all jobs and operators.
filename, current-filename, -f or --current-filename
Prints the filename of the currently-running script. If the current script was called via a
symlink, this will return the symlink. If the current script was received by piping into source,
then this will return -.
basename
Prints just the filename of the running script, without any path components before.
dirname
Prints just the path to the running script, without the actual filename itself. This can be
relative to PWD (including just "."), depending on how the script was called. This is the same as
passing the filename to dirname(3). It's useful if you want to use other files in the current
script's directory or similar.
fish-path
Prints the absolute path to the currently executing instance of fish. This is a best-effort
attempt and the exact output is down to what the platform gives fish. In some cases you might only
get "fish".
function or current-function
Prints the name of the currently called function if able, when missing displays "Not a function"
(or equivalent translated string).
line-number, current-line-number, -n or --current-line-number
Prints the line number of the currently running script.
stack-trace, print-stack-trace, -t or --print-stack-trace
Prints a stack trace of all function calls on the call stack.
job-control, -j or --job-control CONTROL_TYPE
Sets the job control type to CONTROL_TYPE, which can be none, full, or interactive.
features
Lists all available feature flags.
test-feature FEATURE
Returns 0 when FEATURE is enabled, 1 if it is disabled, and 2 if it is not recognized.
buildinfo
This prints information on how fish was build - which architecture, which build system or profile
was used, etc. This is mainly useful for debugging.
Notes
For backwards compatibility most subcommands can also be specified as a long or short option. For
example, rather than status is-login you can type status --is-login. The flag forms are deprecated and
may be removed in a future release (but not before fish 4.0).
You can only specify one subcommand per invocation even if you use the flag form of the subcommand.
string - manipulate strings
Synopsis
string collect [-a | --allow-empty] [-N | --no-trim-newlines] [STRING ...]
string escape [-n | --no-quoted] [--style=] [STRING ...]
string join [-q | --quiet] [-n | --no-empty] SEP [STRING ...]
string join0 [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string length [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string lower [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string match [-a | --all] [-e | --entire] [-i | --ignore-case]
[-g | --groups-only] [-r | --regex] [-n | --index]
[-q | --quiet] [-v | --invert]
PATTERN [STRING ...]
string pad [-r | --right] [(-c | --char) CHAR] [(-w | --width) INTEGER]
[STRING ...]
string repeat [(-n | --count) COUNT] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-N | --no-newline]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string repeat [-N | --no-newline] [-q | --quiet] COUNT [STRING ...]
string replace [-a | --all] [-f | --filter] [-i | --ignore-case]
[-r | --regex] [-q | --quiet] PATTERN REPLACE [STRING ...]
string shorten [(-c | --char) CHARS] [(-m | --max) INTEGER]
[-N | --no-newline] [-l | --left] [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string split [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] SEP [STRING ...]
string split0 [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] [STRING ...]
string sub [(-s | --start) START] [(-e | --end) END] [(-l | --length) LENGTH]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string trim [-l | --left] [-r | --right] [(-c | --chars) CHARS]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string unescape [--style=] [STRING ...]
string upper [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string performs operations on strings.
STRING arguments are taken from the command line unless standard input is connected to a pipe or a file,
in which case they are read from standard input, one STRING per line. It is an error to supply STRING
arguments on the command line and on standard input.
Arguments beginning with - are normally interpreted as switches; -- causes the following arguments not to
be treated as switches even if they begin with -. Switches and required arguments are recognized only on
the command line.
Most subcommands accept a -q or --quiet switch, which suppresses the usual output but exits with the
documented status. In this case these commands will quit early, without reading all of the available
input.
The following subcommands are available.
"collect" subcommand
string collect [-a | --allow-empty] [-N | --no-trim-newlines] [STRING ...]
string collect collects its input into a single output argument, without splitting the output when used
in a command substitution. This is useful when trying to collect multiline output from another command
into a variable. Exit status: 0 if any output argument is non-empty, or 1 otherwise.
A command like echo (cmd | string collect) is mostly equivalent to a quoted command substitution (echo
"$(cmd)"). The main difference is that the former evaluates to zero or one elements whereas the quoted
command substitution always evaluates to one element due to string interpolation.
If invoked with multiple arguments instead of input, string collect preserves each argument separately,
where the number of output arguments is equal to the number of arguments given to string collect.
Any trailing newlines on the input are trimmed, just as with "$(cmd)" substitution. Use
--no-trim-newlines to disable this behavior, which may be useful when running a command such as set
contents (cat filename | string collect -N).
With --allow-empty, string collect always prints one (empty) argument. This can be used to prevent an
argument from disappearing.
Examples
>_ echo "zero $(echo one\ntwo\nthree) four"
zero one
two
three four
>_ echo \"(echo one\ntwo\nthree | string collect)\"
"one
two
three"
>_ echo \"(echo one\ntwo\nthree | string collect -N)\"
"one
two
three
"
>_ echo foo(true | string collect --allow-empty)bar
foobar
"escape" and "unescape" subcommands
string escape [-n | --no-quoted] [--style=] [STRING ...]
string unescape [--style=] [STRING ...]
string escape escapes each STRING in one of several ways.
--style=script (default) alters the string such that it can be passed back to eval to produce the
original argument again. By default, all special characters are escaped, and quotes are used to simplify
the output when possible. If -n or --no-quoted is given, the simplifying quoted format is not used. Exit
status: 0 if at least one string was escaped, or 1 otherwise.
--style=var ensures the string can be used as a variable name by hex encoding any non-alphanumeric
characters. The string is first converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
--style=url ensures the string can be used as a URL by hex encoding any character which is not legal in a
URL. The string is first converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
--style=regex escapes an input string for literal matching within a regex expression. The string is first
converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
string unescape performs the inverse of the string escape command. If the string to be unescaped is not
properly formatted it is ignored. For example, doing string unescape --style=var (string escape
--style=var $str) will return the original string. There is no support for unescaping --style=regex.
Examples
>_ echo \x07 | string escape
\cg
>_ string escape --style=var 'a1 b2'\u6161
a1_20_b2_E6_85_A1_
"join" and "join0" subcommands
string join [-q | --quiet] SEP [STRING ...]
string join0 [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string join joins its STRING arguments into a single string separated by SEP, which can be an empty
string. Exit status: 0 if at least one join was performed, or 1 otherwise. If -n or --no-empty is
specified, empty strings are excluded from consideration (e.g. string join -n + a b "" c would expand to
a+b+c not a+b++c).
string join0 joins its STRING arguments into a single string separated by the zero byte (NUL), and adds a
trailing NUL. This is most useful in conjunction with tools that accept NUL-delimited input, such as sort
-z. Exit status: 0 if at least one join was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Because Unix uses NUL as the string terminator, passing the output of string join0 as an argument to a
command (via a command substitution) won't actually work. Fish will pass the correct bytes along, but the
command won't be able to tell where the argument ends. This is a limitation of Unix' argument passing.
Examples
>_ seq 3 | string join ...
1...2...3
# Give a list of NUL-separated filenames to du (this is a GNU extension)
>_ string join0 file1 file2 file\nwith\nmultiple\nlines | du --files0-from=-
# Just put the strings together without a separator
>_ string join '' a b c
abc
"length" subcommand
string length [-q | --quiet] [-V | --visible] [STRING ...]
string length reports the length of each string argument in characters. Exit status: 0 if at least one
non-empty STRING was given, or 1 otherwise.
With -V or --visible, it uses the visible width of the arguments. That means it will discount escape
sequences fish knows about, account for $fish_emoji_width and $fish_ambiguous_width. It will also count
each line (separated by \n) on its own, and with a carriage return (\r) count only the widest stretch on
a line. The intent is to measure the number of columns the STRING would occupy in the current terminal.
Examples
>_ string length 'hello, world'
12
>_ set str foo
>_ string length -q $str; echo $status
0
# Equivalent to test -n "$str"
>_ string length --visible (set_color red)foobar
# the set_color is discounted, so this is the width of "foobar"
6
>_ string length --visible 🐟🐟🐟🐟
# depending on $fish_emoji_width, this is either 4 or 8
# in new terminals it should be
8
>_ string length --visible abcdef\r123
# this displays as "123def", so the width is 6
6
>_ string length --visible a\nbc
# counts "a" and "bc" as separate lines, so it prints width for each
1
2
"lower" subcommand
string lower [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string lower converts each string argument to lowercase. Exit status: 0 if at least one string was
converted to lowercase, else 1. This means that in conjunction with the -q flag you can readily test
whether a string is already lowercase.
"match" subcommand
string match [-a | --all] [-e | --entire] [-i | --ignore-case]
[-g | --groups-only] [-r | --regex] [-n | --index]
[-q | --quiet] [-v | --invert] [(-m | --max-matches) MAX]
PATTERN [STRING ...]
string match tests each STRING against PATTERN and prints matching substrings. Only the first match for
each STRING is reported unless -a or --all is given, in which case all matches are reported.
If you specify the -e or --entire then each matching string is printed including any prefix or suffix not
matched by the pattern (equivalent to grep without the -o flag). You can, obviously, achieve the same
result by prepending and appending * or .* depending on whether or not you have specified the --regex
flag. The --entire flag is simply a way to avoid having to complicate the pattern in that fashion and
make the intent of the string match clearer. Without --entire and --regex, a PATTERN will need to match
the entire STRING before it will be reported.
Matching can be made case-insensitive with --ignore-case or -i.
If --groups-only or -g is given, only the capturing groups will be reported - meaning the full match will
be skipped. This is incompatible with --entire and --invert, and requires --regex. It is useful as a
simple cutting tool instead of string replace, so you can simply choose "this part" of a string.
If --index or -n is given, each match is reported as a 1-based start position and a length. By default,
PATTERN is interpreted as a glob pattern matched against each entire STRING argument. A glob pattern is
only considered a valid match if it matches the entire STRING.
If --regex or -r is given, PATTERN is interpreted as a Perl-compatible regular expression, which does not
have to match the entire STRING. For a regular expression containing capturing groups, multiple items
will be reported for each match, one for the entire match and one for each capturing group. With this,
only the matching part of the STRING will be reported, unless --entire is given.
When matching via regular expressions, string match automatically sets variables for all named capturing
groups ((?<name>expression)). It will create a variable with the name of the group, in the default scope,
for each named capturing group, and set it to the value of the capturing group in the first matched
argument. If a named capture group matched an empty string, the variable will be set to the empty string
(like set var ""). If it did not match, the variable will be set to nothing (like set var). When --regex
is used with --all, this behavior changes. Each named variable will contain a list of matches, with the
first match contained in the first element, the second match in the second, and so on. If the group was
empty or did not match, the corresponding element will be an empty string.
If --invert or -v is used the selected lines will be only those which do not match the given glob pattern
or regular expression.
If --max-matches MAX or -m MAX is used, string will stop checking for matches after MAX lines of input
have matched. This can be used as an "early exit" optimization when processing long inputs but expecting
a limited and fixed number of outputs that might be found considerably before the input stream has been
exhausted. If combined with --invert or -v, considers only inverted matches.
Exit status: 0 if at least one match was found, or 1 otherwise.
Match Glob Examples
>_ string match 'a' a
a
>_ string match 'a*b' axxb
axxb
>_ string match -i 'a*B' Axxb
Axxb
>_ string match -- '-*' -h foo --version bar
# To match things that look like options, we need a `--`
# to tell string its options end there.
-h
--version
>_ echo 'ok?' | string match '*?'
ok?
# Note that only the second STRING will match here.
>_ string match 'foo' 'foo1' 'foo' 'foo2'
foo
>_ string match -e 'foo' 'foo1' 'foo' 'foo2'
foo1
foo
foo2
>_ string match 'foo*' 'foo1' 'foo' 'foo2'
foo1
foo2
Match Regex Examples
>_ string match -r 'cat|dog|fish' 'nice dog'
dog
>_ string match -r -v "c.*[12]" {cat,dog}(seq 1 4)
dog1
dog2
cat3
dog3
cat4
dog4
>_ string match -r -- '-.*' -h foo --version bar
# To match things that look like options, we need a `--`
# to tell string its options end there.
-h
--version
>_ string match -r '(\d\d?):(\d\d):(\d\d)' 2:34:56
2:34:56
2
34
56
>_ string match -r '^(\w{2,4})\1$' papa mud murmur
papa
pa
murmur
mur
>_ string match -r -a -n at ratatat
2 2
4 2
6 2
>_ string match -r -i '0x[0-9a-f]{1,8}' 'int magic = 0xBadC0de;'
0xBadC0de
>_ echo $version
3.1.2-1575-ga2ff32d90
>_ string match -rq '(?<major>\d+).(?<minor>\d+).(?<revision>\d+)' -- $version
>_ echo "You are using fish $major!"
You are using fish 3!
>_ string match -raq ' *(?<sentence>[^.!?]+)(?<punctuation>[.!?])?' "hello, friend. goodbye"
>_ printf "%s\n" -- $sentence
hello, friend
goodbye
>_ printf "%s\n" -- $punctuation
.
>_ string match -rq '(?<word>hello)' 'hi'
>_ count $word
0
"pad" subcommand
string pad [-r | --right] [(-c | --char) CHAR] [(-w | --width) INTEGER]
[STRING ...]
string pad extends each STRING to the given visible width by adding CHAR to the left. That means the
width of all visible characters added together, excluding escape sequences and accounting for
fish_emoji_width and fish_ambiguous_width. It is the amount of columns in a terminal the STRING occupies.
The escape sequences reflect what fish knows about, and how it computes its output. Your terminal might
support more escapes, or not support escape sequences that fish knows about.
If -r or --right is given, add the padding after a string.
If -c or --char is given, pad with CHAR instead of whitespace.
The output is padded to the maximum width of all input strings. If -w or --width is given, use at least
that.
Examples
>_ string pad -w 10 abc abcdef
abc
abcdef
>_ string pad --right --char=🐟 "fish are pretty" "rich. "
fish are pretty
rich. 🐟🐟🐟🐟
>_ string pad -w$COLUMNS (date)
# Prints the current time on the right edge of the screen.
See also
• The printf command can do simple padding, for example printf %10s\n works like string pad -w10.
• string length with the --visible option can be used to show what fish thinks the width is.
"shorten" subcommand
string shorten [(-c | --char) CHARS] [(-m | --max) INTEGER]
[-N | --no-newline] [-l | --left] [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string shorten truncates each STRING to the given visible width and adds an ellipsis to indicate it.
"Visible width" means the width of all visible characters added together, excluding escape sequences and
accounting for fish_emoji_width and fish_ambiguous_width. It is the amount of columns in a terminal the
STRING occupies.
The escape sequences reflect what fish knows about, and how it computes its output. Your terminal might
support more escapes, or not support escape sequences that fish knows about.
If -m or --max is given, truncate at the given width. Otherwise, the lowest non-zero width of all input
strings is used. A max of 0 means no shortening takes place, all STRINGs are printed as-is.
If -N or --no-newline is given, only the first line (or last line with --left) of each STRING is used,
and an ellipsis is added if it was multiline. This only works for STRINGs being given as arguments,
multiple lines given on stdin will be interpreted as separate STRINGs instead.
If -c or --char is given, add CHAR instead of an ellipsis. This can also be empty or more than one
character.
If -l or --left is given, remove text from the left on instead, so this prints the longest suffix of the
string that fits. With --no-newline, this will take from the last line instead of the first.
If -q or --quiet is given, string shorten only runs for the return value - if anything would be
shortened, it returns 0, else 1.
The default ellipsis is …. If fish thinks your system is incapable because of your locale, it will use
... instead.
The return value is 0 if any shortening occurred, 1 otherwise.
Examples
>_ string shorten foo foobar
# No width was given, we infer, and "foo" is the shortest.
foo
fo…
>_ string shorten --char="..." foo foobar
# The target width is 3 because of "foo",
# and our ellipsis is 3 too, so we can't really show anything.
# This is the default ellipsis if your locale doesn't allow "…".
foo
...
>_ string shorten --char="" --max 4 abcdef 123456
# Leaving the char empty makes us not add an ellipsis
# So this truncates at 4 columns:
abcd
1234
>_ touch "a multiline"\n"file"
>_ for file in *; string shorten -N -- $file; end
# Shorten the multiline file so we only show one line per file:
a multiline…
>_ ss -p | string shorten -m$COLUMNS -c ""
# `ss` from Linux' iproute2 shows socket information, but prints extremely long lines.
# This shortens input so it fits on the screen without overflowing lines.
>_ git branch | string match -rg '^\* (.*)' | string shorten -m20
# Take the current git branch and shorten it at 20 columns.
# Here the branch is "builtin-path-with-expand"
builtin-path-with-e…
>_ git branch | string match -rg '^\* (.*)' | string shorten -m20 --left
# Taking 20 columns from the right instead:
…in-path-with-expand
See also
• string's pad subcommand does the inverse of this command, adding padding to a specific width instead.
• The printf command can do simple padding, for example printf %10s\n works like string pad -w10.
• string length with the --visible option can be used to show what fish thinks the width is.
"repeat" subcommand
string repeat [(-n | --count) COUNT] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-N | --no-newline]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string repeat [-N | --no-newline] [-q | --quiet] COUNT [STRING ...]
string repeat repeats the STRING -n or --count times. The -m or --max option will limit the number of
outputted characters (excluding the newline). This option can be used by itself or in conjunction with
--count. If both --count and --max are present, max char will be outputted unless the final repeated
string size is less than max, in that case, the string will repeat until count has been reached. Both
--count and --max will accept a number greater than or equal to zero, in the case of zero, nothing will
be outputted. The first argument is interpreted as COUNT if --count or --max are not explicitly
specified. If -N or --no-newline is given, the output won't contain a newline character at the end. Exit
status: 0 if yielded string is not empty, 1 otherwise.
Examples
Repeat Examples
>_ string repeat -n 2 'foo '
foo foo
>_ echo foo | string repeat -n 2
foofoo
>_ string repeat -n 2 -m 5 'foo'
foofo
>_ string repeat -m 5 'foo'
foofo
>_ string repeat 2 'foo'
foofoo
>_ string repeat 2 -n 3
222
"replace" subcommand
string replace [-a | --all] [-f | --filter] [-i | --ignore-case]
[-r | --regex] [(-m | --max-matches) MAX] [-q | --quiet]
PATTERN REPLACEMENT [STRING ...]
string replace is similar to string match but replaces non-overlapping matching substrings with a
replacement string and prints the result. By default, PATTERN is treated as a literal substring to be
matched.
If -r or --regex is given, PATTERN is interpreted as a Perl-compatible regular expression, and
REPLACEMENT can contain C-style escape sequences like t as well as references to capturing groups by
number or name as $n or ${n}.
If you specify the -f or --filter flag then each input string is printed only if a replacement was done.
This is useful where you would otherwise use this idiom: a_cmd | string match pattern | string replace
pattern new_pattern. You can instead just write a_cmd | string replace --filter pattern new_pattern.
If --max-matches MAX or -m MAX is used, string replace will stop all processing after MAX lines of input
have matched the specified pattern. In the event of --filter or -f, this means the output will be MAX
lines in length. This can be used as an "early exit" optimization when processing long inputs but
expecting a limited and fixed number of outputs that might be found considerably before the input stream
has been exhausted.
Exit status: 0 if at least one replacement was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Replace Literal Examples
>_ string replace is was 'blue is my favorite'
blue was my favorite
>_ string replace 3rd last 1st 2nd 3rd
1st
2nd
last
>_ string replace -a ' ' _ 'spaces to underscores'
spaces_to_underscores
Replace Regex Examples
>_ string replace -r -a '[^\d.]+' ' ' '0 one two 3.14 four 5x'
0 3.14 5
>_ string replace -r '(\w+)\s+(\w+)' '$2 $1 $$' 'left right'
right left $
>_ string replace -r '\s*newline\s*' '\n' 'put a newline here'
put a
here
"split" and "split0" subcommands
string split [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] SEP [STRING ...]
string split0 [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] [STRING ...]
string split splits each STRING on the separator SEP, which can be an empty string. If -m or --max is
specified, at most MAX splits are done on each STRING. If -r or --right is given, splitting is performed
right-to-left. This is useful in combination with -m or --max. With -n or --no-empty, empty results are
excluded from consideration (e.g. hello\n\nworld would expand to two strings and not three). Exit status:
0 if at least one split was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Use -f or --fields to print out specific fields. FIELDS is a comma-separated string of field numbers
and/or spans. Each field is one-indexed, and will be printed on separate lines. If a given field does not
exist, then the command exits with status 1 and does not print anything, unless --allow-empty is used.
See also the --delimiter option of the read command.
string split0 splits each STRING on the zero byte (NUL). Options are the same as string split except that
no separator is given.
split0 has the important property that its output is not further split when used in a command
substitution, allowing for the command substitution to produce elements containing newlines. This is most
useful when used with Unix tools that produce zero bytes, such as find -print0 or sort -z. See split0
examples below.
Examples
>_ string split . example.com
example
com
>_ string split -r -m1 / /usr/local/bin/fish
/usr/local/bin
fish
>_ string split '' abc
a
b
c
>_ string split --allow-empty -f1,3-4,5 '' abcd
a
c
d
NUL Delimited Examples
>_ # Count files in a directory, without being confused by newlines.
>_ count (find . -print0 | string split0)
42
>_ # Sort a list of elements which may contain newlines
>_ set foo beta alpha\ngamma
>_ set foo (string join0 $foo | sort -z | string split0)
>_ string escape $foo[1]
alpha\ngamma
"sub" subcommand
string sub [(-s | --start) START] [(-e | --end) END] [(-l | --length) LENGTH]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string sub prints a substring of each string argument. The start/end of the substring can be specified
with -s/-e or --start/--end followed by a 1-based index value. Positive index values are relative to the
start of the string and negative index values are relative to the end of the string. The default start
value is 1. The length of the substring can be specified with -l or --length. If the length or end is not
specified, the substring continues to the end of each STRING. Exit status: 0 if at least one substring
operation was performed, 1 otherwise. --length is mutually exclusive with --end.
Examples
>_ string sub --length 2 abcde
ab
>_ string sub -s 2 -l 2 abcde
bc
>_ string sub --start=-2 abcde
de
>_ string sub --end=3 abcde
abc
>_ string sub -e -1 abcde
abcd
>_ string sub -s 2 -e -1 abcde
bcd
>_ string sub -s -3 -e -2 abcde
c
"trim" subcommand
string trim [-l | --left] [-r | --right] [(-c | --chars) CHARS]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string trim removes leading and trailing whitespace from each STRING. If -l or --left is given, only
leading whitespace is removed. If -r or --right is given, only trailing whitespace is trimmed.
The -c or --chars switch causes the set of characters in CHARS to be removed instead of whitespace. This
is a set of characters, not a string - if you pass -c foo, it will remove any "f" or "o", not just "foo"
as a whole.
Exit status: 0 if at least one character was trimmed, or 1 otherwise.
Examples
>_ string trim ' abc '
abc
>_ string trim --right --chars=yz xyzzy zany
x
zan
"upper" subcommand
string upper [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string upper converts each string argument to uppercase. Exit status: 0 if at least one string was
converted to uppercase, else 1. This means that in conjunction with the -q flag you can readily test
whether a string is already uppercase.
Regular Expressions
Both the match and replace subcommand support regular expressions when used with the -r or --regex
option. The dialect is that of PCRE2.
In general, special characters are special by default, so a+ matches one or more "a"s, while a\+ matches
an "a" and then a "+". (a+) matches one or more "a"s in a capturing group ((?:XXXX) denotes a
non-capturing group). For the replacement parameter of replace, $n refers to the n-th group of the match.
In the match parameter, \n (e.g. \1) refers back to groups.
Some features include repetitions:
• * refers to 0 or more repetitions of the previous expression
• + 1 or more
• ? 0 or 1.
• {n} to exactly n (where n is a number)
• {n,m} at least n, no more than m.
• {n,} n or more
Character classes, some of the more important:
• . any character except newline
• \d a decimal digit and \D, not a decimal digit
• \s whitespace and \S, not whitespace
• \w a "word" character and \W, a "non-word" character
• [...] (where "..." is some characters) is a character set
• [^...] is the inverse of the given character set
• [x-y] is the range of characters from x-y
• [[:xxx:]] is a named character set
• [[:^xxx:]] is the inverse of a named character set
• [[:alnum:]] : "alphanumeric"
• [[:alpha:]] : "alphabetic"
• [[:ascii:]] : "0-127"
• [[:blank:]] : "space or tab"
• [[:cntrl:]] : "control character"
• [[:digit:]] : "decimal digit"
• [[:graph:]] : "printing, excluding space"
• [[:lower:]] : "lower case letter"
• [[:print:]] : "printing, including space"
• [[:punct:]] : "printing, excluding alphanumeric"
• [[:space:]] : "white space"
• [[:upper:]] : "upper case letter"
• [[:word:]] : "same as w"
• [[:xdigit:]] : "hexadecimal digit"
Groups:
• (...) is a capturing group
• (?:...) is a non-capturing group
• \n is a backreference (where n is the number of the group, starting with 1)
• $n is a reference from the replacement expression to a group in the match expression.
And some other things:
• \b denotes a word boundary, \B is not a word boundary.
• ^ is the start of the string or line, $ the end.
• | is "alternation", i.e. the "or".
Comparison to other tools
Most operations string supports can also be done by external tools. Some of these include grep, sed and
cut.
If you are familiar with these, it is useful to know how string differs from them.
In contrast to these classics, string reads input either from stdin or as arguments. string also does not
deal with files, so it requires redirections to be used with them.
In contrast to grep, string's match defaults to glob-mode, while replace defaults to literal matching. If
set to regex-mode, they use PCRE regular expressions, which is comparable to grep's -P option. match
defaults to printing just the match, which is like grep with -o (use --entire to enable grep-like
behavior).
Like sed's s/old/new/ command, string replace still prints strings that don't match. sed's -n in
combination with a /p modifier or command is like string replace -f.
string split somedelimiter is a replacement for tr somedelimiter \n.
string-collect - join strings into one
Synopsis
string collect [-a | --allow-empty] [-N | --no-trim-newlines] [STRING ...]
Description
string collect collects its input into a single output argument, without splitting the output when used
in a command substitution. This is useful when trying to collect multiline output from another command
into a variable. Exit status: 0 if any output argument is non-empty, or 1 otherwise.
A command like echo (cmd | string collect) is mostly equivalent to a quoted command substitution (echo
"$(cmd)"). The main difference is that the former evaluates to zero or one elements whereas the quoted
command substitution always evaluates to one element due to string interpolation.
If invoked with multiple arguments instead of input, string collect preserves each argument separately,
where the number of output arguments is equal to the number of arguments given to string collect.
Any trailing newlines on the input are trimmed, just as with "$(cmd)" substitution. Use
--no-trim-newlines to disable this behavior, which may be useful when running a command such as set
contents (cat filename | string collect -N).
With --allow-empty, string collect always prints one (empty) argument. This can be used to prevent an
argument from disappearing.
Examples
>_ echo "zero $(echo one\ntwo\nthree) four"
zero one
two
three four
>_ echo \"(echo one\ntwo\nthree | string collect)\"
"one
two
three"
>_ echo \"(echo one\ntwo\nthree | string collect -N)\"
"one
two
three
"
>_ echo foo(true | string collect --allow-empty)bar
foobar
string-escape - escape special characters
Synopsis
string escape [-n | --no-quoted] [--style=] [STRING ...]
string unescape [--style=] [STRING ...]
Description
string escape escapes each STRING in one of several ways.
--style=script (default) alters the string such that it can be passed back to eval to produce the
original argument again. By default, all special characters are escaped, and quotes are used to simplify
the output when possible. If -n or --no-quoted is given, the simplifying quoted format is not used. Exit
status: 0 if at least one string was escaped, or 1 otherwise.
--style=var ensures the string can be used as a variable name by hex encoding any non-alphanumeric
characters. The string is first converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
--style=url ensures the string can be used as a URL by hex encoding any character which is not legal in a
URL. The string is first converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
--style=regex escapes an input string for literal matching within a regex expression. The string is first
converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
string unescape performs the inverse of the string escape command. If the string to be unescaped is not
properly formatted it is ignored. For example, doing string unescape --style=var (string escape
--style=var $str) will return the original string. There is no support for unescaping --style=regex.
Examples
>_ echo \x07 | string escape
\cg
>_ string escape --style=var 'a1 b2'\u6161
a1_20_b2_E6_85_A1_
string-join - join strings with delimiter
Synopsis
string join [-q | --quiet] SEP [STRING ...]
string join0 [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string join joins its STRING arguments into a single string separated by SEP, which can be an empty
string. Exit status: 0 if at least one join was performed, or 1 otherwise. If -n or --no-empty is
specified, empty strings are excluded from consideration (e.g. string join -n + a b "" c would expand to
a+b+c not a+b++c).
string join0 joins its STRING arguments into a single string separated by the zero byte (NUL), and adds a
trailing NUL. This is most useful in conjunction with tools that accept NUL-delimited input, such as sort
-z. Exit status: 0 if at least one join was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Because Unix uses NUL as the string terminator, passing the output of string join0 as an argument to a
command (via a command substitution) won't actually work. Fish will pass the correct bytes along, but the
command won't be able to tell where the argument ends. This is a limitation of Unix' argument passing.
Examples
>_ seq 3 | string join ...
1...2...3
# Give a list of NUL-separated filenames to du (this is a GNU extension)
>_ string join0 file1 file2 file\nwith\nmultiple\nlines | du --files0-from=-
# Just put the strings together without a separator
>_ string join '' a b c
abc
string-join0 - join strings with zero bytes
Synopsis
string join [-q | --quiet] SEP [STRING ...]
string join0 [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string join joins its STRING arguments into a single string separated by SEP, which can be an empty
string. Exit status: 0 if at least one join was performed, or 1 otherwise. If -n or --no-empty is
specified, empty strings are excluded from consideration (e.g. string join -n + a b "" c would expand to
a+b+c not a+b++c).
string join0 joins its STRING arguments into a single string separated by the zero byte (NUL), and adds a
trailing NUL. This is most useful in conjunction with tools that accept NUL-delimited input, such as sort
-z. Exit status: 0 if at least one join was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Because Unix uses NUL as the string terminator, passing the output of string join0 as an argument to a
command (via a command substitution) won't actually work. Fish will pass the correct bytes along, but the
command won't be able to tell where the argument ends. This is a limitation of Unix' argument passing.
Examples
>_ seq 3 | string join ...
1...2...3
# Give a list of NUL-separated filenames to du (this is a GNU extension)
>_ string join0 file1 file2 file\nwith\nmultiple\nlines | du --files0-from=-
# Just put the strings together without a separator
>_ string join '' a b c
abc
string-length - print string lengths
Synopsis
string length [-q | --quiet] [-V | --visible] [STRING ...]
Description
string length reports the length of each string argument in characters. Exit status: 0 if at least one
non-empty STRING was given, or 1 otherwise.
With -V or --visible, it uses the visible width of the arguments. That means it will discount escape
sequences fish knows about, account for $fish_emoji_width and $fish_ambiguous_width. It will also count
each line (separated by \n) on its own, and with a carriage return (\r) count only the widest stretch on
a line. The intent is to measure the number of columns the STRING would occupy in the current terminal.
Examples
>_ string length 'hello, world'
12
>_ set str foo
>_ string length -q $str; echo $status
0
# Equivalent to test -n "$str"
>_ string length --visible (set_color red)foobar
# the set_color is discounted, so this is the width of "foobar"
6
>_ string length --visible 🐟🐟🐟🐟
# depending on $fish_emoji_width, this is either 4 or 8
# in new terminals it should be
8
>_ string length --visible abcdef\r123
# this displays as "123def", so the width is 6
6
>_ string length --visible a\nbc
# counts "a" and "bc" as separate lines, so it prints width for each
1
2
string-lower - convert strings to lowercase
Synopsis
string lower [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string lower converts each string argument to lowercase. Exit status: 0 if at least one string was
converted to lowercase, else 1. This means that in conjunction with the -q flag you can readily test
whether a string is already lowercase.
string-match - match substrings
Synopsis
string match [-a | --all] [-e | --entire] [-i | --ignore-case]
[-g | --groups-only] [-r | --regex] [-n | --index]
[-q | --quiet] [-v | --invert] [(-m | --max-matches) MAX]
PATTERN [STRING ...]
Description
string match tests each STRING against PATTERN and prints matching substrings. Only the first match for
each STRING is reported unless -a or --all is given, in which case all matches are reported.
If you specify the -e or --entire then each matching string is printed including any prefix or suffix not
matched by the pattern (equivalent to grep without the -o flag). You can, obviously, achieve the same
result by prepending and appending * or .* depending on whether or not you have specified the --regex
flag. The --entire flag is simply a way to avoid having to complicate the pattern in that fashion and
make the intent of the string match clearer. Without --entire and --regex, a PATTERN will need to match
the entire STRING before it will be reported.
Matching can be made case-insensitive with --ignore-case or -i.
If --groups-only or -g is given, only the capturing groups will be reported - meaning the full match will
be skipped. This is incompatible with --entire and --invert, and requires --regex. It is useful as a
simple cutting tool instead of string replace, so you can simply choose "this part" of a string.
If --index or -n is given, each match is reported as a 1-based start position and a length. By default,
PATTERN is interpreted as a glob pattern matched against each entire STRING argument. A glob pattern is
only considered a valid match if it matches the entire STRING.
If --regex or -r is given, PATTERN is interpreted as a Perl-compatible regular expression, which does not
have to match the entire STRING. For a regular expression containing capturing groups, multiple items
will be reported for each match, one for the entire match and one for each capturing group. With this,
only the matching part of the STRING will be reported, unless --entire is given.
When matching via regular expressions, string match automatically sets variables for all named capturing
groups ((?<name>expression)). It will create a variable with the name of the group, in the default scope,
for each named capturing group, and set it to the value of the capturing group in the first matched
argument. If a named capture group matched an empty string, the variable will be set to the empty string
(like set var ""). If it did not match, the variable will be set to nothing (like set var). When --regex
is used with --all, this behavior changes. Each named variable will contain a list of matches, with the
first match contained in the first element, the second match in the second, and so on. If the group was
empty or did not match, the corresponding element will be an empty string.
If --invert or -v is used the selected lines will be only those which do not match the given glob pattern
or regular expression.
If --max-matches MAX or -m MAX is used, string will stop checking for matches after MAX lines of input
have matched. This can be used as an "early exit" optimization when processing long inputs but expecting
a limited and fixed number of outputs that might be found considerably before the input stream has been
exhausted. If combined with --invert or -v, considers only inverted matches.
Exit status: 0 if at least one match was found, or 1 otherwise.
Examples
Match Glob Examples
>_ string match 'a' a
a
>_ string match 'a*b' axxb
axxb
>_ string match -i 'a*B' Axxb
Axxb
>_ string match -- '-*' -h foo --version bar
# To match things that look like options, we need a `--`
# to tell string its options end there.
-h
--version
>_ echo 'ok?' | string match '*?'
ok?
# Note that only the second STRING will match here.
>_ string match 'foo' 'foo1' 'foo' 'foo2'
foo
>_ string match -e 'foo' 'foo1' 'foo' 'foo2'
foo1
foo
foo2
>_ string match 'foo*' 'foo1' 'foo' 'foo2'
foo1
foo2
Match Regex Examples
>_ string match -r 'cat|dog|fish' 'nice dog'
dog
>_ string match -r -v "c.*[12]" {cat,dog}(seq 1 4)
dog1
dog2
cat3
dog3
cat4
dog4
>_ string match -r -- '-.*' -h foo --version bar
# To match things that look like options, we need a `--`
# to tell string its options end there.
-h
--version
>_ string match -r '(\d\d?):(\d\d):(\d\d)' 2:34:56
2:34:56
2
34
56
>_ string match -r '^(\w{2,4})\1$' papa mud murmur
papa
pa
murmur
mur
>_ string match -r -a -n at ratatat
2 2
4 2
6 2
>_ string match -r -i '0x[0-9a-f]{1,8}' 'int magic = 0xBadC0de;'
0xBadC0de
>_ echo $version
3.1.2-1575-ga2ff32d90
>_ string match -rq '(?<major>\d+).(?<minor>\d+).(?<revision>\d+)' -- $version
>_ echo "You are using fish $major!"
You are using fish 3!
>_ string match -raq ' *(?<sentence>[^.!?]+)(?<punctuation>[.!?])?' "hello, friend. goodbye"
>_ printf "%s\n" -- $sentence
hello, friend
goodbye
>_ printf "%s\n" -- $punctuation
.
>_ string match -rq '(?<word>hello)' 'hi'
>_ count $word
0
string-pad - pad strings to a fixed width
Synopsis
string pad [-r | --right] [(-c | --char) CHAR] [(-w | --width) INTEGER]
[STRING ...]
Description
string pad extends each STRING to the given visible width by adding CHAR to the left. That means the
width of all visible characters added together, excluding escape sequences and accounting for
fish_emoji_width and fish_ambiguous_width. It is the amount of columns in a terminal the STRING occupies.
The escape sequences reflect what fish knows about, and how it computes its output. Your terminal might
support more escapes, or not support escape sequences that fish knows about.
If -r or --right is given, add the padding after a string.
If -c or --char is given, pad with CHAR instead of whitespace.
The output is padded to the maximum width of all input strings. If -w or --width is given, use at least
that.
Examples
>_ string pad -w 10 abc abcdef
abc
abcdef
>_ string pad --right --char=🐟 "fish are pretty" "rich. "
fish are pretty
rich. 🐟🐟🐟🐟
>_ string pad -w$COLUMNS (date)
# Prints the current time on the right edge of the screen.
See Also
• The printf command can do simple padding, for example printf %10s\n works like string pad -w10.
• string length with the --visible option can be used to show what fish thinks the width is.
string-repeat - multiply a string
Synopsis
string repeat [(-n | --count) COUNT] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-N | --no-newline]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
string repeat [-N | --no-newline] [-q | --quiet] COUNT [STRING ...]
Description
string repeat repeats the STRING -n or --count times. The -m or --max option will limit the number of
outputted characters (excluding the newline). This option can be used by itself or in conjunction with
--count. If both --count and --max are present, max char will be outputted unless the final repeated
string size is less than max, in that case, the string will repeat until count has been reached. Both
--count and --max will accept a number greater than or equal to zero, in the case of zero, nothing will
be outputted. The first argument is interpreted as COUNT if --count or --max are not explicitly
specified. If -N or --no-newline is given, the output won't contain a newline character at the end. Exit
status: 0 if yielded string is not empty, 1 otherwise.
Examples
Repeat Examples
>_ string repeat -n 2 'foo '
foo foo
>_ echo foo | string repeat -n 2
foofoo
>_ string repeat -n 2 -m 5 'foo'
foofo
>_ string repeat -m 5 'foo'
foofo
>_ string repeat 2 'foo'
foofoo
>_ string repeat 2 -n 3
222
string-replace - replace substrings
Synopsis
string replace [-a | --all] [-f | --filter] [-i | --ignore-case]
[-r | --regex] [(-m | --max-matches) MAX] [-q | --quiet]
PATTERN REPLACEMENT [STRING ...]
Description
string replace is similar to string match but replaces non-overlapping matching substrings with a
replacement string and prints the result. By default, PATTERN is treated as a literal substring to be
matched.
If -r or --regex is given, PATTERN is interpreted as a Perl-compatible regular expression, and
REPLACEMENT can contain C-style escape sequences like t as well as references to capturing groups by
number or name as $n or ${n}.
If you specify the -f or --filter flag then each input string is printed only if a replacement was done.
This is useful where you would otherwise use this idiom: a_cmd | string match pattern | string replace
pattern new_pattern. You can instead just write a_cmd | string replace --filter pattern new_pattern.
If --max-matches MAX or -m MAX is used, string replace will stop all processing after MAX lines of input
have matched the specified pattern. In the event of --filter or -f, this means the output will be MAX
lines in length. This can be used as an "early exit" optimization when processing long inputs but
expecting a limited and fixed number of outputs that might be found considerably before the input stream
has been exhausted.
Exit status: 0 if at least one replacement was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Examples
Replace Literal Examples
>_ string replace is was 'blue is my favorite'
blue was my favorite
>_ string replace 3rd last 1st 2nd 3rd
1st
2nd
last
>_ string replace -a ' ' _ 'spaces to underscores'
spaces_to_underscores
Replace Regex Examples
>_ string replace -r -a '[^\d.]+' ' ' '0 one two 3.14 four 5x'
0 3.14 5
>_ string replace -r '(\w+)\s+(\w+)' '$2 $1 $$' 'left right'
right left $
>_ string replace -r '\s*newline\s*' '\n' 'put a newline here'
put a
here
string-shorten - shorten strings to a width, with an ellipsis
Synopsis
string shorten [(-c | --char) CHARS] [(-m | --max) INTEGER]
[-N | --no-newline] [-l | --left] [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string shorten truncates each STRING to the given visible width and adds an ellipsis to indicate it.
"Visible width" means the width of all visible characters added together, excluding escape sequences and
accounting for fish_emoji_width and fish_ambiguous_width. It is the amount of columns in a terminal the
STRING occupies.
The escape sequences reflect what fish knows about, and how it computes its output. Your terminal might
support more escapes, or not support escape sequences that fish knows about.
If -m or --max is given, truncate at the given width. Otherwise, the lowest non-zero width of all input
strings is used. A max of 0 means no shortening takes place, all STRINGs are printed as-is.
If -N or --no-newline is given, only the first line (or last line with --left) of each STRING is used,
and an ellipsis is added if it was multiline. This only works for STRINGs being given as arguments,
multiple lines given on stdin will be interpreted as separate STRINGs instead.
If -c or --char is given, add CHAR instead of an ellipsis. This can also be empty or more than one
character.
If -l or --left is given, remove text from the left on instead, so this prints the longest suffix of the
string that fits. With --no-newline, this will take from the last line instead of the first.
If -q or --quiet is given, string shorten only runs for the return value - if anything would be
shortened, it returns 0, else 1.
The default ellipsis is …. If fish thinks your system is incapable because of your locale, it will use
... instead.
The return value is 0 if any shortening occurred, 1 otherwise.
Examples
>_ string shorten foo foobar
# No width was given, we infer, and "foo" is the shortest.
foo
fo…
>_ string shorten --char="..." foo foobar
# The target width is 3 because of "foo",
# and our ellipsis is 3 too, so we can't really show anything.
# This is the default ellipsis if your locale doesn't allow "…".
foo
...
>_ string shorten --char="" --max 4 abcdef 123456
# Leaving the char empty makes us not add an ellipsis
# So this truncates at 4 columns:
abcd
1234
>_ touch "a multiline"\n"file"
>_ for file in *; string shorten -N -- $file; end
# Shorten the multiline file so we only show one line per file:
a multiline…
>_ ss -p | string shorten -m$COLUMNS -c ""
# `ss` from Linux' iproute2 shows socket information, but prints extremely long lines.
# This shortens input so it fits on the screen without overflowing lines.
>_ git branch | string match -rg '^\* (.*)' | string shorten -m20
# Take the current git branch and shorten it at 20 columns.
# Here the branch is "builtin-path-with-expand"
builtin-path-with-e…
>_ git branch | string match -rg '^\* (.*)' | string shorten -m20 --left
# Taking 20 columns from the right instead:
…in-path-with-expand
See Also
• string's pad subcommand does the inverse of this command, adding padding to a specific width instead.
• The printf command can do simple padding, for example printf %10s\n works like string pad -w10.
• string length with the --visible option can be used to show what fish thinks the width is.
string-split - split strings by delimiter
Synopsis
string split [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] SEP [STRING ...]
string split0 [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] [STRING ...]
Description
string split splits each STRING on the separator SEP, which can be an empty string. If -m or --max is
specified, at most MAX splits are done on each STRING. If -r or --right is given, splitting is performed
right-to-left. This is useful in combination with -m or --max. With -n or --no-empty, empty results are
excluded from consideration (e.g. hello\n\nworld would expand to two strings and not three). Exit status:
0 if at least one split was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Use -f or --fields to print out specific fields. FIELDS is a comma-separated string of field numbers
and/or spans. Each field is one-indexed, and will be printed on separate lines. If a given field does not
exist, then the command exits with status 1 and does not print anything, unless --allow-empty is used.
See also the --delimiter option of the read command.
string split0 splits each STRING on the zero byte (NUL). Options are the same as string split except that
no separator is given.
split0 has the important property that its output is not further split when used in a command
substitution, allowing for the command substitution to produce elements containing newlines. This is most
useful when used with Unix tools that produce zero bytes, such as find -print0 or sort -z. See split0
examples below.
Examples
>_ string split . example.com
example
com
>_ string split -r -m1 / /usr/local/bin/fish
/usr/local/bin
fish
>_ string split '' abc
a
b
c
>_ string split --allow-empty -f1,3-4,5 '' abcd
a
c
d
NUL Delimited Examples
>_ # Count files in a directory, without being confused by newlines.
>_ count (find . -print0 | string split0)
42
>_ # Sort a list of elements which may contain newlines
>_ set foo beta alpha\ngamma
>_ set foo (string join0 $foo | sort -z | string split0)
>_ string escape $foo[1]
alpha\ngamma
string-split0 - split on zero bytes
Synopsis
string split [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] SEP [STRING ...]
string split0 [(-f | --fields) FIELDS] [(-m | --max) MAX] [-n | --no-empty]
[-q | --quiet] [-r | --right] [STRING ...]
Description
string split splits each STRING on the separator SEP, which can be an empty string. If -m or --max is
specified, at most MAX splits are done on each STRING. If -r or --right is given, splitting is performed
right-to-left. This is useful in combination with -m or --max. With -n or --no-empty, empty results are
excluded from consideration (e.g. hello\n\nworld would expand to two strings and not three). Exit status:
0 if at least one split was performed, or 1 otherwise.
Use -f or --fields to print out specific fields. FIELDS is a comma-separated string of field numbers
and/or spans. Each field is one-indexed, and will be printed on separate lines. If a given field does not
exist, then the command exits with status 1 and does not print anything, unless --allow-empty is used.
See also the --delimiter option of the read command.
string split0 splits each STRING on the zero byte (NUL). Options are the same as string split except that
no separator is given.
split0 has the important property that its output is not further split when used in a command
substitution, allowing for the command substitution to produce elements containing newlines. This is most
useful when used with Unix tools that produce zero bytes, such as find -print0 or sort -z. See split0
examples below.
Examples
>_ string split . example.com
example
com
>_ string split -r -m1 / /usr/local/bin/fish
/usr/local/bin
fish
>_ string split '' abc
a
b
c
>_ string split --allow-empty -f1,3-4,5 '' abcd
a
c
d
NUL Delimited Examples
>_ # Count files in a directory, without being confused by newlines.
>_ count (find . -print0 | string split0)
42
>_ # Sort a list of elements which may contain newlines
>_ set foo beta alpha\ngamma
>_ set foo (string join0 $foo | sort -z | string split0)
>_ string escape $foo[1]
alpha\ngamma
string-sub - extract substrings
Synopsis
string sub [(-s | --start) START] [(-e | --end) END] [(-l | --length) LENGTH]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string sub prints a substring of each string argument. The start/end of the substring can be specified
with -s/-e or --start/--end followed by a 1-based index value. Positive index values are relative to the
start of the string and negative index values are relative to the end of the string. The default start
value is 1. The length of the substring can be specified with -l or --length. If the length or end is not
specified, the substring continues to the end of each STRING. Exit status: 0 if at least one substring
operation was performed, 1 otherwise. --length is mutually exclusive with --end.
Examples
>_ string sub --length 2 abcde
ab
>_ string sub -s 2 -l 2 abcde
bc
>_ string sub --start=-2 abcde
de
>_ string sub --end=3 abcde
abc
>_ string sub -e -1 abcde
abcd
>_ string sub -s 2 -e -1 abcde
bcd
>_ string sub -s -3 -e -2 abcde
c
string-trim - remove trailing whitespace
Synopsis
string trim [-l | --left] [-r | --right] [(-c | --chars) CHARS]
[-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string trim removes leading and trailing whitespace from each STRING. If -l or --left is given, only
leading whitespace is removed. If -r or --right is given, only trailing whitespace is trimmed.
The -c or --chars switch causes the set of characters in CHARS to be removed instead of whitespace. This
is a set of characters, not a string - if you pass -c foo, it will remove any "f" or "o", not just "foo"
as a whole.
Exit status: 0 if at least one character was trimmed, or 1 otherwise.
Examples
>_ string trim ' abc '
abc
>_ string trim --right --chars=yz xyzzy zany
x
zan
string-unescape - expand escape sequences
Synopsis
string escape [-n | --no-quoted] [--style=] [STRING ...]
string unescape [--style=] [STRING ...]
Description
string escape escapes each STRING in one of several ways.
--style=script (default) alters the string such that it can be passed back to eval to produce the
original argument again. By default, all special characters are escaped, and quotes are used to simplify
the output when possible. If -n or --no-quoted is given, the simplifying quoted format is not used. Exit
status: 0 if at least one string was escaped, or 1 otherwise.
--style=var ensures the string can be used as a variable name by hex encoding any non-alphanumeric
characters. The string is first converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
--style=url ensures the string can be used as a URL by hex encoding any character which is not legal in a
URL. The string is first converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
--style=regex escapes an input string for literal matching within a regex expression. The string is first
converted to UTF-8 before being encoded.
string unescape performs the inverse of the string escape command. If the string to be unescaped is not
properly formatted it is ignored. For example, doing string unescape --style=var (string escape
--style=var $str) will return the original string. There is no support for unescaping --style=regex.
Examples
>_ echo \x07 | string escape
\cg
>_ string escape --style=var 'a1 b2'\u6161
a1_20_b2_E6_85_A1_
string-upper - convert strings to uppercase
Synopsis
string upper [-q | --quiet] [STRING ...]
Description
string upper converts each string argument to uppercase. Exit status: 0 if at least one string was
converted to uppercase, else 1. This means that in conjunction with the -q flag you can readily test
whether a string is already uppercase.
suspend - suspend the current shell
Synopsis
suspend [--force]
Description
suspend suspends execution of the current shell by sending it a SIGTSTP signal, returning to the
controlling process. It can be resumed later by sending it a SIGCONT. In order to prevent suspending a
shell that doesn't have a controlling process, it will not suspend the shell if it is a login shell. This
requirement is bypassed if the --force option is given or the shell is not interactive.
switch - conditionally execute a block of commands
Synopsis
switch VALUE; [case [GLOB ...]; [COMMANDS ...]; ...] end
Description
switch performs one of several blocks of commands, depending on whether a specified value equals one of
several globbed values. case is used together with the switch statement in order to determine which block
should be executed.
Each case command is given one or more parameters. The first case command with a parameter that matches
the string specified in the switch command will be evaluated. case parameters may contain globs. These
need to be escaped or quoted in order to avoid regular glob expansion using filenames.
Note that fish does not fall through on case statements. Only the first matching case is executed.
Note that break cannot be used to exit a case/switch block early like in other languages. It can only be
used in loops.
Note that command substitutions in a case statement will be evaluated even if its body is not taken. All
substitutions, including command substitutions, must be performed before the value can be compared
against the parameter.
Example
If the variable $animal contains the name of an animal, the following code would attempt to classify it:
switch $animal
case cat
echo evil
case wolf dog human moose dolphin whale
echo mammal
case duck goose albatross
echo bird
case shark trout stingray
echo fish
case '*'
echo I have no idea what a $animal is
end
If the above code was run with $animal set to whale, the output would be mammal.
test - perform tests on files and text
Synopsis
test [EXPRESSION]
[ [EXPRESSION] ]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin test. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man test.
test checks the given conditions and sets the exit status to 0 if they are true, 1 if they are false.
The first form (test) is preferred. For compatibility with other shells, the second form is available: a
matching pair of square brackets ([ [EXPRESSION] ]).
When using a variable or command substitution as an argument with test you should almost always enclose
it in double-quotes, as variables expanding to zero or more than one argument will most likely interact
badly with test.
WARNING:
For historical reasons, test supports the one-argument form (test foo), and this will also be
triggered by e.g. test -n $foo if $foo is unset. We recommend you don't use the one-argument form and
quote all variables or command substitutions used with test.
This confusing misfeature will be removed in future. test -n without any additional argument will be
false, test -z will be true and any other invocation with exactly one or zero arguments, including
test -d and test "foo" will be an error.
The same goes for [, e.g. [ "foo" ] and [ -d ] will be errors.
This can be turned on already via the test-require-arg feature flag, and will eventually become the
default and then only option.
Operators for files and directories
-b FILE
Returns true if FILE is a block device.
-c FILE
Returns true if FILE is a character device.
-d FILE
Returns true if FILE is a directory.
-e FILE
Returns true if FILE exists.
-f FILE
Returns true if FILE is a regular file.
-g FILE
Returns true if FILE has the set-group-ID bit set.
-G FILE
Returns true if FILE exists and has the same group ID as the current user.
-k FILE
Returns true if FILE has the sticky bit set. If the OS does not support the concept it returns
false. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_bit.
-L FILE
Returns true if FILE is a symbolic link.
-O FILE
Returns true if FILE exists and is owned by the current user.
-p FILE
Returns true if FILE is a named pipe.
-r FILE
Returns true if FILE is marked as readable.
-s FILE
Returns true if the size of FILE is greater than zero.
-S FILE
Returns true if FILE is a socket.
-t FD Returns true if the file descriptor FD is a terminal (TTY).
-u FILE
Returns true if FILE has the set-user-ID bit set.
-w FILE
Returns true if FILE is marked as writable; note that this does not check if the filesystem is
read-only.
-x FILE
Returns true if FILE is marked as executable.
Operators to compare files and directories
FILE1 -nt FILE2
Returns true if FILE1 is newer than FILE2, or FILE1 exists and FILE2 does not.
FILE1 -ot FILE2
Returns true if FILE1 is older than FILE2, or FILE2 exists and FILE1 does not.
FILE1 -ef FILE1
Returns true if FILE1 and FILE2 refer to the same file.
Operators for text strings
STRING1 = STRING2
Returns true if the strings STRING1 and STRING2 are identical.
STRING1 != STRING2
Returns true if the strings STRING1 and STRING2 are not identical.
-n STRING
Returns true if the length of STRING is non-zero.
-z STRING
Returns true if the length of STRING is zero.
Operators to compare and examine numbers
NUM1 -eq NUM2
Returns true if NUM1 and NUM2 are numerically equal.
NUM1 -ne NUM2
Returns true if NUM1 and NUM2 are not numerically equal.
NUM1 -gt NUM2
Returns true if NUM1 is greater than NUM2.
NUM1 -ge NUM2
Returns true if NUM1 is greater than or equal to NUM2.
NUM1 -lt NUM2
Returns true if NUM1 is less than NUM2.
NUM1 -le NUM2
Returns true if NUM1 is less than or equal to NUM2.
Both integers and floating point numbers are supported.
Operators to combine expressions
COND1 -a COND2
Returns true if both COND1 and COND2 are true.
COND1 -o COND2
Returns true if either COND1 or COND2 are true.
Expressions can be inverted using the ! operator:
! EXPRESSION
Returns true if EXPRESSION is false, and false if EXPRESSION is true.
Expressions can be grouped using parentheses.
( EXPRESSION )
Returns the value of EXPRESSION.
Note that parentheses will usually require escaping with \ (so they appear as \( and \)) to avoid being
interpreted as a command substitution.
Examples
If the /tmp directory exists, copy the /etc/motd file to it:
if test -d /tmp
cp /etc/motd /tmp/motd
end
If the variable MANPATH is defined and not empty, print the contents. (If MANPATH is not defined, then it
will expand to zero arguments, unless quoted.)
if test -n "$MANPATH"
echo $MANPATH
end
Be careful with unquoted variables:
if test -n $MANPATH
# This will also be reached if $MANPATH is unset,
# because in that case we have `test -n`, so it checks if "-n" is non-empty, and it is.
echo $MANPATH
end
This will change in a future release of fish, or already with the test-require-arg feature flag - if
$MANPATH is unset, if test -n $MANPATH will be false.
Parentheses and the -o and -a operators can be combined to produce more complicated expressions. In this
example, success is printed if there is a /foo or /bar file as well as a /baz or /bat file.
if test \( -f /foo -o -f /bar \) -a \( -f /baz -o -f /bat \)
echo Success.
end
Numerical comparisons will simply fail if one of the operands is not a number:
if test 42 -eq "The answer to life, the universe and everything"
echo So long and thanks for all the fish # will not be executed
end
A common comparison is with status:
if test $status -eq 0
echo "Previous command succeeded"
end
The previous test can likewise be inverted:
if test ! $status -eq 0
echo "Previous command failed"
end
which is logically equivalent to the following:
if test $status -ne 0
echo "Previous command failed"
end
Standards
Unlike many things in fish, test implements a subset of the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (POSIX.1) standard
<https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/test.html>. The following exceptions apply:
• The < and > operators for comparing strings are not implemented.
• With test-require-arg, the zero- and one-argument modes will behave differently.
In cases such as this, one can use command test to explicitly use the system's standalone test rather
than this builtin test.
See also
Other commands that may be useful as a condition, and are often easier to use:
• string - manipulate strings, which can do string operations including wildcard and regular expression
matching
• path - manipulate and check paths, which can do file checks and operations, including filters on
multiple paths at once
time - measure how long a command or block takes
Synopsis
time COMMAND
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish keyword time. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man time.
time causes fish to measure how long a command takes and print the results afterwards. The command can be
a simple fish command or a block. The results can not currently be redirected.
For checking timing after a command has completed, check $CMD_DURATION.
Your system most likely also has a time command. To use that use something like command time, as in
command time sleep 10. Because it's not inside fish, it won't have access to fish functions and won't be
able to time blocks and such.
How to interpret the output
Time outputs a few different values. Let's look at an example:
> time string repeat -n 10000000 y\n | command grep y >/dev/null
________________________________________________________
Executed in 805.98 millis fish external
usr time 798.88 millis 763.88 millis 34.99 millis
sys time 141.22 millis 40.20 millis 101.02 millis
The time after "Executed in" is what is known as the "wall-clock time". It is simply a measure of how
long it took from the start of the command until it finished. Typically it is reasonably close to
CMD_DURATION, except for a slight skew because the two are taken at slightly different times.
The other times are all measures of CPU time. That means they measure how long the CPU was used in this
part, and they count multiple cores separately. So a program with four threads using all CPU for a second
will have a time of 4 seconds.
The "usr" time is how much CPU time was spent inside the program itself, the "sys" time is how long was
spent in the kernel on behalf of that program.
The "fish" time is how much CPU was spent in fish, the "external" time how much was spent in external
commands.
So in this example, since string is a builtin, everything that string repeat did is accounted to fish.
Any time it spends doing syscalls like write() is accounted for in the fish/sys time.
And grep here is explicitly invoked as an external command, so its times will be counted in the
"external" column.
Note that, as in this example, the CPU times can add up to more than the execution time. This is because
things can be done in parallel - grep can match while string repeat writes.
Example
(for obvious reasons exact results will vary on your system)
>_ time sleep 1s
________________________________________________________
Executed in 1,01 secs fish external
usr time 2,32 millis 0,00 micros 2,32 millis
sys time 0,88 millis 877,00 micros 0,00 millis
>_ time for i in 1 2 3; sleep 1s; end
________________________________________________________
Executed in 3,01 secs fish external
usr time 9,16 millis 2,94 millis 6,23 millis
sys time 0,23 millis 0,00 millis 0,23 millis
Inline variable assignments need to follow the time keyword:
>_ time a_moment=1.5m sleep $a_moment
________________________________________________________
Executed in 90.00 secs fish external
usr time 4.62 millis 4.62 millis 0.00 millis
sys time 2.35 millis 0.41 millis 1.95 millis
trap - perform an action when the shell receives a signal
Synopsis
trap [OPTIONS] [[ARG] REASON ... ]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin trap. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man trap.
trap is a wrapper around the fish event delivery framework. It exists for backwards compatibility with
POSIX shells. For other uses, it is recommended to define an event handler.
The following parameters are available:
ARG Command to be executed on signal delivery.
REASON Name of the event to trap. For example, a signal like INT or SIGINT, or the special symbol EXIT.
-l or --list-signals
Prints a list of signal names.
-p or --print
Prints all defined signal handlers.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
If ARG and REASON are both specified, ARG is the command to be executed when the event specified by
REASON occurs (e.g., the signal is delivered).
If ARG is absent (and there is a single REASON) or -, each specified signal is reset to its original
disposition (the value it had upon entrance to the shell). If ARG is the null string the signal
specified by each REASON is ignored by the shell and by the commands it invokes.
If ARG is not present and -p has been supplied, then the trap commands associated with each REASON are
displayed. If no arguments are supplied or if only -p is given, trap prints the list of commands
associated with each signal.
Signal names are case insensitive and the SIG prefix is optional. Trapping a signal will prevent fish
from exiting in response to that signal.
The exit status is 1 if any REASON is invalid; otherwise trap returns 0.
Example
trap "status --print-stack-trace" SIGUSR1
# Prints a stack trace each time the SIGUSR1 signal is sent to the shell.
true - return a successful result
Synopsis
true
Description
true sets the exit status to 0.
: (a single colon) is an alias for the true command.
See Also
• false command
• $status variable
type - locate a command and describe its type
Synopsis
type [OPTIONS] NAME [...]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin type. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man type.
With no options, type indicates how each NAME would be interpreted if used as a command name.
The following options are available:
-a or --all
Prints all of possible definitions of the specified names.
-s or --short
Don't print function definitions when used with no options or with -a/--all.
-f or --no-functions
Suppresses function lookup.
-t or --type
Prints function, builtin, or file if NAME is a shell function, builtin, or disk file,
respectively.
-p or --path
Prints the path to NAME if NAME resolves to an executable file in PATH, the path to the script
containing the definition of the function NAME if NAME resolves to a function loaded from a file
on disk (i.e. not interactively defined at the prompt), or nothing otherwise.
-P or --force-path
Returns the path to the executable file NAME, presuming NAME is found in the PATH environment
variable, or nothing otherwise. --force-path explicitly resolves only the path to executable files
in PATH, regardless of whether NAME is shadowed by a function or builtin with the same name.
-q or --query
Suppresses all output; this is useful when testing the exit status. For compatibility with old
fish versions this is also --quiet.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
The -q, -p, -t and -P flags (and their long flag aliases) are mutually exclusive. Only one can be
specified at a time.
type returns 0 if at least one entry was found, 1 otherwise, and 2 for invalid options or option
combinations.
Example
>_ type fg
fg is a builtin
ulimit - set or get resource usage limits
Synopsis
ulimit [OPTIONS] [LIMIT]
Description
ulimit sets or outputs the resource usage limits of the shell and any processes spawned by it. If a new
limit value is omitted, the current value of the limit of the resource is printed; otherwise, the
specified limit is set to the new value.
Use one of the following switches to specify which resource limit to set or report:
-b or --socket-buffers
The maximum size of socket buffers.
-c or --core-size
The maximum size of core files created. By setting this limit to zero, core dumps can be disabled.
-d or --data-size
The maximum size of a process' data segment.
-e or --nice
Controls the maximum nice value; on Linux, this value is subtracted from 20 to give the effective
value.
-f or --file-size
The maximum size of files created by a process.
-i or --pending-signals
The maximum number of signals that may be queued.
-l or --lock-size
The maximum size that may be locked into memory.
-m or --resident-set-size
The maximum resident set size.
-n or --file-descriptor-count
The maximum number of open file descriptors.
-q or --queue-size
The maximum size of data in POSIX message queues.
-r or --realtime-priority
The maximum realtime scheduling priority.
-s or --stack-size
The maximum stack size.
-t or --cpu-time
The maximum amount of CPU time in seconds.
-u or --process-count
The maximum number of processes available to the current user.
-w or --swap-size
The maximum swap space available to the current user.
-v or --virtual-memory-size
The maximum amount of virtual memory available to the shell.
-y or --realtime-maxtime
The maximum contiguous realtime CPU time in microseconds.
-K or --kernel-queues
The maximum number of kqueues (kernel queues) for the current user.
-P or --ptys
The maximum number of pseudo-terminals for the current user.
-T or --threads
The maximum number of simultaneous threads for the current user.
Note that not all these limits are available in all operating systems; consult the documentation for
setrlimit in your operating system.
The value of limit can be a number in the unit specified for the resource or one of the special values
hard, soft, or unlimited, which stand for the current hard limit, the current soft limit, and no limit,
respectively.
If limit is given, it is the new value of the specified resource. If no option is given, then -f is
assumed. Values are in kilobytes, except for -t, which is in seconds and -n and -u, which are unscaled
values. The exit status is 0 unless an invalid option or argument is supplied, or an error occurs while
setting a new limit.
ulimit also accepts the following options that determine what type of limit to set:
-H or --hard
Sets hard resource limit.
-S or --soft
Sets soft resource limit.
A hard limit can only be decreased. Once it is set it cannot be increased; a soft limit may be increased
up to the value of the hard limit. If neither -H nor -S is specified, both the soft and hard limits are
updated when assigning a new limit value, and the soft limit is used when reporting the current value.
The following additional options are also understood by ulimit:
-a or --all
Prints all current limits.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
The fish implementation of ulimit should behave identically to the implementation in bash, except for
these differences:
• Fish ulimit supports GNU-style long options for all switches.
• Fish ulimit does not support the -p option for getting the pipe size. The bash implementation consists
of a compile-time check that empirically guesses this number by writing to a pipe and waiting for
SIGPIPE. Fish does not do this because this method of determining pipe size is unreliable. Depending on
bash version, there may also be further additional limits to set in bash that do not exist in fish.
• Fish ulimit does not support getting or setting multiple limits in one command, except reporting all
values using the -a switch.
Example
ulimit -Hs 64 sets the hard stack size limit to 64 kB.
umask - set or get the file creation mode mask
Synopsis
umask [OPTIONS] [MASK]
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin umask. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man umask.
umask displays and manipulates the "umask", or file creation mode mask, which is used to restrict the
default access to files.
The umask may be expressed either as an octal number, which represents the rights that will be removed by
default, or symbolically, which represents the only rights that will be granted by default.
Access rights are explained in the manual page for the chmod(1) program.
With no parameters, the current file creation mode mask is printed as an octal number.
-S or --symbolic
Prints the umask in symbolic form instead of octal form.
-p or --as-command
Outputs the umask in a form that may be reused as input.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.
If a numeric mask is specified as a parameter, the current shell's umask will be set to that value, and
the rights specified by that mask will be removed from new files and directories by default.
If a symbolic mask is specified, the desired permission bits, and not the inverse, should be specified. A
symbolic mask is a comma separated list of rights. Each right consists of three parts:
• The first part specifies to whom this set of right applies, and can be one of u, g, o or a, where u
specifies the user who owns the file, g specifies the group owner of the file, o specific other users
rights and a specifies all three should be changed.
• The second part of a right specifies the mode, and can be one of =, + or -, where = specifies that the
rights should be set to the new value, + specifies that the specified right should be added to those
previously specified and - specifies that the specified rights should be removed from those previously
specified.
• The third part of a right specifies what rights should be changed and can be any combination of r, w
and x, representing read, write and execute rights.
If the first and second parts are skipped, they are assumed to be a and =, respectively. As an example,
r,u+w means all users should have read access and the file owner should also have write access.
Note that symbolic masks currently do not work as intended.
Example
umask 177 or umask u=rw sets the file creation mask to read and write for the owner and no permissions at
all for any other users.
vared - interactively edit the value of an environment variable
Synopsis
vared VARIABLE_NAME
Description
vared is used to interactively edit the value of an environment variable. Array variables as a whole can
not be edited using vared, but individual list elements can.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
vared PATH[3] edits the third element of the PATH list
wait - wait for jobs to complete
Synopsis
wait [-n | --any] [PID | PROCESS_NAME] ...
Description
NOTE: This page documents the fish builtin wait. To see the documentation on any non-fish versions, use
command man wait.
wait waits for child jobs to complete.
If a PID is specified, the command waits for the job that the process with that process ID belongs to.
If a PROCESS_NAME is specified, the command waits for the jobs that the matched processes belong to.
If neither a pid nor a process name is specified, the command waits for all background jobs.
If the -n or --any flag is provided, the command returns as soon as the first job completes. If it is not
provided, it returns after all jobs complete.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
sleep 10 &
wait $last_pid
spawns sleep in the background, and then waits until it finishes.
for i in (seq 1 5); sleep 10 &; end
wait
spawns five jobs in the background, and then waits until all of them finish.
for i in (seq 1 5); sleep 10 &; end
hoge &
wait sleep
spawns five sleep jobs and hoge in the background, and then waits until all sleeps finish, and doesn't
wait for hoge.
while - perform a set of commands multiple times
Synopsis
while CONDITION; COMMANDS; end
Description
while repeatedly executes CONDITION, and if the exit status is 0, then executes COMMANDS.
The exit status of the while loop is the exit status of the last iteration of the COMMANDS executed, or 0
if none were executed. (This matches other shells and is POSIX-compatible.)
You can use and or or for complex conditions. Even more complex control can be achieved with while true
containing a break.
The -h or --help option displays help about using this command.
Example
while test -f foo.txt; or test -f bar.txt ; echo file exists; sleep 10; end
# outputs 'file exists' at 10 second intervals,
# as long as the file foo.txt or bar.txt exists.
Fish for bash users
This is to give you a quick overview if you come from bash (or to a lesser extent other shells like zsh
or ksh) and want to know how fish differs. Fish is intentionally not POSIX-compatible and as such some of
the things you are used to work differently.
Many things are similar - they both fundamentally expand commandlines to execute commands, have pipes,
redirections, variables, globs, use command output in various ways. This document is there to quickly
show you the differences.
Command substitutions
Fish spells command substitutions as $(command) or (command), but not `command`.
In addition, it only splits them on newlines instead of $IFS. If you want to split on something else, use
string split, string split0 or string collect. If those are used as the last command in a command
substitution the splits they create are carried over. So:
for i in (find . -print0 | string split0)
will correctly handle all possible filenames.
Variables
Fish sets and erases variables with set instead of VAR=VAL and a variety of separate builtins like
declare and unset and export. set takes options to determine the scope and exportedness of a variable:
# Define $PAGER *g*lobal and e*x*ported,
# so this is like ``export PAGER=less``
set -gx PAGER less
# Define $alocalvariable only locally,
# like ``local alocalvariable=foo``
set -l alocalvariable foo
or to erase variables:
set -e PAGER
VAR=VAL statements are available as environment overrides:
PAGER=cat git log
Fish does not perform word splitting. Once a variable has been set to a value, that value stays as it is,
so double-quoting variable expansions isn't the necessity it is in bash. [1]
For instance, here's bash
> foo="bar baz"
> printf '"%s"\n' $foo
# will print two lines, because we didn't double-quote
# this is word splitting
"bar"
"baz"
And here is fish:
> set foo "bar baz"
> printf '"%s"\n' $foo
# foo was set as one element,
# so it will be passed as one element, so this is one line
"bar baz"
All variables are "arrays" (we use the term "lists"), and expanding a variable expands to all its
elements, with each element as its own argument (like bash's "${var[@]}":
> set var "foo bar" banana
> printf %s\n $var
foo bar
banana
Specific elements of a list can be selected:
echo $list[5..7]
The arguments to set are ordinary, so you can also set a variable to the output of a command:
# Set lines to all the lines in file, one element per line
set lines (cat file)
or a mixture of literal values and output:
> set numbers 1 2 3 (seq 5 8) 9
> printf '%s\n' $numbers
1
2
3
5
6
7
8
9
A = is unnecessary and unhelpful with set - set foo = bar will set the variable "foo" to two values: "="
and "bar". set foo=bar will print an error.
See Shell variables for more.
[1] zsh also does not perform word splitting by default (the SH_WORD_SPLIT option controls this)
Wildcards (globs)
Fish only supports the * and ** glob (and the deprecated ? glob) as syntax. If a glob doesn't match it
fails the command (like with bash's failglob) unless the command is for, set or count or the glob is used
with an environment override (VAR=* command), in which case it expands to nothing (like with bash's
nullglob option).
Globbing doesn't happen on expanded variables, so:
set foo "*"
echo $foo
will not match any files.
There are no options to control globbing so it always behaves like that.
The ** glob will match in subdirectories as well. In other shells this often needs to be turned on with
an option, like setopt globstar in bash.
Unlike bash, fish will also follow symlinks, and will sort the results in a natural sort, with included
numbers compared as numbers. That means it will sort e.g. music tracks correctly even if they have
numbers like 1 instead of 01.
See Wildcards for more.
Quoting
Fish has two quoting styles: "" and ''. Variables are expanded in double-quotes, nothing is expanded in
single-quotes.
There is no $'', instead the sequences that would transform are transformed when unquoted:
> echo a\nb
a
b
See Quotes for more.
String manipulation
Fish does not have ${foo%bar}, ${foo#bar} and ${foo/bar/baz}. Instead string manipulation is done by the
string builtin.
For example, to replace "bar" with "baz":
> string replace bar baz "bar luhrmann"
baz luhrmann
It can also split strings:
> string split "," "foo,bar"
foo
bar
Match regular expressions as a replacement for grep:
> echo bababa | string match -r 'aba$'
aba
Pad strings to a given width, with arbitrary characters:
> string pad -c x -w 20 "foo"
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxfoo
Make strings lower/uppercase:
> string lower Foo
foo
> string upper Foo
FOO
repeat strings, trim strings, escape strings or print a string's length or width (in terminal cells).
Special variables
Some bash variables and their closest fish equivalent:
• $*, $@, $1 and so on: $argv
• $?: $status
• $$: $fish_pid
• $#: No variable, instead use count $argv
• $!: $last_pid
• $0: status filename
• $-: Mostly status is-interactive and status is-login
Process substitution
Instead of <(command) fish uses (command | psub). There is no equivalent to >(command).
Note that both of these are bashisms, and most things can easily be expressed without. E.g. instead of:
source (command | psub)
just use:
command | source
as fish's source can read from stdin.
Heredocs
Fish does not have <<EOF "heredocs". Instead of
cat <<EOF
some string
some more string
EOF
use:
printf %s\n "some string" "some more string"
or:
echo "some string
some more string"
# or if you want the quotes on separate lines:
echo "\
some string
some more string\
"
Quotes are followed across newlines.
What "heredocs" do is:
1. Read/interpret the string, with special rules, up to the terminator. [2]
2. Write the resulting string to a temporary file.
3. Start the command the heredoc is attached to with that file as stdin.
This means it is essentially the same as just reading from a pipe, so:
echo "foo" | cat
is mostly the same as
cat <<EOF
foo
EOF
Just like with heredocs, the command has to be prepared to read from stdin. Sometimes this requires
special options to be used, often giving a filename of - turns it on.
For example:
echo "xterm
rxvt-unicode" | pacman --remove -
# is the same as (the `-` makes pacman read arguments from stdin)
pacman --remove xterm rxvt-unicode
and could be written in other shells as
# This "-" is still necessary - the heredoc is *also* passed over stdin!
pacman --remove - << EOF
xterm
rxvt-unicode
EOF
So heredocs really are just minor syntactical sugar that introduces a lot of special rules, which is why
fish doesn't have them. Pipes are a core concept, and are simpler and compose nicer.
[2] For example, the "EOF" is just a convention, the terminator can be an arbitrary string, something
like "THISISTHEEND" also works. And using <<- trims leading tab characters (but not other
whitespace), so you can indent the lines, but only with tabs. Substitutions (variables, commands)
are done on the heredoc by default, but not if the terminator is quoted: cat << "EOF".
Test (test, [, [[)
Fish has a POSIX-compatible test or [ builtin. There is no [[ and test does not accept == as a synonym
for =. It can compare floating point numbers, however.
set -q can be used to determine if a variable exists or has a certain number of elements (set -q foo[2]).
Arithmetic Expansion
Fish does not have $((i+1)) arithmetic expansion, computation is handled by math:
math $i + 1
Unlike bash's arithmetic, it can handle floating point numbers:
> math 5 / 2
2.5
And also has some functions, like for trigonometry:
> math cos 2 x pi
1
You can pass arguments to math separately like above or in quotes. Because fish uses () parentheses for
command substitutions, quoting is needed if you want to use them in your expression:
> math '(5 + 2) * 4'
Both * and x are valid ways to spell multiplication, but * needs to be quoted because it looks like a
glob.
Prompts
Fish does not use the $PS1, $PS2 and so on variables. Instead the prompt is the output of the fish_prompt
function, plus the fish_mode_prompt function if vi mode is enabled. The output of the fish_right_prompt
function is used for the right-sided prompt.
As an example, here's a relatively simple bash prompt:
# <$HOSTNAME> <$PWD in blue> <Prompt Sign in Yellow> <Rest in default light white>
PS1='\h\[\e[1;34m\]\w\[\e[m\] \[\e[1;32m\]\$\[\e[m\] '
and a rough fish equivalent:
function fish_prompt
set -l prompt_symbol '$'
fish_is_root_user; and set prompt_symbol '#'
echo -s (prompt_hostname) \
(set_color blue) (prompt_pwd) \
(set_color yellow) $prompt_symbol (set_color normal)
end
This shows a few differences:
• Fish provides set_color to color text. It can use the 16 named colors and also RGB sequences (so you
could also use set_color 5555FF)
• Instead of introducing specific escapes like \h for the hostname, the prompt is simply a function. To
achieve the effect of \h, fish provides helper functions like prompt_hostname, which prints a shortened
version of the hostname.
• Fish offers other helper functions for adding things to the prompt, like fish_vcs_prompt for adding a
display for common version control systems (git, mercurial, svn), and prompt_pwd for showing a
shortened $PWD (the user's home directory becomes ~ and any path component is shortened).
The default prompt is reasonably full-featured and its code can be read via type fish_prompt.
Fish does not have $PS2 for continuation lines, instead it leaves the lines indented to show that the
commandline isn't complete yet.
Blocks and loops
Fish's blocking constructs look a little different. They all start with a word, end in end and don't have
a second starting word:
for i in 1 2 3; do
echo $i
done
# becomes
for i in 1 2 3
echo $i
end
while true; do
echo Weeee
done
# becomes
while true
echo Weeeeeee
end
{
echo Hello
}
# becomes
begin
echo Hello
end
if true; then
echo Yes I am true
else
echo "How is true not true?"
fi
# becomes
if true
echo Yes I am true
else
echo "How is true not true?"
end
foo() {
echo foo
}
# becomes
function foo
echo foo
end
# (bash allows the word "function",
# but this is an extension)
Fish does not have an until. Use while not or while !.
Subshells
Bash has a feature called "subshells", where it will start another shell process for certain things. That
shell will then be independent and e.g. any changes it makes to variables won't be visible in the main
shell.
This includes things like:
# A list of commands in `()` parentheses
(foo; bar) | baz
# Both sides of a pipe
foo | while read -r bar; do
# This will not be visible outside of the loop.
VAR=VAL
# This background process will not be, either
baz &
done
Fish does not currently have subshells. You will have to find a different solution. The isolation can
usually be achieved by just scoping variables (with set -l), but if you really do need to run your code
in a new shell environment you can use fish -c 'your code here' to do so explicitly.
() subshells are often confused with {} grouping, which does not use a subshell. When you just need to
group, you can use begin; end in fish:
(foo; bar) | baz
# when it should really have been:
{ foo; bar; } | baz
# becomes
begin; foo; bar; end | baz
The pipe will simply be run in the same process, so while read loops can set variables outside:
foo | while read bar
set -g VAR VAL
baz &
end
echo $VAR # will print VAL
jobs # will show "baz"
Subshells are also frequently confused with command substitutions, which bash writes as `command` or
$(command) and fish writes as $(command) or (command). Bash also uses subshells to implement them.
Builtins and other commands
By now it has become apparent that fish puts much more of a focus on its builtins and external commands
rather than its syntax. So here are some helpful builtins and their rough equivalent in bash:
• string - this replaces most of the string transformation (${i%foo} et al) and can also be used instead
of grep and sed and such.
• math - this replaces $((i + 1)) arithmetic and can also do floats and some simple functions (sine and
friends).
• argparse - this can handle a script's option parsing, for which bash would probably use getopt (zsh
provides zparseopts).
• count can be used to count things and therefore replaces $# and can be used instead of wc.
• status provides information about the shell status, e.g. if it's interactive or what the current
linenumber is. This replaces $- and $BASH_LINENO and other variables.
• seq(1) can be used as a replacement for {1..10} range expansion. If your OS doesn't ship a seq fish
includes a replacement function.
Other facilities
Bash has set -x or set -o xtrace to print all commands that are being executed. In fish, this would be
enabled by setting fish_trace.
Or, if your intention is to profile how long each line of a script takes, you can use fish --profile -
see the page for the fish command.
Tutorial
Why fish?
Fish is a fully-equipped command line shell (like bash or zsh) that is smart and user-friendly. Fish
supports powerful features like syntax highlighting, autosuggestions, and tab completions that just work,
with nothing to learn or configure.
If you want to make your command line more productive, more useful, and more fun, without learning a
bunch of arcane syntax and configuration options, then fish might be just what you're looking for!
Getting started
Once installed, just type in fish into your current shell to try it out!
You will be greeted by the standard fish prompt, which means you are all set up and can start using fish:
> fish
Welcome to fish, the friendly interactive shell
Type help for instructions on how to use fish
you@hostname ~>
This prompt that you see above is the fish default prompt: it shows your username, hostname, and working
directory. You can customize it, see how to change your prompt.
From now on, we'll pretend your prompt is just a > to save space.
Learning fish
This tutorial assumes a basic understanding of command line shells and Unix commands, and that you have a
working copy of fish.
If you have a strong understanding of other shells, and want to know what fish does differently, search
for the magic phrase unlike other shells, which is used to call out important differences.
Or, if you want a quick overview over the differences to other shells like Bash, see Fish For Bash Users.
For the full, detailed description of how to use fish interactively, see Interactive Use.
For a comprehensive description of fish's scripting language, see The Fish Language.
Running Commands
Fish runs commands like other shells: you type a command, followed by its arguments. Spaces are
separators:
> echo hello world
hello world
This runs the command echo with the arguments hello and world. In this case that's the same as one
argument hello world, but in many cases it's not. If you need to pass an argument that includes a space,
you can escape with a backslash, or quote it using single or double quotes:
> mkdir My\ Files
# Makes a directory called "My Files", with a space in the name
> cp ~/Some\ File 'My Files'
# Copies a file called "Some File" in the home directory to "My Files"
> ls "My Files"
Some File
Getting Help
Run help to open fish's help in a web browser, and man with the page (like fish-language) to open it in a
man page. You can also ask for help with a specific command, for example, help set to open in a web
browser, or man set to see it in the terminal.
> man set
set - handle shell variables
Synopsis...
To open this section, use help getting-help.
This only works for fish's own documentation for itself and its built-in commands (the "builtins"). For
any other commands on your system, they should provide their own documentation, often in the man system.
For example man ls should tell you about your computer's ls command.
Syntax Highlighting
You'll quickly notice that fish performs syntax highlighting as you type. Invalid commands are colored
red by default:
> /bin/mkd
A command may be invalid because it does not exist, or refers to a file that you cannot execute. When the
command becomes valid, it is shown in a different color:
> /bin/mkdir
Valid file paths are underlined as you type them:
> cat ~/somefi
This tells you that there exists a file that starts with somefi, which is useful feedback as you type.
These colors, and many more, can be changed by running fish_config, or by modifying color variables
directly.
For example, if you want to disable (almost) all coloring:
fish_config theme choose none
This picks the "none" theme. To see all themes:
fish_config theme show
Just running fish_config will open up a browser interface that allows you to pick from the available
themes.
Autosuggestions
As you type fish will suggest commands to the right of the cursor, in gray. For example:
> /bin/hostname
It knows about paths and options:
> grep --ignore-case
And history too. Type a command once, and you can re-summon it by just typing a few letters:
> rsync -avze ssh . myname@somelonghost.com:/some/long/path/doo/dee/doo/dee/doo
To accept the autosuggestion, hit right (→) or ctrl-f. To accept a single word of the autosuggestion,
alt-right (→). If the autosuggestion is not what you want, just ignore it.
If you don't like autosuggestions, you can disable them by setting $fish_autosuggestion_enabled to 0:
set -g fish_autosuggestion_enabled 0
Tab Completions
A rich set of tab completions work "out of the box".
Press tab and fish will attempt to complete the command, argument, or path:
> /pritab => /private/
If there's more than one possibility, it will list them:
> ~/stuff/stab
~/stuff/script.sh (command) ~/stuff/sources/ (directory)
Hit tab again to cycle through the possibilities. The part in parentheses there (that "command" and
"directory") is the completion description. It's just a short hint to explain what kind of argument it
is.
fish can also complete many commands, like git branches:
> git merge prtab => git merge prompt_designer
> git checkout btab
builtin_list_io_merge (Branch) builtin_set_color (Branch) busted_events (Tag)
Try hitting tab and see what fish can do!
Variables
Like other shells, a dollar sign followed by a variable name is replaced with the value of that variable:
> echo My home directory is $HOME
My home directory is /home/tutorial
This is known as variable substitution, and it also happens in double quotes, but not single quotes:
> echo "My current directory is $PWD"
My current directory is /home/tutorial
> echo 'My current directory is $PWD'
My current directory is $PWD
Unlike other shells, fish has an ordinary command to set variables: set, which takes a variable name, and
then its value.
> set name 'Mister Noodle'
> echo $name
Mister Noodle
(Notice the quotes: without them, Mister and Noodle would have been separate arguments, and $name would
have been made into a list of two elements.)
Unlike other shells, variables are not further split after substitution:
> mkdir $name
> ls
Mister Noodle
In bash, this would have created two directories "Mister" and "Noodle". In fish, it created only one: the
variable had the value "Mister Noodle", so that is the argument that was passed to mkdir, spaces and all.
You can erase (or "delete") a variable with -e or --erase
> set -e MyVariable
> env | grep MyVariable
(no output)
For more, see Variable expansion.
Exports (Shell Variables)
Sometimes you need to have a variable available to an external command, often as a setting. For example
many programs like git or man read the $PAGER variable to figure out your preferred pager (the program
that lets you scroll text). Other variables used like this include $BROWSER, $LANG (to configure your
language) and $PATH. You'll note these are written in ALLCAPS, but that's just a convention.
To give a variable to an external command, it needs to be "exported". This is done with a flag to set,
either --export or just -x.
> set -x MyVariable SomeValue
> env | grep MyVariable
MyVariable=SomeValue
It can also be unexported with --unexport or -u.
This works the other way around as well! If fish is started by something else, it inherits that parents
exported variables. So if your terminal emulator starts fish, and it exports $LANG set to en_US.UTF-8,
fish will receive that setting. And whatever started your terminal emulator also gave it some variables
that it will then pass on unless it specifically decides not to. This is how fish usually receives the
values for things like $LANG, $PATH and $TERM, without you having to specify them again.
Exported variables can be local or global or universal - "exported" is not a scope! Usually you'd make
them global via set -gx MyVariable SomeValue.
For more, see Exporting variables.
Lists
The set command above used quotes to ensure that Mister Noodle was one argument. If it had been two
arguments, then name would have been a list of length 2. In fact, all variables in fish are really
lists, that can contain any number of values, or none at all.
Some variables, like $PWD, only have one value. By convention, we talk about that variable's value, but
we really mean its first (and only) value.
Other variables, like $PATH, really do have multiple values. During variable expansion, the variable
expands to become multiple arguments:
> echo $PATH
/usr/bin /bin /usr/sbin /sbin /usr/local/bin
Variables whose name ends in "PATH" are automatically split on colons to become lists. They are joined
using colons when exported to subcommands. This is for compatibility with other tools, which expect $PATH
to use colons. You can also explicitly add this quirk to a variable with set --path, or remove it with
set --unpath.
Lists cannot contain other lists: there is no recursion. A variable is a list of strings, full stop.
Get the length of a list with count:
> count $PATH
5
You can append (or prepend) to a list by setting the list to itself, with some additional arguments. Here
we append /usr/local/bin to $PATH:
> set PATH $PATH /usr/local/bin
You can access individual elements with square brackets. Indexing starts at 1 from the beginning, and -1
from the end:
> echo $PATH
/usr/bin /bin /usr/sbin /sbin /usr/local/bin
> echo $PATH[1]
/usr/bin
> echo $PATH[-1]
/usr/local/bin
You can also access ranges of elements, known as "slices":
> echo $PATH[1..2]
/usr/bin /bin
> echo $PATH[-1..2]
/usr/local/bin /sbin /usr/sbin /bin
You can iterate over a list (or a slice) with a for loop:
for val in $PATH
echo "entry: $val"
end
# Will print:
# entry: /usr/bin/
# entry: /bin
# entry: /usr/sbin
# entry: /sbin
# entry: /usr/local/bin
One particular bit is that you can use lists like Brace expansion. If you attach another string to a
list, it'll combine every element of the list with the string:
> set mydirs /usr/bin /bin
> echo $mydirs/fish # this is just like {/usr/bin,/bin}/fish
/usr/bin/fish /bin/fish
This also means that, if the list is empty, there will be no argument:
> set empty # no argument
> echo $empty/this_is_gone # prints an empty line
If you quote the list, it will be used as one string and so you'll get one argument even if it is empty.
For more, see Lists. For more on combining lists with strings (or even other lists), see cartesian
products and Variable expansion.
Wildcards
Fish supports the familiar wildcard *. To list all JPEG files:
> ls *.jpg
lena.jpg
meena.jpg
santa maria.jpg
You can include multiple wildcards:
> ls l*.p*
lena.png
lesson.pdf
The recursive wildcard ** searches directories recursively:
> ls /var/**.log
/var/log/system.log
/var/run/sntp.log
If that directory traversal is taking a long time, you can ctrl-c out of it.
For more, see Wildcards.
Pipes and Redirections
You can pipe between commands with the usual vertical bar:
> echo hello world | wc
1 2 12
stdin and stdout can be redirected via the familiar < and >. stderr is redirected with a 2>.
> grep fish < /etc/shells > ~/output.txt 2> ~/errors.txt
To redirect stdout and stderr into one file, you can use &>:
> make &> make_output.txt
For more, see Input and output redirections and Pipes.
Command Substitutions
Command substitutions use the output of one command as an argument to another. Unlike other shells, fish
does not use backticks `` for command substitutions. Instead, it uses parentheses with or without a
dollar:
> echo In (pwd), running $(uname)
In /home/tutorial, running FreeBSD
A common idiom is to capture the output of a command in a variable:
> set os (uname)
> echo $os
Linux
Command substitutions without a dollar are not expanded within quotes, so the version with a dollar is
simpler:
> touch "testing_$(date +%s).txt"
> ls *.txt
testing_1360099791.txt
Unlike other shells, fish does not split command substitutions on any whitespace (like spaces or tabs),
only newlines. Usually this is a big help because unix commands operate on a line-by-line basis.
Sometimes it can be an issue with commands like pkg-config that print what is meant to be multiple
arguments on a single line. To split it on spaces too, use string split.
> printf '%s\n' (pkg-config --libs gio-2.0)
-lgio-2.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0
> printf '%s\n' (pkg-config --libs gio-2.0 | string split -n " ")
-lgio-2.0
-lgobject-2.0
-lglib-2.0
If you need a command substitutions output as one argument, without any splits, use quoted command
substitution:
> echo "first line
second line" > myfile
> set myfile "$(cat myfile)"
> printf '|%s|' $myfile
|first line
second line|
For more, see Command substitution.
Separating Commands (Semicolon)
Like other shells, fish allows multiple commands either on separate lines or the same line.
To write them on the same line, use the semicolon (";"). That means the following two examples are
equivalent:
echo fish; echo chips
# or
echo fish
echo chips
This is useful interactively to enter multiple commands. In a script it's easier to read if the commands
are on separate lines.
Exit Status
When a command exits, it returns a status code as a non-negative integer (that's a whole number >= 0).
Unlike other shells, fish stores the exit status of the last command in $status instead of $?.
> false
> echo $status
1
This indicates how the command fared - 0 usually means success, while the others signify kinds of
failure. For instance fish's set --query returns the number of variables it queried that weren't set -
set --query PATH usually returns 0, set --query arglbargl boogagoogoo usually returns 2.
There is also a $pipestatus list variable for the exit statuses [1] of processes in a pipe.
For more, see The status variable.
[1] or "stati" if you prefer, or "statūs" if you've time-travelled from ancient Rome or work as a latin
teacher
Combiners (And, Or, Not)
fish supports the familiar && and || to combine commands, and ! to negate them:
> ./configure && make && sudo make install
Here, make is only executed if ./configure succeeds (returns 0), and sudo make install is only executed
if both ./configure and make succeed.
fish also supports and, or, and not. The first two are job modifiers and have lower precedence. Example
usage:
> cp file1 file1_bak && cp file2 file2_bak; and echo "Backup successful"; or echo "Backup failed"
Backup failed
As mentioned in the section on the semicolon, this can also be written in multiple lines, like so:
cp file1 file1_bak && cp file2 file2_bak
and echo "Backup successful"
or echo "Backup failed"
Conditionals (If, Else, Switch)
Use if and else to conditionally execute code, based on the exit status of a command.
if grep fish /etc/shells
echo Found fish
else if grep bash /etc/shells
echo Found bash
else
echo Got nothing
end
To compare strings or numbers or check file properties (whether a file exists or is writeable and such),
use test, like
if test "$fish" = "flounder"
echo FLOUNDER
end
# or
if test "$number" -gt 5
echo $number is greater than five
else
echo $number is five or less
end
# or
# This test is true if the path /etc/hosts exists
# - it could be a file or directory or symlink (or possibly something else).
if test -e /etc/hosts
echo We most likely have a hosts file
else
echo We do not have a hosts file
end
Combiners can also be used to make more complex conditions, like
if command -sq fish; and grep fish /etc/shells
echo fish is installed and configured
end
For even more complex conditions, use begin and end to group parts of them.
There is also a switch command:
switch (uname)
case Linux
echo Hi Tux!
case Darwin
echo Hi Hexley!
case FreeBSD NetBSD DragonFly
echo Hi Beastie!
case '*'
echo Hi, stranger!
end
As you see, case does not fall through, and can accept multiple arguments or (quoted) wildcards.
For more, see Conditions.
Functions
A fish function is a list of commands, which may optionally take arguments. Unlike other shells,
arguments are not passed in "numbered variables" like $1, but instead in a single list $argv. To create a
function, use the function builtin:
function say_hello
echo Hello $argv
end
say_hello
# prints: Hello
say_hello everybody!
# prints: Hello everybody!
Unlike other shells, fish does not have aliases or special prompt syntax. Functions take their place. [2]
You can list the names of all functions with the functions builtin (note the plural!). fish starts out
with a number of functions:
> functions
N_, abbr, alias, bg, cd, cdh, contains_seq, dirh, dirs, disown, down-or-search, edit_command_buffer, export, fg, fish_add_path, fish_breakpoint_prompt, fish_clipboard_copy, fish_clipboard_paste, fish_config, fish_default_key_bindings, fish_default_mode_prompt, fish_git_prompt, fish_hg_prompt, fish_hybrid_key_bindings, fish_indent, fish_is_root_user, fish_job_summary, fish_key_reader, fish_md5, fish_mode_prompt, fish_npm_helper, fish_opt, fish_print_git_action, fish_print_hg_root, fish_prompt, fish_sigtrap_handler, fish_svn_prompt, fish_title, fish_update_completions, fish_vcs_prompt, fish_vi_cursor, fish_vi_key_bindings, funced, funcsave, grep, help, history, hostname, isatty, kill, la, ll, ls, man, nextd, open, popd, prevd, prompt_hostname, prompt_pwd, psub, pushd, realpath, seq, setenv, suspend, trap, type, umask, up-or-search, vared, wait
You can see the source for any function by passing its name to functions:
> functions ls
function ls --description 'List contents of directory'
command ls -G $argv
end
For more, see Functions.
[2] There is a function called alias, but it's just a shortcut to make functions. fish also provides
abbreviations, through the abbr command.
Loops
While loops:
while true
echo "Loop forever"
end
# Prints:
# Loop forever
# Loop forever
# Loop forever
# yes, this really will loop forever. Unless you abort it with ctrl-c.
For loops can be used to iterate over a list. For example, a list of files:
for file in *.txt
cp $file $file.bak
end
Iterating over a list of numbers can be done with seq:
for x in (seq 5)
touch file_$x.txt
end
For more, see Loops and blocks.
Prompt
Unlike other shells, there is no prompt variable like PS1. To display your prompt, fish executes the
fish_prompt function and uses its output as the prompt. And if it exists, fish also executes the
fish_right_prompt function and uses its output as the right prompt.
You can define your own prompt from the command line:
> function fish_prompt; echo "New Prompt % "; end
New Prompt % _
Then, if you are happy with it, you can save it to disk by typing funcsave fish_prompt. This saves the
prompt in ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_prompt.fish. (Or, if you want, you can create that file manually
from the start.)
Multiple lines are OK. Colors can be set via set_color, passing it named ANSI colors, or hex RGB values:
function fish_prompt
set_color purple
date "+%m/%d/%y"
set_color F00
echo (pwd) '>' (set_color normal)
end
This prompt would look like:
02/06/13
/home/tutorial > _
You can choose among some sample prompts by running fish_config for a web UI or fish_config prompt for a
simpler version inside your terminal.
$PATH
$PATH is an environment variable containing the directories that fish searches for commands. Unlike other
shells, $PATH is a list, not a colon-delimited string.
Fish takes care to set $PATH to a default, but typically it is just inherited from fish's parent process
and is set to a value that makes sense for the system - see Exports.
To prepend /usr/local/bin and /usr/sbin to $PATH, you can write:
> set PATH /usr/local/bin /usr/sbin $PATH
To remove /usr/local/bin from $PATH, you can write:
> set PATH (string match -v /usr/local/bin $PATH)
For compatibility with other shells and external commands, $PATH is a path variable, and so will be
joined with colons (not spaces) when you quote it:
> echo "$PATH"
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin
and it will be exported like that, and when fish starts it splits the $PATH it receives into a list on
colon.
You can do so directly in config.fish, like you might do in other shells with .profile. See this example.
A faster way is to use the fish_add_path function, which adds given directories to the path if they
aren't already included. It does this by modifying the $fish_user_paths universal variable, which is
automatically prepended to $PATH. For example, to permanently add /usr/local/bin to your $PATH, you could
write:
> fish_add_path /usr/local/bin
The advantage is that you don't have to go mucking around in files: just run this once at the command
line, and it will affect the current session and all future instances too. You can also add this line to
config.fish, as it only adds the component if necessary.
Or you can modify $fish_user_paths yourself, but you should be careful not to append to it
unconditionally in config.fish, or it will grow longer and longer.
Startup (Where's .bashrc?)
Fish starts by executing commands in ~/.config/fish/config.fish. You can create it if it does not exist.
It is possible to directly create functions and variables in config.fish file, using the commands shown
above. For example:
> cat ~/.config/fish/config.fish
set -x PATH $PATH /sbin/
function ll
ls -lh $argv
end
However, it is more common and efficient to use autoloading functions and universal variables.
If you want to organize your configuration, fish also reads commands in .fish files in
~/.config/fish/conf.d/. See Configuration Files for the details.
Autoloading Functions
When fish encounters a command, it attempts to autoload a function for that command, by looking for a
file with the name of that command in ~/.config/fish/functions/.
For example, if you wanted to have a function ll, you would add a text file ll.fish to
~/.config/fish/functions:
> cat ~/.config/fish/functions/ll.fish
function ll
ls -lh $argv
end
This is the preferred way to define your prompt as well:
> cat ~/.config/fish/functions/fish_prompt.fish
function fish_prompt
echo (pwd) "> "
end
See the documentation for funced and funcsave for ways to create these files automatically, and
$fish_function_path to control their location.
Universal Variables
A universal variable is a variable whose value is shared across all instances of fish, now and in the
future – even after a reboot. You can make a variable universal with set -U:
> set -U EDITOR vim
Now in another shell:
> echo $EDITOR
vim
You only need to set universal variables once interactively. There is no need to add them to your config
files. For more details, see Universal Variables.
Ready for more?
If you want to learn more about fish, there is lots of detailed documentation, the official gitter
channel <https://gitter.im/fish-shell/fish-shell>, an official mailing list
<https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fish-users>, and the github page <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/>.
Writing your own completions
To specify a completion, use the complete command. complete takes as a parameter the name of the command
to specify a completion for. For example, to add a completion for the program myprog, start the
completion command with complete -c myprog ...
For a complete description of the various switches accepted by the complete command, see the
documentation for the complete builtin, or write complete --help inside the fish shell.
To provide a list of possible completions for myprog, use the -a switch. If myprog accepts the arguments
start and stop, this can be specified as complete -c myprog -a 'start stop'. The argument to the -a
switch is always a single string. At completion time, it will be tokenized on spaces and tabs, and
variable expansion, command substitution and other forms of parameter expansion will take place:
# If myprog can list the valid outputs with the list-outputs subcommand:
complete -c myprog -l output -a '(myprog list-outputs)'
fish has a special syntax to support specifying switches accepted by a command. The switches -s, -l and
-o are used to specify a short switch (single character, such as -l), a gnu style long switch (such as
--color) and an old-style long switch (with one -, like -shuffle), respectively. If the command 'myprog'
has an option that can be written as -o or --output, that is:
complete -c myprog -s o -l output
If this option takes an optional argument, you would also add --argument or -a, and give that the
possible arguments:
complete -c myprog -s o -l output -a "yes no"
This offers the arguments "yes" and "no" for:
> myprog -o<TAB>
> myprog --output=<TAB>
By default, option arguments are optional, so the candidates are only offered directly attached like
that, so they aren't given in this case:
> myprog -o <TAB>
Usually options require a parameter, so you would give --require-parameter / -r:
complete -c myprog -s o -l output -ra "yes no"
which offers yes/no in these cases:
> myprog -o<TAB>
> myprog --output=<TAB>
> myprog -o <TAB>
> myprog --output <TAB>
Fish will also offer files by default, in addition to the arguments you specified. You would either
inhibit file completion for a single option:
complete -c myprog -s o -l output --no-files -ra "yes no"
or with a specific condition:
complete -c myprog -f --condition '__fish_seen_subcommand_from somesubcommand'
or you can disable file completions globally for the command:
complete -c myprog -f
If you have disabled them globally, you can enable them just for a specific condition or option with the
--force-files / -F option:
# Disable files by default
complete -c myprog -f
# but reenable them for --config-file
complete -c myprog -l config-file --force-files -r
As a more comprehensive example, here's a commented excerpt of the completions for systemd's timedatectl:
# All subcommands that timedatectl knows - this is useful for later.
set -l commands status set-time set-timezone list-timezones set-local-rtc set-ntp
# Disable file completions for the entire command
# because it does not take files anywhere
# Note that this can be undone by using "-F".
#
# File completions also need to be disabled
# if you want to have more control over what files are offered
# (e.g. just directories, or just files ending in ".mp3").
complete -c timedatectl -f
# This line offers the subcommands
# -"status",
# -"set-timezone",
# -"set-time"
# -"list-timezones"
# if no subcommand has been given so far.
#
# The `-n`/`--condition` option takes script as a string, which it executes.
# If it returns true, the completion is offered.
# Here the condition is the `__fish_seen_subcommands_from` helper function.
# It returns true if any of the given commands is used on the commandline,
# as determined by a simple heuristic.
# For more complex uses, you can write your own function.
# See e.g. the git completions for an example.
#
complete -c timedatectl -n "not __fish_seen_subcommand_from $commands" \
-a "status set-time set-timezone list-timezones"
# If the "set-timezone" subcommand is used,
# offer the output of `timedatectl list-timezones` as completions.
# Each line of output is used as a separate candidate,
# and anything after a tab is taken as the description.
# It's often useful to transform command output with `string` into that form.
complete -c timedatectl -n "__fish_seen_subcommand_from set-timezone" \
-a "(timedatectl list-timezones)"
# Completion candidates can also be described via `-d`,
# which is useful if the description is constant.
# Try to keep these short, because that means the user gets to see more at once.
complete -c timedatectl -n "not __fish_seen_subcommand_from $commands" \
-a "set-local-rtc" -d "Maintain RTC in local time"
# We can also limit options to certain subcommands by using conditions.
complete -c timedatectl -n "__fish_seen_subcommand_from set-local-rtc" \
-l adjust-system-clock -d 'Synchronize system clock from the RTC'
# These are simple options that can be used everywhere.
complete -c timedatectl -s h -l help -d 'Print a short help text and exit'
complete -c timedatectl -l version -d 'Print a short version string and exit'
complete -c timedatectl -l no-pager -d 'Do not pipe output into a pager'
For examples of how to write your own complex completions, study the completions in
/usr/share/fish/completions. (The exact path depends on your chosen installation prefix and may be
slightly different)
Useful functions for writing completions
fish ships with several functions that may be useful when writing command-specific completions. Most of
these function names begin with the string __fish_. Such functions are internal to fish and their name
and interface may change in future fish versions. A few of these functions are described here.
Functions beginning with the string __fish_print_ print a newline separated list of strings. For example,
__fish_print_filesystems prints a list of all known file systems. Functions beginning with
__fish_complete_ print out a newline separated list of completions with descriptions. The description is
separated from the completion by a tab character.
• __fish_complete_directories STRING DESCRIPTION performs path completion on STRING, allowing only
directories, and giving them the description DESCRIPTION.
• __fish_complete_path STRING DESCRIPTION performs path completion on STRING, giving them the description
DESCRIPTION.
• __fish_complete_groups prints a list of all user groups with the groups members as description.
• __fish_complete_pids prints a list of all processes IDs with the command name as description.
• __fish_complete_suffix SUFFIX performs file completion but sorts files ending in SUFFIX first. This is
useful in conjunction with complete --keep-order.
• __fish_complete_users prints a list of all users with their full name as description.
• __fish_print_filesystems prints a list of all known file systems. Currently, this is a static list, and
not dependent on what file systems the host operating system actually understands.
• __fish_print_hostnames prints a list of all known hostnames. This function searches the fstab for nfs
servers, ssh for known hosts and checks the /etc/hosts file.
• __fish_print_interfaces prints a list of all known network interfaces.
Where to put completions
Completions can be defined on the commandline or in a configuration file, but they can also be
automatically loaded. Fish automatically searches through any directories in the list variable
$fish_complete_path, and any completions defined are automatically loaded when needed. A completion file
must have a filename consisting of the name of the command to complete and the suffix .fish.
By default, Fish searches the following for completions, using the first available file that it finds:
• A directory for end-users to keep their own completions, usually ~/.config/fish/completions (controlled
by the XDG_CONFIG_HOME environment variable);
• A directory for systems administrators to install completions for all users on the system, usually
/etc/fish/completions;
• A user-specified directory for third-party vendor completions, usually
~/.local/share/fish/vendor_completions.d (controlled by the XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable);
• A directory for third-party software vendors to ship their own completions for their software, usually
/usr/share/fish/vendor_completions.d;
• The completions shipped with fish, usually installed in /usr/share/fish/completions; and
• Completions automatically generated from the operating system's manual, usually stored in
~/.cache/fish/generated_completions (controlled by XDG_CACHE_HOME environment variable).
These paths are controlled by parameters set at build, install, or run time, and may vary from the
defaults listed above.
This wide search may be confusing. If you are unsure, your completions probably belong in
~/.config/fish/completions.
If you have written new completions for a common Unix command, please consider sharing your work by
submitting it via the instructions in Further help and development.
If you are developing another program and would like to ship completions with your program, install them
to the "vendor" completions directory. As this path may vary from system to system, the pkgconfig
framework should be used to discover this path with the output of pkg-config --variable completionsdir
fish.
Writing your own prompt
WARNING:
This document uses formatting to show what a prompt would look like. If you are viewing this in the
man page, you probably want to switch to looking at the html version instead. Run help custom-prompt
to view it in a web browser.
Fish ships a number of prompts that you can view with the fish_config command, and many users have shared
their prompts online.
However, you can also write your own, or adjust an existing prompt. This is a good way to get used to
fish's scripting language.
Unlike other shells, fish's prompt is built by running a function - fish_prompt. Or, more specifically,
three functions:
• fish_prompt, which is the main prompt function
• fish_right_prompt, which is shown on the right side of the terminal.
• fish_mode_prompt, which is shown if vi mode is used.
These functions are run, and whatever they print is displayed as the prompt (minus one trailing newline).
Here, we will just be writing a simple fish_prompt.
Our first prompt
Let's look at a very simple example:
function fish_prompt
echo $PWD '>'
end
This prints the current working directory (PWD) and a > symbol to show where the prompt ends. The > is
quoted because otherwise it would signify a redirection.
Because we've used echo, it adds spaces between the two so it ends up looking like (assuming _ is your
cursor):
/home/tutorial >_
Formatting
echo adds spaces between its arguments. If you don't want those, you can use string join like this:
function fish_prompt
string join '' -- $PWD '>'
end
The -- indicates to string that no options can come after it, in case we extend this with something that
can start with a -.
There are other ways to remove the space, including echo -s and printf.
Adding color
This prompt is functional, but a bit boring. We could add some color.
Fortunately, fish offers the set_color command, so you can do:
echo (set_color red)foo
set_color can also handle RGB colors like set_color 23b455, and other formatting options including bold
and italics.
So, taking our previous prompt and adding some color:
function fish_prompt
string join '' -- (set_color green) $PWD (set_color normal) '>'
end
A "normal" color tells the terminal to go back to its normal formatting options.
set_color works by producing an escape sequence, which is a special piece of text that terminals
interpret as instructions - for example, to change color. So set_color red produces the same effect as:
echo \e\[31m
Although you can write your own escape sequences by hand, it's much easier to use set_color.
Shortening the working directory
This is fine, but our PWD can be a bit long, and we are typically only interested in the last few
directories. We can shorten this with the prompt_pwd helper that will give us a shortened working
directory:
function fish_prompt
string join '' -- (set_color green) (prompt_pwd) (set_color normal) '>'
end
prompt_pwd takes options to control how much to shorten. For instance, if we want to display the last two
directories, we'd use prompt_pwd --full-length-dirs 2:
function fish_prompt
string join '' -- (set_color green) (prompt_pwd --full-length-dirs 2) (set_color normal) '>'
end
With a current directory of "/home/tutorial/Music/Lena Raine/Oneknowing", this would print
~/M/Lena Raine/Oneknowing>_
Status
One important bit of information that every command returns is the status. This is a whole number from 0
to 255, and usually it is used as an error code - 0 if the command returned successfully, or a number
from 1 to 255 if not.
It's useful to display this in your prompt, but showing it when it's 0 seems kind of wasteful.
First of all, since every command (except for set) changes the status, you need to store it for later use
as the first thing in your prompt. Use a local variable so it will be confined to your prompt function:
set -l last_status $status
And after that, you can set a string if it is not zero:
# Prompt status only if it's not 0
set -l stat
if test $last_status -ne 0
set stat (set_color red)"[$last_status]"(set_color normal)
end
And to print it, we add it to our string join:
string join '' -- (set_color green) (prompt_pwd) (set_color normal) $stat '>'
If $last_status was 0, $stat is empty, and so it will simply disappear.
So our entire prompt is now:
function fish_prompt
set -l last_status $status
# Prompt status only if it's not 0
set -l stat
if test $last_status -ne 0
set stat (set_color red)"[$last_status]"(set_color normal)
end
string join '' -- (set_color green) (prompt_pwd) (set_color normal) $stat '>'
end
And it looks like:
~/M/L/Oneknowing[1]>_
after we run false (which returns 1).
Save the prompt
Once you are happy with your prompt, you can save it with funcsave fish_prompt (see funcsave - save the
definition of a function to the user's autoload directory) or write it to
~/.config/fish/functions/fish_prompt.fish yourself.
If you want to edit it again, open that file or use funced fish_prompt (see funced - edit a function
interactively).
Where to go from here?
We have now built a simple but working and usable prompt, but of course more can be done.
•
Fish offers more helper functions:
• prompt_login to describe the user/hostname/container or prompt_hostname to describe just the
host
• fish_is_root_user to help with changing the symbol for root.
• fish_vcs_prompt to show version control information (or fish_git_prompt / fish_hg_prompt /
fish_svn_prompt to limit it to specific systems)
• You can add a right prompt by changing fish_right_prompt or a vi mode prompt by changing
fish_mode_prompt.
•
Some prompts have interesting or advanced features
• Add the time when the prompt was printed
• Show various integrations like python's venv
• Color the parts differently.
You can look at fish's sample prompts for inspiration. Open up fish_config, find one you like and pick
it. For example:
fish_config prompt show # <- shows all the sample prompts
fish_config prompt choose disco # <- this picks the "disco" prompt for this session
funced fish_prompt # <- opens fish_prompt in your editor, and reloads it once the editor exits
Design
This is a description of the design principles that have been used to design fish. The fish design has
three high level goals. These are:
1. Everything that can be done in other shell languages should be possible to do in fish, though fish may
rely on external commands in doing so.
2. Fish should be user-friendly, but not at the expense of expressiveness. Most tradeoffs between power
and ease of use can be avoided with careful design.
3. Whenever possible without breaking the above goals, fish should follow POSIX.
To achieve these high-level goals, the fish design relies on a number of more specific design principles.
These are presented below, together with a rationale and a few examples for each.
The law of orthogonality
The shell language should have a small set of orthogonal features. Any situation where two features are
related but not identical, one of them should be removed, and the other should be made powerful and
general enough to handle all common use cases of either feature.
Rationale: Related features make the language larger, which makes it harder to learn. It also increases
the size of the source code, making the program harder to maintain and update.
Examples:
• Here documents are too similar to using echo inside of a pipeline.
• Subshells, command substitution and process substitution are strongly related. fish only supports
command substitution, the others can be achieved either using a block or the psub shellscript function.
• Having both aliases and functions is confusing, especially since both of them have limitations and
problems. fish functions have none of the drawbacks of either syntax.
• The many Posix quoting styles are silly, especially $.
The law of responsiveness
The shell should attempt to remain responsive to the user at all times, even in the face of contended or
unresponsive filesystems. It is only acceptable to block in response to a user initiated action, such as
running a command.
Rationale: Bad performance increases user-facing complexity, because it trains users to recognize and
route around slow use cases. It is also incredibly frustrating.
Examples:
• Features like syntax highlighting and autosuggestions must perform all of their disk I/O
asynchronously.
• Startup should minimize forks and disk I/O, so that fish can be started even if the system is under
load.
Configurability is the root of all evil
Every configuration option in a program is a place where the program is too stupid to figure out for
itself what the user really wants, and should be considered a failure of both the program and the
programmer who implemented it.
Rationale: Different configuration options are a nightmare to maintain, since the number of potential
bugs caused by specific configuration combinations quickly becomes an issue. Configuration options often
imply assumptions about the code which change when reimplementing the code, causing issues with backwards
compatibility. But mostly, configuration options should be avoided since they simply should not exist, as
the program should be smart enough to do what is best, or at least a good enough approximation of it.
Examples:
• Fish allows the user to set various syntax highlighting colors. This is needed because fish does not
know what colors the terminal uses by default, which might make some things unreadable. The proper
solution would be for text color preferences to be defined centrally by the user for all programs, and
for the terminal emulator to send these color properties to fish.
• Fish does not allow you to set the number of history entries, different language substyles or any
number of other common shell configuration options.
A special note on the evils of configurability is the long list of very useful features found in some
shells, that are not turned on by default. Both zsh and bash support command-specific completions, but no
such completions are shipped with bash by default, and they are turned off by default in zsh. Other
features that zsh supports that are disabled by default include tab-completion of strings containing
wildcards, a sane completion pager and a history file.
The law of user focus
When designing a program, one should first think about how to make an intuitive and powerful program.
Implementation issues should only be considered once a user interface has been designed.
Rationale: This design rule is different than the others, since it describes how one should go about
designing new features, not what the features should be. The problem with focusing on what can be done,
and what is easy to do, is that too much of the implementation is exposed. This means that the user must
know a great deal about the underlying system to be able to guess how the shell works, it also means that
the language will often be rather low-level.
Examples:
• There should only be one type of input to the shell, lists of commands. Loops, conditionals and
variable assignments are all performed through regular commands.
• The differences between built-in commands and shellscript functions should be made as small as
possible. Built-ins and shellscript functions should have exactly the same types of argument expansion
as other commands, should be possible to use in any position in a pipeline, and should support any I/O
redirection.
• Instead of forking when performing command substitution to provide a fake variable scope, all fish
commands are performed from the same process, and fish instead supports true scoping.
• All blocks end with the end built-in.
The law of discoverability
A program should be designed to make its features as easy as possible to discover for the user.
Rationale: A program whose features are discoverable turns a new user into an expert in a shorter span of
time, since the user will become an expert on the program simply by using it.
The main benefit of a graphical program over a command-line-based program is discoverability. In a
graphical program, one can discover all the common features by simply looking at the user interface and
guessing what the different buttons, menus and other widgets do. The traditional way to discover features
in command-line programs is through manual pages. This requires both that the user starts to use a
different program, and then they remember the new information until the next time they use the same
program.
Examples:
• Everything should be tab-completable, and every tab completion should have a description.
• Every syntax error and error in a built-in command should contain an error message describing what went
wrong and a relevant help page. Whenever possible, errors should be flagged red by the syntax
highlighter.
• The help manual should be easy to read, easily available from the shell, complete and contain many
examples
• The language should be uniform, so that once the user understands the command/argument syntax, they
will know the whole language, and be able to use tab-completion to discover new features.
Release notes
fish 4.0.2 (released April 20, 2025)
This release of fish fixes a number of issues identified in fish 4.0.1:
• Completions are quoted, rather than backslash-escaped, only if the completion is unambiguous.
Continuing to edit the token is therefore easier (#11271 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11271>). This changes the behavior introduced in 4.0.0 where all completions were quoted.
• The warning when the terminfo database can't be found has been downgraded to a log message. fish will
act as if the terminal behaves like xterm-256color, which is correct for the vast majority of cases (‐
#11277 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11277>, #11290 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/11290>).
• Key combinations using the super (Windows/command) key can now (actually) be bound using the super-
prefix (#11217 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11217>). This was listed in the release
notes for 4.0.1 but did not work correctly.
• function is stricter about argument parsing, rather than allowing additional parameters to be silently
ignored (#11295 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11295>).
• Using parentheses in the test builtin works correctly, following a regression in 4.0.0 where they were
not recognized (#11387 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11387>).
• delete in Vi mode when Num Lock is active will work correctly (#11303 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/11303>).
• Abbreviations cannot alter the command-line contents, preventing a crash (#11324
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11324>).
• Improvements to various completions, including new completions for wl-randr (#11301
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11301>), performance improvements for cargo
completions by avoiding network requests (#11347 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11347>), and other improvements for btrfs (#11320 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11320>), cryptsetup (#11315 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11315>), git
(#11319 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11319>, #11322 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/11322>, #11323 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11323>), jj (‐
#11046 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11046>), and systemd-analyze (#11314
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11314>).
• The Mercurial (hg) prompt can handle working directories that contain an embedded newline, rather than
producing errors (#11348 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11348>).
• A number of crashes have been fixed. Triggers include prompts containing backspace characters (#11280
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11280>), history pager search (#11355
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11355>), invalid UTF-8 in read (#11383
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11383>), and the kill-selection binding (#11367
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11367>).
• A race condition in the test suite has been fixed (#11254 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11254>), and a test for fish versioning relaxed to support downstream distributors'
modifications (#11173 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11173>).
• Small improvements to the documentation (#11264
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11264>, #11329 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11329>, #11361 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11361>).
----
fish 4.0.1 (released March 12, 2025)
This release of fish includes the following improvements compared to fish 4.0.0:
• Key combinations using the super (Windows/command) key can be bound using the super- prefix (#11217
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11217>).
• Konsole's menu shows the "Open folder with" option again (#11198 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11198>).
•
$fish_color_search_match will now only be applied to the foreground color if it has an explicit
foreground. For example, this allows setting::
set -g fish_color_search_match --reverse
• Cursor shape commands (\e[2 q) are no longer sent in non-interactive shells or in redirections (#11255
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11255>).
• status gained a is-interactive-read subcommand, to check whether the script is being called from an
interactive read invocation.
• fish's background tasks are now started in a way that avoids an error on macOS Terminal.app (#11181
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11181>).
• Using key combinations within qemu should work correctly.
• Prompts containing control characters no longer cause incorrect display of command lines (#11252
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11252>).
• Cancelling the command-line in Vi mode displays correctly again (#11261 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/11261>).
• The acidhub prompt properly displays the git branch again (#11179 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11179>).
• Completions for wine correctly include files again (#11202 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11202>).
• On macOS, paths from /etc/paths and /etc/manpaths containing colons are handled correctly (#10684
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10684>). This functionality was included in the 4.0.0
release notes but was missing from the source code.
• The XTerm modifyOtherKeys keyboard encoding is no longer used under WezTerm, as it does not work
correctly in all layouts (#11204 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11204>).
• kbd:option-left and other similar keys should now work in iTerm versions before 3.5.12; the kitty
keyboard protocol is now disabled on these versions (#11192 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11192>).
• The kitty keyboard protocol is no longer used under Midnight Commander, as it does not work correctly
(#10640 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10640>).
• fish now sends the commandline along with the OSC 133 semantic prompt command start sequence. This
fixes a test in the kitty terminal (#11203 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11203>).
• Git completions for third-party commands like "git-absorb" are completed correctly again (#11205
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11205>).
• Completions for diskutil no longer produce an error (#11201 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11201>).
• The output of certain error messages no longer prints newlines to standard output (#11248
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11248>).
• A number of crashes have been fixed, including file names longer than 255 bytes (#11221
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11221>), using fish on a btrfs filesystem (#11219
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11219>), history files that do not have the expected
format (#11236 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11236>), and pasting into an empty
command line (#11256 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11256>).
----
fish 4.0.0 (released February 27, 2025)
fish's core code has been ported from C++ to Rust (#9512 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9512>). This means a large change in dependencies and how to build fish. However, there
should be no direct impact on users. Packagers should see the For Distributors section at the end.
Notable backwards-incompatible changes
• As part of a larger binding rework, bind gained a new key notation. In most cases the old notation
should keep working, but in rare cases you may have to change a bind invocation to use the new
notation. See below for details.
• ctrl-c now calls a new bind function called clear-commandline. The old behavior, which leaves a "^C"
marker, is available as cancel-commandline (#10935 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10935>)
• random will produce different values from previous versions of fish when used with the same seed, and
will work more sensibly with small seed numbers. The seed was never guaranteed to give the same result
across systems, so we do not expect this to have a large impact (#9593 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9593>).
• Variables in command position that expand to a subcommand keyword are now forbidden to fix a likely
user error. For example, set editor command emacs; $editor is no longer allowed (#10249
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10249>).
• functions --handlers will now list handlers in a different order. Now it is definition order, first to
last, where before it was last to first. This was never specifically defined, and we recommend not
relying on a specific order (#9944 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9944>).
• The qmark-noglob feature, introduced in fish 3.0, is enabled by default. That means ? will no longer
act as a single-character glob. You can, for the time being, turn it back on by adding no-qmark-noglob
to fish_features and restarting fish:
set -Ua fish_features no-qmark-noglob
The flag will eventually be made read-only, making it impossible to turn off.
• Terminals that fail to ignore unrecognized OSC or CSI sequences may display garbage. We know
cool-retro-term and emacs' ansi-term are affected, but most mainstream terminals are not.
• fish no longer searches directories from the Windows system/user $PATH environment variable for Linux
executables. To execute Linux binaries by name (i.e. not with a relative or absolute path) from a
Windows folder, make sure the /mnt/c/... path is explicitly added to $fish_user_paths and not just
automatically appended to $PATH by wsl.exe (#10506 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10506>).
• Under Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Linux 1 (not WSL 2), backgrounded jobs that have not been
disowned and do not terminate on their own after a SIGHUP + SIGCONT sequence will be explicitly killed
by fish on exit (after the usual prompt to close or disown them) to work around a WSL 1 deficiency that
sees backgrounded processes that run into SIGTTOU remain in a suspended state indefinitely (#5263
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5263>). The workaround is to explicitly disown
processes you wish to outlive the shell session.
Notable improvements and fixes
• fish now requests XTerm's modifyOtherKeys keyboard encoding and kitty keyboard protocol's
<https://sw.kovidgoyal.net/kitty/keyboard-protocol/> progressive enhancements (#10359
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10359>). Depending on terminal support, this allows
to binding more key combinations, including arbitrary combinations of modifiers ctrl, alt and shift,
and distinguishing (for example) ctrl-i from tab.
Additionally, bind now supports a human-readable syntax in addition to byte sequences. This includes
modifier names, and names for keys like enter and backspace. For example
• bind up 'do something' binds the up-arrow key instead of a two-key sequence ("u" and then "p")
• bind ctrl-x,alt-c 'do something' binds a sequence of two keys.
Any key argument that starts with an ASCII control character (like \e or \cX) or is up to 3 characters
long, not a named key, and does not contain , or - will be interpreted in the old syntax to keep
compatibility for the majority of bindings.
Keyboard protocols can be turned off by disabling the "keyboard-protocols" feature flag:
set -Ua fish_features no-keyboard-protocols
This is a temporary measure to work around buggy terminals (#11056 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11056>), which appear to be relatively rare. Use this if something like "=0" or "=5u"
appears in your commandline mysteriously.
• fish can now be built as a self-installing binary (#10367 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10367>). That means it can be easily built on one system and copied to another, where it
can extract supporting files. To do this, run:
cargo install --path . # in a clone of the fish repository
# or `cargo build --release` and copy target/release/fish{,_indent,_key_reader} wherever you want
The first time it runs interactively, it will extract all the data files to
~/.local/share/fish/install/. A specific path can be used for the data files with fish --install=PATH
To uninstall, remove the fish binaries and that directory.
This build system is experimental; the main build system, using cmake, remains the recommended approach
for packaging and installation to a prefix.
• A new function fish_should_add_to_history can be overridden to decide whether a command should be added
to the history (#10302 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10302>).
• Bindings can now mix special input functions and shell commands, so bind ctrl-g expand-abbr
"commandline -i \n" works as expected (#8186 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8186>).
• Special input functions run from bindings via commandline -f are now applied immediately, instead of
after the currently executing binding (#3031 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3031>, ‐
#10126 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10126>). For example, commandline -i foo;
commandline | grep foo succeeds now.
• Undo history is no longer truncated after every command, but kept for the lifetime of the shell
process.
• The ctrl-r history search now uses glob syntax (#10131 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10131>).
• The ctrl-r history search now operates only on the line or command substitution at cursor, making it
easier to combine commands from history (#9751 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9751>).
• Abbreviations can now be restricted to specific commands. For instance:
abbr --add --command git back 'reset --hard HEAD^'
will expand "back" to reset --hard HEAD^, but only when the command is git (#9411
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9411>).
Deprecations and removed features
• commandline --tokenize (short option -o) has been deprecated in favor of commandline --tokens-expanded
(short option -x) which expands variables and other shell syntax, removing the need to use eval in
completion scripts (#10212 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10212>).
• Two new feature flags:
• remove-percent-self (see status features) disables PID expansion of %self, which has been supplanted
by $fish_pid (#10262 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10262>).
• test-require-arg disables test's one-argument mode. That means test -n without an additional argument
will return false, test -z will keep returning true. Any other option without an argument, anything
that is not an option and no argument will be an error. This also goes for [, test's alternate name.
This is a frequent source of confusion and so we are breaking with POSIX explicitly in this regard.
In addition to the feature flag, there is a debug category "deprecated-test". Running fish with fish
-d deprecated-test will show warnings whenever a test invocation that would change is used. (#10365
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10365>).
These can be enabled with:
set -Ua fish_features remove-percent-self test-require-arg
We intend to enable them by default in future, and after that eventually make them read-only.
• Specifying key names as terminfo names (using the bind -k syntax) is deprecated and may be removed in a
future version.
• When a terminal pastes text into fish using bracketed paste, fish used to switch to a special paste
bind mode. This bind mode has been removed. The behavior on paste is no longer configurable.
• When an interactive fish is stopped or terminated by a signal that cannot be caught (SIGSTOP or
SIGKILL), it may leave the terminal in a state where keypresses with modifiers are sent as CSI u
sequences, instead of traditional control characters or escape sequences that are recognized by
Readline and compatible programs, such as bash and python. If this happens, you can use the reset
command from ncurses to restore the terminal state.
• fish_key_reader --verbose no longer shows timing information.
• Terminal information is no longer read from hashed terminfo databases, or termcap databases (#10269
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10269>). The vast majority of systems use a non-hashed
terminfo database, which is still supported.
• source returns an error if used without a filename or pipe/redirection (#10774
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10774>).
Scripting improvements
• for loops will no longer remember local variables from the previous iteration (#10525
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10525>).
• A new history append subcommand appends a command to the history, without executing it (#4506
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4506>).
• A new redirection: <? /path/to/file will try opening the file as input, and if it doesn't succeed
silently uses /dev/null instead. This can help with checks like test -f /path/to/file; and string
replace foo bar < /path/to/file. (#10387 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10387>)
• A new option commandline --tokens-raw prints a list of tokens without any unescaping (#10212
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10212>).
• A new option commandline --showing-suggestion tests whether an autosuggestion is currently displayed (‐
#10586 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10586>).
• functions and type now show that a function was copied and its source, rather than solely Defined
interactively (#6575 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6575>).
• Stack trace now shows line numbers for copied functions (#6575 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6575>).
• foo & && bar is now a syntax error, like in other shells (#9911 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9911>).
• if -e foo; end now prints a more accurate error (#10000 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10000>).
• cd into a directory that is not readable but accessible (permissions --x) is now possible (#10432
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10432>).
• An integer overflow in string repeat leading to a near-infinite loop has been fixed (#9899
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9899>).
• string shorten behaves better in the presence of non-printable characters, including fixing an integer
overflow that shortened strings more than intended (#9854 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9854>).
• string pad no longer allows non-printable characters as padding (#9854 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9854>).
• string repeat now allows omission of -n when the first argument is an integer (#10282
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10282>).
• string match and replace have a new --max-matches option to return as soon as the specified number of
matches have been identified, which can improve performance in scripts (#10587
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10587>).
• functions --handlers-type caller-exit once again lists functions defined as function --on-job-exit
caller, rather than them being listed by functions --handlers-type process-exit.
• A new set --no-event option sets or erases variables without triggering a variable event. This can be
useful to change a variable in an event handler (#10480 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10480>).
• Commas in command substitution output are no longer used as separators in brace expansion, preventing a
surprising expansion in some cases (#5048 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5048>).
• Universal variables can now store strings containing invalid UTF-8 (#10313 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10313>).
• A new path basename -E option that causes it to return the basename ("filename" with the directory
prefix removed) with the final extension (if any) also removed. This is a shorter version of path
change-extension "" (path basename $foo) (#10521 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10521>).
• A new math --scale-mode option to select truncate, round, floor, ceiling as you wish; the default value
is truncate. (#9117 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9117>).
• random is now less strict about its arguments, allowing a start larger or equal to the end. (#10879
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10879>)
• function --argument-names now produces an error if a read-only variable name is used, rather than
simply ignoring it (#10842 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10842>).
• Tilde expansion in braces (that is, {~,}) works correctly (#10610 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10610>).
Interactive improvements
• Autosuggestions were sometimes not shown after recalling a line from history, which has been fixed (‐
#10287 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10287>).
• Up-arrow search matches -- which are highlighted in reverse colors -- are no longer syntax-highlighted,
to fix bad contrast with the search match highlighting.
• Command abbreviations (those with --position command or without a --position) now also expand after
decorators like command (#10396 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10396>).
• Abbreviations now expand after process separators like ; and |. This fixes a regression in version 3.6
(#9730 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9730>).
• When exporting interactively defined functions (using type, functions or funcsave) the function body is
now indented, to match the interactive command line editor (#8603 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8603>).
• ctrl-x (fish_clipboard_copy) on multiline commands now includes indentation (#10437
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10437>).
• ctrl-v (fish_clipboard_paste) now strips ASCII control characters from the pasted text. This is
consistent with normal keyboard input (#5274 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5274>).
• When a command like fg %2 fails to find the given job, it no longer behaves as if no job spec was given
(#9835 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9835>).
• Redirection in command position like >echo is now highlighted as error (#8877 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8877>).
• fish_vi_cursor now works properly inside the prompt created by builtin read (#10088
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10088>).
• fish no longer fails to open a FIFO if interrupted by a terminal resize signal (#10250
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10250>).
• read --help and friends no longer ignore redirections. This fixes a regression in version 3.1 (#10274
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10274>).
• Measuring a command with time now considers the time taken for command substitution (#9100
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9100>).
• fish_add_path now automatically enables verbose mode when used interactively (in the command line), in
an effort to be clearer about what it does (#10532 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10532>).
• fish no longer adopts TTY modes of failed commands (#10603 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10603>).
• complete -e cmd now prevents autoloading completions for cmd (#6716 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6716>).
• fish's default color scheme no longer uses the color "blue", as it has bad contrast against the
background in a few terminal's default palettes (#10758 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10758>, #10786 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10786>) The color scheme
will not be upgraded for existing installs. If you want, you should select it again via fish_config.
• Command lines which are larger than the terminal are now displayed correctly, instead of multiple blank
lines being displayed (#7296 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7296>).
• Prompts that use external commands will no longer produce an infinite loop if the command crashes (‐
#9796 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9796>).
• Undo (ctrl-z) restores the cursor position too (#10838 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10838>).
• The output of jobs shows "-" for jobs that have the same process group ID as the fish process, rather
than "-2" (#10833 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10833>).
• Job expansion (%1 syntax) works properly for jobs that are a mixture of external commands and functions
(#10832 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10832>).
• Command lines which have more lines than the terminal can be displayed and edited correctly (#10827
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10827>).
• Functions that have been erased are no longer highlighted as valid commands (#10866
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10866>).
• not, time, and variable assignments (that is not time a=b env) is correctly recognized as valid syntax
(#10890 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10890>).
• The Web-based configuration removes old right-hand-side prompts again, fixing a regression in fish
3.4.0 (#10675 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10675>).
• Further protection against programs which crash and leave the terminal in an inconsistent state (#10834
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10834>, #11038 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/11038>).
• A workaround for git being very slow on macOS has been applied, improving performance after a fresh
boot (#10535 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10535>).
New or improved bindings
• When the cursor is on a command that resolves to an executable script, alt-o will now open that script
in your editor (#10266 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10266>).
• During up-arrow history search, shift-delete will delete the current search item and move to the next
older item. Previously this was only supported in the history pager.
• shift-delete will also remove the currently-displayed autosuggestion from history, and remove it as a
suggestion.
• ctrl-Z (also known as ctrl-shift-z) is now bound to redo.
• Some improvements to the alt-e binding which edits the command line in an external editor: - The
editor's cursor position is copied back to fish. This is currently supported for Vim and Kakoune. -
Cursor position synchronization is only supported for a set of known editors, which are now also
detected in aliases which use complete --wraps. For example, use complete --wraps my-vim vim to
synchronize cursors when EDITOR=my-vim. - Multiline commands are indented before being sent to the
editor, which matches how they are displayed in fish.
• The ...-path-component bindings, like backward-kill-path-component, now treat # as part of a path
component (#10271 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10271>).
• Bindings like alt-l that print output in between prompts now work correctly with multiline
commandlines.
• alt-d on an empty command line lists the directory history again. This restores the behavior of version
2.1.
• history-prefix-search-backward and -forward now maintain the cursor position, instead of moving the
cursor to the end of the command line (#10430 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10430>).
• The following keys have refined behavior if the terminal supports the new keyboard encodings: -
shift-enter now inserts a newline instead of executing the command line. - ctrl-backspace now deletes
the last word instead of only one character (#10741 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10741>). - ctrl-delete deletes the next word (same as alt-d).
• New special input functions: - forward-char-passive and backward-char-passive are like their
non-passive variants but do not accept autosuggestions or move focus in the completion pager (#10398
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10398>). - forward-token, backward-token, kill-token,
and backward-kill-token are similar to the *-bigword variants but for the whole argument token (which
includes escaped spaces) (#2014 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2014>). -
clear-commandline, which merely clears the command line, as an alternative to cancel-commandline which
prints ^C and a new prompt (#10213 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10213>).
• The accept-autosuggestion special input function now returns false when there was nothing to accept (‐
#10608 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10608>).
• Vi mode has seen some improvements but continues to suffer from the lack of people working on it. -
New default cursor shapes for insert and replace mode. - ctrl-n in insert mode accepts autosuggestions
(#10339 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10339>). - Outside insert mode, the cursor
will no longer be placed beyond the last character on the commandline. - When the cursor is at the end
of the commandline, a single l will accept an autosuggestion (#10286 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10286>). - The cursor position after pasting (p) has been corrected. - Added
an additional binding, _, for moving to the beginning of the line (#10720 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10720>). - When the cursor is at the start of a line, escaping from insert
mode no longer moves the cursor to the previous line. - Added bindings for clipboard interaction, like
",+,p and ",+,y,y. - Deleting in visual mode now moves the cursor back, matching vi (#10394
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10394>). - The ;, ,, v, V, I, and gU bindings work in
visual mode (#10601 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10601>, #10648
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10648>). - Support % motion (#10593
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10593>). - ctrl-k to remove the contents of the line
beyond the cursor in all modes (#10648 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10648>). -
Support ab and ib vi text objects. New input functions are introduced jump-{to,till}-matching-bracket
(#1842 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1842>). - The E binding now correctly handles
the last character of the word, by jumping to the next word (#9700 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9700>).
Completions
• Command-specific tab completions may now offer results whose first character is a period. For example,
it is now possible to tab-complete git add for files with leading periods. The default file completions
hide these files, unless the token itself has a leading period (#3707 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3707>).
• Option completion now uses fuzzy subsequence filtering, just like non-option completion (#830
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/830>). This means that --fb may be completed to
--foobar if there is no better match.
• Completions that insert an entire token now use quotes instead of backslashes to escape special
characters (#5433 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5433>).
• Normally, file name completions start after the last : or = in a token. This helps commands like
rsync --files-from=. This special meaning can now disabled by escaping these separators as \: and \=.
This matches Bash's behavior. Note that this escaping is usually not necessary since the completion
engine already tries to guess whether the separator is actually part of a file name.
• Various new completion scripts and numerous updates to existing ones.
• Completions could hang if the PAGER environment variable was sent to certain editors on macOS, FreeBSD
and some other platforms. This has been fixed (#10820 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10820>).
• Generated completions are now stored in $XDG_CACHE_HOME/fish or ~/.cache/fish by default (#10369
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10369>)
• A regression in fish 3.1, where completing a command line could change it completely, has been fixed (‐
#10904 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10904>).
Improved terminal support
• fish now marks the prompt and command-output regions (via OSC 133) to enable terminal shell integration
(#10352 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10352>). Shell integration shortcuts can
scroll to the next/previous prompt or show the last command output in a pager.
• fish now reports the working directory (via OSC 7) unconditionally instead of only for some terminals
(#9955 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9955>).
• fish now sets the terminal window title (via OSC 0) unconditionally instead of only for some terminals
(#10037 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10037>).
• Focus reporting in tmux is no longer disabled on the first prompt.
• Focus reporting is now disabled during commands run inside key bindings (#6942
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6942>).
• Cursor changes are applied to all terminals that support them, and the list of specifically-supported
terminals has been removed (#10693 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10693>).
• If it cannot find the terminfo entry given by TERM environment variable, fish will now use an included
xterm-256color definition to match the vast majority of current terminal emulators (#10905
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10905>). If you need to have a specific terminfo
profile for your terminal's TERM variable, install it into the terminfo database.
• Further improvements to the correct display of prompts which fill the width of the terminal (#8164
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8164>).
Other improvements
• status gained a buildinfo subcommand, to print information on how fish was built, to help with
debugging (#10896 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10896>).
• fish_indent will now collapse multiple empty lines into one (#10325 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10325>).
• fish_indent now preserves the modification time of files if there were no changes (#10624
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10624>).
• Performance in launching external processes has been improved for many cases (#10869
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10869>).
• Performance and interactivity under Windows Subsystem for Linux has been improved, with a workaround
for Windows-specific locations being appended to $PATH by default (#10506 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10506>).
• On macOS, paths from /etc/paths and /etc/manpaths containing colons are handled correctly (#10684
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10684>).
• Additional filesystems such as AFS are properly detected as remote, which avoids certain hangs due to
expensive filesystem locks (#10818 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10818>).
• A spurious error when launching multiple instances of fish for the first time has been removed (#10813
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10813>).
For distributors
fish has been ported to Rust. This means a significant change in dependencies, which are listed in the
README. In short, Rust 1.70 or greater is required, and a C++ compiler is no longer needed (although a C
compiler is still required, for some C glue code and the tests).
CMake remains the recommended build system, because of cargo's limited support for installing support
files. Version 3.5 remains the minimum supported version. The Xcode generator for CMake is not supported
any longer (#9924 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9924>). CMake builds default to
optimized release builds (#10799 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10799>).
fish no longer depends on the ncurses library, but still uses a terminfo database. When packaging fish,
please add a dependency on the package containing your terminfo database instead of curses.
The test target was removed as it can no longer be defined in new CMake versions. Use make
fish_run_tests. Any existing test target will not print output if it fails (#11116
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11116>).
The Web-based configuration has been rewritten to use Alpine.js (#9554 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9554>).
----
fish 4.0b1 (released December 17, 2024)
A number of improvements were included in fish 4.0.0 following the beta release of 4.0b1. These include
fixes for regressions, improvements to completions and documentation, and the removal of a small number
of problematic changes.
The full list of fixed issues can be found on the GitHub milestone page for 4.0-final
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/milestone/43>.
----
fish 3.7.1 (released March 19, 2024)
This release of fish fixes the following problems identified in fish 3.7.0:
• Deleting the last history entry via history delete works again (#10190 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10190>).
• Wildcards (*) will no longer sometimes generate paths that did not exist (#10205
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10205>).
This release also contains some improvements:
• A crash when trying to run an ELF program with a missing interpreter has been fixed. This crashed in
the process after fork, so did not affect the fish process that tried to start the program (#10199
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10199>).
• funced will now always source the file after it has written it, even if the contents did not change.
This prevents issues if the file was otherwise modified (#10318 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10318>).
• The warning for when a builtin returns a negative exit code was improved, now mentioning the original
status (#10187 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10187>).
• Added completions for
• cobra-cli (#10293 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10293>)
• dmidecode (#10368 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10368>)
• mycli (#10309 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10309>)
• ollama (#10327 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10327>)
• pstree (#10317 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10317>)
• Some improvements to documentation and completions.
----
fish 3.7.0 (released January 1, 2024)
This release of fish includes a number of improvements over fish 3.6.4, detailed below. Although work
continues on the porting of fish internals to the Rust programming language, that work is not included in
this release. fish 3.7.0 and any future releases in the 3.7 series remain C++ programs.
Notable improvements and fixes
• Improvements to the history pager, including:
• The history pager will now also attempt subsequence matches (#9476 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9476>), so you can find a command line like git log 3.6.1..Integration_3.7.0
by searching for gitInt.
• Opening the history pager will now fill the search field with a search string if you're already in a
search (#10005 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10005>). This makes it nicer to
search something with up and then later decide to switch to the full pager.
• Closing the history pager with enter will now copy the search text to the commandline if there was no
match, so you can continue editing the command you tried to find right away (#9934
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9934>).
• Performance improvements for command completions and globbing, where supported by the operating system,
especially on slow filesystems such as NFS (#9891 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9891>, #9931 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9931>, #10032
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10032>, #10052 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10052>).
• fish can now be configured to wait a specified amount of time for a multi-key sequence to be completed,
instead of waiting indefinitely. For example, this makes binding kj to switching modes in vi mode
possible. The timeout can be set via the new fish_sequence_key_delay_ms variable (#7401
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7401>), and may be set by default in future versions.
Deprecations and removed features
• LS_COLORS is no longer set automatically by the ls function (#10080 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10080>). Users that set .dircolors should manually import it using other means.
Typically this would be set -gx LS_COLORS (dircolors -c .dircolors | string split ' ')[3]
Scripting improvements
• Running exit with a negative number no longer crashes fish (#9659 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9659>).
• fish --command will now return a non-zero status if parsing failed (#9888 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9888>).
• The jobs builtin will now escape the commands it prints (#9808 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9808>).
• string repeat no longer overflows if the count is a multiple of the chunk size (#9900
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9900>).
• The builtin builtin will now properly error out with invalid arguments instead of doing nothing and
returning true (#9942 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9942>).
• command time in a pipeline is allowed again, as is command and and command or (#9985
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9985>).
• exec will now also apply variable overrides, so FOO=bar exec will now set $FOO correctly (#9995
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9995>).
• umask will now handle empty symbolic modes correctly, like umask u=,g=rwx,o= (#10177
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10177>).
• Improved error messages for errors occurring in command substitutions (#10054 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10054>).
Interactive improvements
• read no longer enables bracketed paste so it doesn't stay enabled in combined commandlines like mysql
-p(read --silent) (#8285 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8285>).
• Vi mode now uses fish_cursor_external to set the cursor shape for external commands (#4656
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4656>).
• Opening the history search in vi mode switches to insert mode correctly (#10141
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10141>).
• Vi mode cursor shaping is now enabled in iTerm2 (#9698 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9698>).
• Completing commands as root includes commands not owned by root, fixing a regression introduced in fish
3.2.0 (#9699 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9699>).
• Selection uses fish_color_selection for the foreground and background colors, as intended, rather than
just the background (#9717 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9717>).
• The completion pager will no longer sometimes skip the last entry when moving through a long list (‐
#9833 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9833>).
• The interactive history delete interface now allows specifying index ranges like "1..5" (#9736
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9736>), and history delete --exact now properly saves
the history (#10066 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10066>).
• Command completion will now call the stock manpath on macOS, instead of a potential Homebrew version.
This prevents awkward error messages (#9817 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9817>).
• the redo special input function restores the pre-undo cursor position.
• A new bind function history-pager-delete, bound to shift-delete by default, will delete the
currently-selected history pager item from history (#9454 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9454>).
• fish_key_reader will now use printable characters as-is, so pressing "ö" no longer leads to it telling
you to bind \u00F6 (#9986 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9986>).
• open can be used to launch terminal programs again, as an xdg-open bug has been fixed and a workaround
has been removed (#10045 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10045>).
• The repaint-mode binding will now only move the cursor if there is repainting to be done. This fixes
alt combination bindings in vi mode (#7910 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7910>).
• A new clear-screen bind function is used for ctrl-l by default. This clears the screen and repaints the
existing prompt at first, so it eliminates visible flicker unless the terminal is very slow (#10044
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10044>).
• The alias convenience function has better support for commands with unusual characters, like + (#8720
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8720>).
• A longstanding issue where items in the pager would sometimes display without proper formatting has
been fixed (#9617 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9617>).
• The alt-l binding, which lists the directory of the token under the cursor, correctly expands tilde (~)
to the home directory (#9954 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9954>).
• Various fish utilities that use an external pager will now try a selection of common pagers if the
PAGER environment variable is not set, or write the output to the screen without a pager if there is
not one available (#10074 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10074>).
• Command-specific tab completions may now offer results whose first character is a period. For example,
it is now possible to tab-complete git add for files with leading periods. The default file completions
hide these files, unless the token itself has a leading period (#3707 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3707>).
Improved prompts
• The default theme now only uses named colors, so it will track the terminal's palette (#9913
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9913>).
• The Dracula theme has now been synced with upstream (#9807 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9807>); use fish_config to re-apply it to pick up the changes.
• fish_vcs_prompt now also supports fossil (#9497
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9497>).
• Prompts which display the working directory using the prompt_pwd function correctly display directories
beginning with dashes (#10169 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10169>).
Completions
• Added completions for:
• age and age-keygen (#9813 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9813>)
• airmon-ng (#10116 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10116>)
• ar (#9720 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9720>)
• blender (#9905 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9905>)
• bws (#10165 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10165>)
• calendar (#10138 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10138>)
• checkinstall (#10106 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10106>)
• crc (#10034 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10034>)
• doctl
• gimp (#9904 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9904>)
• gojq (#9740 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9740>)
• horcrux (#9922 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9922>)
• ibmcloud (#10004 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10004>)
• iwctl (#6884 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6884>)
• java_home (#9998 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9998>)
• krita (#9903 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9903>)
• oc (#10034 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10034>)
• qjs (#9723 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9723>)
• qjsc (#9731 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9731>)
• rename (#10136 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10136>)
• rpm-ostool (#9669 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9669>)
• smerge (#10135 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10135>)
• userdel (#10056 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10056>)
• watchexec (#10027 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10027>)
• wpctl (#10043 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10043>)
• xxd (#10137 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10137>)
• zabbix (#9647 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9647>)
• The zfs completions no longer print errors about setting a read-only variable (#9705
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9705>).
• The kitty completions have been removed in favor of keeping them upstream (#9750
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9750>).
• git completions now support aliases that reference other aliases (#9992 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9992>).
• The gw and gradlew completions are loaded properly (#10127 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/10127>).
• Improvements to many other completions.
• Improvements to the manual page completion generator (#9787 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9787>, #9814 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9814>, #9961
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9961>).
Other improvements
• Improvements and corrections to the documentation.
• The Web-based configuration now uses a more readable style when printed, such as for a keybinding
reference (#9828 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9828>).
• Updates to the German translations (#9824 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9824>).
• The colors of the Nord theme better match their official style (#10168 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/10168>).
For distributors
• The licensing information for some of the derived code distributed with fish was incomplete. Though the
license information was present in the source distribution, it was not present in the documentation.
This has been corrected (#10162 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/10162>).
• The CMake configure step will now also look for libterminfo as an alternative name for libtinfo, as
used in NetBSD curses (#9794 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9794>).
----
fish 3.6.4 (released December 5, 2023)
This release contains a complete fix for the test suite failure in fish 3.6.2 and 3.6.3.
----
fish 3.6.3 (released December 4, 2023)
This release contains a fix for a test suite failure in fish 3.6.2.
----
fish 3.6.2 (released December 4, 2023)
This release of fish contains a security fix for CVE-2023-49284, a minor security problem identified in
fish 3.6.1 and previous versions (thought to affect all released versions of fish).
fish uses certain Unicode non-characters internally for marking wildcards and expansions. It incorrectly
allowed these markers to be read on command substitution output, rather than transforming them into a
safe internal representation.
For example, echo \UFDD2HOME has the same output as echo $HOME.
While this may cause unexpected behavior with direct input, this may become a minor security problem if
the output is being fed from an external program into a command substitution where this output may not be
expected.
----
fish 3.6.1 (released March 25, 2023)
This release of fish contains a number of fixes for problems identified in fish 3.6.1, as well as some
enhancements.
Notable improvements and fixes
• abbr --erase now also erases the universal variables used by the old abbr function. That means:
abbr --erase (abbr --list)
can now be used to clean out all old abbreviations (#9468 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9468>).
• abbr --add --universal now warns about --universal being non-functional, to make it easier to detect
old-style abbr calls (#9475 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9475>).
Deprecations and removed features
• The Web-based configuration for abbreviations has been removed, as it was not functional with the
changes abbreviations introduced in 3.6.0 (#9460
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9460>).
Scripting improvements
• abbr --list no longer escapes the abbr name, which is necessary to be able to pass it to abbr --erase
(#9470 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9470>).
• read will now print an error if told to set a read-only variable, instead of silently doing nothing (‐
#9346 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9346>).
• set_color -v no longer crashes fish (#9640 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9640>).
Interactive improvements
• Using fish_vi_key_bindings in combination with fish's --no-config mode works without locking up the
shell (#9443 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9443>).
• The history pager now uses more screen space, usually half the screen (#9458 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9458>)
• Variables that were set while the locale was C (the default ASCII-only locale) will now properly be
encoded if the locale is switched (#2613 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2613>, #9473
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9473>).
• Escape during history search restores the original command line again (fixing a regression in 3.6.0).
• Using --help on builtins now respects the $MANPAGER variable, in preference to $PAGER (#9488
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9488>).
• ctrl-g closes the history pager, like other shells (#9484 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9484>).
• The documentation for the :, [ and . builtin commands can now be looked up with man (#9552
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9552>).
• fish no longer crashes when searching history for non-ASCII codepoints case-insensitively (#9628
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9628>).
• The alt-s binding will now also use please if available (#9635 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9635>).
• Themes that don't specify every color option can be installed correctly in the Web-based configuration
(#9590 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9590>).
• Compatibility with Midnight Commander's prompt integration has been improved (#9540
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9540>).
• A spurious error, noted when using fish in Google Drive directories under WSL 2, has been silenced (‐
#9550 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9550>).
• Using read in fish_greeting or similar functions will not trigger an infinite loop (#9564
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9564>).
• Compatibility when upgrading from old versions of fish (before 3.4.0) has been improved (#9569
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9569>).
Improved prompts
• The git prompt will compute the stash count to be used independently of the informative status (#9572
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9572>).
Completions
• Added completions for:
• apkanalyzer (#9558 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9558>)
• neovim (#9543 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9543>)
• otool
• pre-commit (#9521 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9521>)
• proxychains (#9486 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9486>)
• scrypt (#9583 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9583>)
• stow (#9571 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9571>)
• trash and helper utilities trash-empty, trash-list, trash-put, trash-restore (#9560
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9560>)
• ssh-copy-id (#9675 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9675>)
• Improvements to many completions, including the speed of completing directories in WSL 2 (#9574
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9574>).
• Completions using __fish_complete_suffix are now offered in the correct order, fixing a regression in
3.6.0 (#8924 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8924>).
• git completions for git-foo-style commands was restored, fixing a regression in 3.6.0 (#9457
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9457>).
• File completion now offers ../ and ./ again, fixing a regression in 3.6.0 (#9477
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9477>).
• The behaviour of completions using __fish_complete_path matches standard path completions (#9285
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9285>).
Other improvements
• Improvements and corrections to the documentation.
For distributors
• fish 3.6.1 builds correctly on Cygwin (#9502 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9502>).
----
fish 3.6.0 (released January 7, 2023)
Notable improvements and fixes
• By default, ctrl-r now opens the command history in the pager (#602 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/602>). This is fully searchable and syntax-highlighted, as an alternative to
the incremental search seen in other shells. The new special input function history-pager has been
added for custom bindings.
• Abbrevations are more flexible (#9313 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9313>, #5003
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5003>, #2287 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2287>):
• They may optionally replace tokens anywhere on the command line, instead of only commands
• Matching tokens may be described using a regular expression instead of a literal word
• The replacement text may be produced by a fish function, instead of a literal word
• They may position the cursor anywhere in the expansion, instead of at the end
For example:
function multicd
echo cd (string repeat -n (math (string length -- $argv[1]) - 1) ../)
end
abbr --add dotdot --regex '^\.\.+$' --function multicd
This expands .. to cd ../, ... to cd ../../ and .... to cd ../../../ and so on.
Or:
function last_history_item; echo $history[1]; end
abbr -a !! --position anywhere --function last_history_item
which expands !! to the last history item, anywhere on the command line, mimicking other shells'
history expansion.
See the documentation for more.
• path gained a new mtime subcommand to print the modification time stamp for files. For example, this
can be used to handle cache file ages (#9057 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9057>):
> touch foo
> sleep 10
> path mtime --relative foo
10
• string gained a new shorten subcommand to shorten strings to a given visible width (#9156
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9156>):
> string shorten --max 10 "Hello this is a long string"
Hello thi…
• test (aka [) gained -ot (older than) and -nt (newer than) operators to compare file modification times,
and -ef to compare whether the arguments are the same file (#3589 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3589>).
• fish will now mark the extent of many errors with a squiggly line, instead of just a caret (^) at the
beginning (#9130 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9130>). For example:
checks/set.fish (line 471): for: a,b: invalid variable name. See `help identifiers`
for a,b in y 1 z 3
^~^
• A new function, fish_delta, shows changes that have been made in fish's configuration from the defaults
(#9255 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9255>).
• set --erase can now be used with multiple scopes at once, like set -efglU foo (#7711
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7711>, #9280 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9280>).
• status gained a new subcommand, current-commandline, which retrieves the entirety of the
currently-executing command line when called from a function during execution. This allows easier job
introspection (#8905 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8905>, #9296
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9296>).
Deprecations and removed features
• The \x and \X escape syntax is now equivalent. \xAB previously behaved the same as \XAB, except that it
would error if the value "AB" was larger than "7f" (127 in decimal, the highest ASCII value) (#9247
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9247>, #9245 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9245>, #1352 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1352>).
• The fish_git_prompt will now only turn on features if the appropriate variable has been set to a true
value (of "1", "yes" or "true") instead of just checking if it is defined. This allows specifically
turning features off without having to erase variables, such as via universal variables. If you have
defined a variable to a different value and expect it to count as true, you need to change it (#9274
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9274>). For example, set -g
__fish_git_prompt_show_informative_status 0 previously would have enabled informative status (because
any value would have done so), but now it turns it off.
• Abbreviations are no longer stored in universal variables. Existing universal abbreviations are still
imported, but new abbreviations should be added to config.fish.
• The short option -r for abbreviations has changed from rename to regex, for consistency with string.
Scripting improvements
• argparse can now be used without option specifications, to allow using --min-args, --max-args or for
commands that take no options (but might in future) (#9006 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9006>):
function my_copy
argparse --min-args 2 -- $argv
or return
cp $argv
end
• set --show now shows when a variable was inherited from fish's parent process, which should help with
debugging (#9029 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9029>):
> set --show XDG_DATA_DIRS
$XDG_DATA_DIRS: set in global scope, exported, a path variable with 4 elements
$XDG_DATA_DIRS[1]: |/home/alfa/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share|
$XDG_DATA_DIRS[2]: |/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share|
$XDG_DATA_DIRS[3]: |/usr/local/share|
$XDG_DATA_DIRS[4]: |/usr/share|
$XDG_DATA_DIRS: originally inherited as |/home/alfa/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share/:/usr/share/|
• The read limit is now restored to the default when fish_read_limit is unset (#9129
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9129>).
• math produces an error for division-by-zero, as well as augmenting some errors with their extent (#9190
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9190>). This changes behavior in some limited cases,
such as:
math min 1 / 0, 5
which would previously print "5" (because in floating point division "1 / 0" yields infinite, and 5 is
smaller than infinite) but will now return an error.
• fish_clipboard_copy and fish_clipboard_paste can now be used in pipes (#9271 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9271>):
git rev-list 3.5.1 | fish_clipboard_copy
fish_clipboard_paste | string join + | math
• status fish-path returns a fully-normalised path, particularly noticeable on NetBSD (#9085
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9085>).
Interactive improvements
• If the terminal definition for TERM can't be found, fish now tries using the "xterm-256color" and
"xterm" definitions before "ansi" and "dumb". As the majority of terminal emulators in common use are
now more or less xterm-compatible (often even explicitly claiming the xterm-256color entry), this
should often result in a fully or almost fully usable terminal (#9026 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9026>).
• A new variable, fish_cursor_selection_mode, can be used to configure whether the command line selection
includes the character under the cursor (inclusive) or not (exclusive). The new default is exclusive;
use set fish_cursor_selection_mode inclusive to get the previous behavior back (#7762
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7762>).
• fish's completion pager now fills half the terminal on first tab press instead of only 4 rows, which
should make results visible more often and save key presses, without constantly snapping fish to the
top of the terminal (#9105 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9105>, #2698
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2698>).
• The complete-and-search binding, used with shift-tab by default, selects the first item in the results
immediately (#9080 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9080>).
• bind output is now syntax-highlighted when used interacively.
• alt-h (the default __fish_man_page binding) does a better job of showing the manual page of the command
under cursor (#9020 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9020>).
• If fish_color_valid_path contains an actual color instead of just modifiers, those will be used for
valid paths even if the underlying color isn't "normal" (#9159 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9159>).
• The key combination for the QUIT terminal sequence, often ctrl-\ (\x1c), can now be used as a binding
(#9234 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9234>).
• fish's vi mode uses normal xterm-style sequences to signal cursor change, instead of using the iTerm's
proprietary escape sequences. This allows for a blinking cursor and makes it work in complicated
scenarios with nested terminals. (#3741 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3741>, #9172
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9172>)
• When running fish on a remote system (such as inside SSH or a container), ctrl-x now copies to the
local client system's clipboard if the terminal supports OSC 52.
• commandline gained two new options, --selection-start and --selection-end, to set the start/end of the
current selection (#9197 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9197>, #9215
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9215>).
• fish's builtins now handle keyboard interrupts (ctrl-c) correctly (#9266 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9266>).
Completions
• Added completions for:
• ark
• asciinema (#9257 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9257>)
• clojure (#9272 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9272>)
• csh
• direnv (#9268 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9268>)
• dive (#9082 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9082>)
• dolphin
• dua (#9277 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9277>)
• efivar (#9318 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9318>)
• eg
• es (#9388 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9388>)
• firefox-developer-edition and firefox (#9090 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9090>)
• fortune (#9177 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9177>)
• kb
• kind (#9110 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9110>)
• konsole
• ksh
• loadkeys (#9312 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9312>)
• okular
• op (#9300 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9300>)
• ouch (#9405 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9405>)
• pix
• readelf (#8746 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8746>, #9386
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9386>)
• qshell
• rc
• sad (#9145 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9145>)
• tcsh
• toot
• tox (#9078 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9078>)
• wish
• xed
• xonsh (#9389 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9389>)
• xplayer
• xreader
• xviewer
• yash (#9391 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9391>)
• zig (#9083 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9083>)
• Improvements to many completions, including making cd completion much faster (#9220
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9220>).
• Completion of tilde (~) works properly even when the file name contains an escaped character (#9073
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9073>).
• fish no longer loads completions if the command is used via a relative path and is not in PATH (#9133
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9133>).
• fish no longer completes inside of comments (#9320 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9320>).
Improved terminal support
• Opening help on WSL now uses PowerShell to open the browser if available, removing some awkward UNC
path errors (#9119 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9119>).
Other improvements
• The Web-based configuration tool now works on systems with IPv6 disabled (#3857
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3857>).
• Aliases can ignore arguments by ending them with # (#9199 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9199>).
• string is now faster when reading large strings from stdin (#9139 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9139>).
• string repeat uses less memory and is faster. (#9124 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9124>)
• Builtins are much faster when writing to a pipe or file. (#9229 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9229>).
• Performance improvements to highlighting (#9180 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9180>)
should make using fish more pleasant on slow systems.
• On 32-bit systems, globs like * will no longer fail to return some files, as large file support has
been enabled.
Fixed bugs
• The history search text for a token search is now highlighted correctly if the line contains multiple
instances of that text (#9066 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9066>).
• process-exit and job-exit events are now generated for all background jobs, including those launched
from event handlers (#9096 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9096>).
• A crash when completing a token that contained both a potential glob and a quoted variable expansion
was fixed (#9137 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9137>).
• prompt_pwd no longer accidentally overwrites a global or universal $fish_prompt_pwd_full_dirs when
called with the -d or --full-length-dirs option (#9123 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9123>).
• A bug which caused fish to freeze or exit after running a command which does not preserve the
foreground process group was fixed (#9181 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9181>).
• The "Disco" sample prompt no longer prints an error in some working directories (#9164
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9164>). If you saved this prompt, you should run
fish_config prompt save disco again.
• fish launches external commands via the given path again, rather than always using an absolute path.
This behaviour was inadvertently changed in 3.5.0 and is visible, for example, when launching a bash
script which checks $0 (#9143 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9143>).
• printf no longer tries to interpret the first argument as an option (#9132 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9132>).
• Interactive read in scripts will now have the correct keybindings again (#9227
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9227>).
• A possible stack overflow when recursively evaluating substitutions has been fixed (#9302
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9302>).
• A crash with relative $CDPATH has been fixed (#9407 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9407>).
• printf now properly fills extra %d specifiers with 0 even on macOS and BSD (#9321
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9321>).
• fish_key_reader now correctly exits when receiving a SIGHUP (like after closing the terminal) (#9309
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9309>).
• fish_config theme save now works as documented instead of erroring out (#9088 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/9088>, #9273 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9273>).
• fish no longer triggers prompts to install command line tools when first run on macOS (#9343
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9343>).
• fish_git_prompt now quietly fails on macOS if the xcrun cache is not yet populated (#6625
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6625>), working around a potential hang.
For distributors
• The vendored PCRE2 sources have been removed. It is recommended to declare PCRE2 as a dependency when
packaging fish. If the CMake variable FISH_USE_SYSTEM_PCRE2 is false, fish will now download and build
PCRE2 from the official repo (#8355 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8355>, #8363
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8363>). Note this variable defaults to true if PCRE2
is found installed on the system.
----
fish 3.5.1 (released July 20, 2022)
This release of fish introduces the following small enhancements:
• Cursor shaping for Vi mode is enabled by default in tmux, and will be used if the outer terminal is
capable (#8981 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8981>).
• printf returns a better error when used with arguments interpreted as octal numbers (#9035
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9035>).
• history merge when in private mode is now an error, rather than wiping out other sessions' history (‐
#9050 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9050>).
• The error message when launching a command that is built for the wrong architecture on macOS is more
helpful (#9052 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9052>).
• Added completions for:
• choose (#9065 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9065>)
• expect (#9060 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9060>)
• navi (#9064 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9064>)
• qdbus (#9031 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9031>)
• reflector (#9027 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9027>)
• Improvements to some completions.
This release also fixes a number of problems identified in fish 3.5.0.
• Completing git blame or git -C works correctly (#9053 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9053>).
• On terminals that emit a CSI u sequence for shift-space, fish inserts a space instead of printing an
error. (#9054 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9054>).
• status fish-path on Linux-based platforms could print the path with a " (deleted)" suffix (such as
/usr/bin/fish (deleted)), which is now removed (#9019 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9019>).
• Cancelling an initial command (from fish's --init-command option) with ctrl-c no longer prevents
configuration scripts from running (#9024 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9024>).
• The job summary contained extra blank lines if the prompt used multiple lines, which is now fixed (‐
#9044 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9044>).
• Using special input functions in bindings, in combination with and/or conditionals, no longer crashes
(#9051 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9051>).
----
fish 3.5.0 (released June 16, 2022)
Notable improvements and fixes
• A new path builtin command to filter and transform paths (#7659 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7659>, #8958 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8958>). For example, to list
all the separate extensions used on files in /usr/share/man (after removing one extension, commonly a
".gz"):
path filter -f /usr/share/man/** | path change-extension '' | path extension | path sort -u
• Tab (or any key bound to complete) now expands wildcards instead of invoking completions, if there is a
wildcard in the path component under the cursor (#954 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/954>, #8593 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8593>).
• Scripts can now catch and handle the SIGINT and SIGTERM signals, either via function --on-signal or
with trap (#6649 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6649>).
Deprecations and removed features
• The stderr-nocaret feature flag, introduced in fish 3.0 and enabled by default in fish 3.1, has been
made read-only. That means it is no longer possible to disable it, and code supporting the ^
redirection has been removed (#8857 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8857>, #8865
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8865>).
To recap: fish used to support ^ to redirect stderr, so you could use commands like:
test "$foo" -gt 8 ^/dev/null
to ignore error messages. This made the ^ symbol require escaping and quoting, and was a bit of a weird
shortcut considering 2> already worked, which is only one character longer.
So the above can simply become:
test "$foo" -gt 8 2>/dev/null
• The following feature flags have been enabled by default:
• regex-easyesc, which makes string replace -r not do a superfluous round of unescaping in the
replacement expression. That means e.g. to escape any "a" or "b" in an argument you can use string
replace -ra '([ab])' '\\\\$1' foobar instead of needing 8 backslashes.
This only affects the replacement expression, not the match expression (the '([ab])' part in the
example). A survey of plugins on GitHub did not turn up any affected code, so we do not expect this
to affect many users.
This flag was introduced in fish 3.1.
• ampersand-nobg-in-token, which means that & will not create a background job if it occurs in the
middle of a word. For example, echo foo&bar will print "foo&bar" instead of running echo foo in the
background and then starting bar as a second job.
Reformatting with fish_indent would already introduce spaces, turning echo foo&bar into echo foo &
bar.
This flag was introduced in fish 3.4.
To turn off these flags, add no-regex-easyesc or no-ampersand-nobg-in-token to fish_features and
restart fish:
set -Ua fish_features no-regex-easyesc
Like stderr-nocaret, they will eventually be made read-only.
• Most string subcommands no longer append a newline to their input if the input didn't have one (#8473
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8473>, #3847 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3847>)
• Fish's escape sequence removal (like for string length --visible or to figure out how wide the prompt
is) no longer has special support for non-standard color sequences like from Data General terminals,
e.g. the Data General Dasher D220 from 1984. This removes a bunch of work in the common case, allowing
string length --visible to be much faster with unknown escape sequences. We don't expect anyone to have
ever used fish with such a terminal (#8769 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8769>).
• Code to upgrade universal variables from fish before 3.0 has been removed. Users who upgrade directly
from fish versions 2.7.1 or before will have to set their universal variables & abbreviations again. (‐
#8781 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8781>)
• The meaning of an empty color variable has changed (#8793 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8793>). Previously, when a variable was set but empty, it would be interpreted as the
"normal" color. Now, empty color variables cause the same effect as unset variables - the general
highlighting variable for that type is used instead. For example:
set -g fish_color_command blue
set -g fish_color_keyword
would previously make keywords "normal" (usually white in a dark terminal). Now it'll make them blue.
To achieve the previous behavior, use the normal color explicitly: set -g fish_color_keyword normal.
This makes it easier to make self-contained color schemes that don't accidentally use color that was
set before. fish_config has been adjusted to set known color variables that a theme doesn't explicitly
set to empty.
• eval is now a reserved keyword, so it can't be used as a function name. This follows set and read, and
is necessary because it can't be cleanly shadowed by a function - at the very least eval set -l argv
foo breaks. Fish will ignore autoload files for it, so left over eval.fish from previous fish versions
won't be loaded.
• The git prompt in informative mode now defaults to skipping counting untracked files, as this was
extremely slow. To turn it on, set __fish_git_prompt_showuntrackedfiles or set the git config value
"bash.showuntrackedfiles" to true explicitly (which can be done for individual repositories). The
"informative+vcs" sample prompt already skipped display of untracked files, but didn't do so in a way
that skipped the computation, so it should be quite a bit faster in many cases (#8980
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8980>).
• The __terlar_git_prompt function, used by the "Terlar" sample prompt, has been rebuilt as a
configuration of the normal fish_git_prompt to ease maintenance, improve performance and add features
(like reading per-repo git configuration). Some slight changes remain; users who absolutely must have
the same behavior are encouraged to copy the old function (#9011 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/9011>, #7918 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7918>, #8979
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8979>).
Scripting improvements
• Quoted command substitution that directly follow a variable expansion (like echo "$var$(echo x)") no
longer affect the variable expansion (#8849 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8849>).
• Fish now correctly expands command substitutions that are preceded by an escaped dollar (like echo
\$(echo)). This regressed in version 3.4.0.
• math can now handle underscores (_) as visual separators in numbers (#8611 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8611>, #8496 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8496>):
math 5 + 2_123_252
• math's min and max functions now take a variable number of arguments instead of always requiring 2 (‐
#8644 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8644>, #8646 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8646>):
> math min 8,2,4
2
• read is now faster as the last process in a pipeline (#8552 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8552>).
• string join gained a new --no-empty flag to skip empty arguments (#8774 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8774>, #8351 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8351>).
• read now only triggers the fish_read event, not the fish_prompt event (#8797 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8797>). It was supposed to work this way in fish 3.2.0 and later, but both
events were emitted.
• The TTY modes are no longer restored when non-interactive shells exit. This fixes wrong tty modes in
pipelines with interactive commands. (#8705 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8705>).
• Some functions shipped with fish printed error messages to standard output, but they now they rightly
go to standard error (#8855 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8855>).
• jobs now correctly reports CPU usage as a percentage, instead of as a number of clock ticks (#8919
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8919>).
• process-exit events now fire when the process exits even if the job has not yet exited, fixing a
regression in 3.4.1 (#8914 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8914>).
Interactive improvements
• Fish now reports a special error if a command wasn't found and there is a non-executable file by that
name in PATH (#8804 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8804>).
• less and other interactive commands would occasionally be stopped when run in a pipeline with fish
functions; this has been fixed (#8699 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8699>).
• Case-changing autosuggestions generated mid-token now correctly append only the suffix, instead of
duplicating the token (#8820 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8820>).
• ulimit learned a number of new options for the resource limits available on Linux, FreeBSD ande NetBSD,
and returns a specific warning if the limit specified is not available on the active operating system
(#8823 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8823>, #8786 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8786>).
• The vared command can now successfully edit variables named "tmp" or "prompt" (#8836
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8836>, #8837 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8837>).
• time now emits an error if used after the first command in a pipeline (#8841 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8841>).
• fish_add_path now prints a message for skipped non-existent paths when using the -v flag (#8884
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8884>).
• Since fish 3.2.0, pressing ctrl-d while a command is running would end up inserting a space into the
next commandline, which has been fixed (#8871 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8871>).
• A bug that caused multi-line prompts to be moved down a line when pasting or switching modes has been
fixed (#3481 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3481>).
• The Web-based configuration system no longer strips too many quotes in the abbreviation display (#8917
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8917>, #8918 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8918>).
• Fish started with --no-config will now use the default keybindings (#8493 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8493>)
• When fish inherits a USER environment variable value that doesn't correspond to the current effective
user ID, it will now correct it in all cases (#8879 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8879>, #8583 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8583>).
• Fish sets a new EUID variable containing the current effective user id (#8866 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8866>).
• history search no longer interprets the search term as an option (#8853 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8853>)
• The status message when a job terminates should no longer be erased by a multiline prompt (#8817
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8817>)
New or improved bindings
• The alt-s binding will now insert doas instead of sudo if necessary (#8942 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8942>).
• The kill-whole-line special input function now kills the newline preceeding the last line. This makes
dd in vi-mode clear the last line properly.
• The new kill-inner-line special input function kills the line without any newlines, allowing cc in
vi-mode to clear the line while preserving newlines (#8983 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8983>).
• On terminals that emit special sequences for these combinations, shift-space is bound like space, and
ctrl-enter is bound like return (#8874 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8874>).
Improved prompts
• A new Astronaut prompt (#8775 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8775>), a multi-line
prompt using plain text reminiscent of the Starship.rs prompt.
Completions
• Added completions for:
• archlinux-java (#8911 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8911>)
• apk (#8951 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8951>)
• brightnessctl (#8758 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8758>)
• efibootmgr (#9010 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/9010>)
• fastboot (#8904 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8904>)
• optimus-manager (#8913 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8913>)
• rclone (#8819 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8819>)
• sops (#8821 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8821>)
• tuned-adm (#8760 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8760>)
• wg-quick (#8687 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8687>)
• complete can now be given multiple --condition options. They will be attempted in the order they were
given, and only if all succeed will the completion be made available (as if they were connected with
&&). This helps with caching - fish's complete system stores the return value of each condition as long
as the commandline doesn't change, so this can reduce the number of conditions that need to be
evaluated (#8536 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8536>, #8967
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8967>).
Improved terminal support
• Working directory reporting is enabled for kitty (#8806 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8806>).
• Changing the cursor shape is now enabled by default in iTerm2 (#3696 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3696>).
For distributors
• libatomic is now correctly detected as necessary when building on RISC-V (#8850
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8850>, #8851 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8851>).
• In some cases, the build process found the wrong libintl on macOS. This has been corrected (#5244
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5244>).
• The paths for completions, functions, and configuration snippets now include subdirectories
fish/vendor_completions.d, fish/vendor_functions.d, and fish/vendor_conf.d (respectively) within
XDG_DATA_HOME (or ~/.local/share if not defined) (#8887 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8887>, #7816 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7816>).
----
fish 3.4.1 (released March 25, 2022)
This release of fish fixes the following problems identified in fish 3.4.0:
• An error printed after upgrading, where old instances could pick up a newer version of the fish_title
function, has been fixed (#8778 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8778>)
• fish builds correctly on NetBSD (#8788 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8788>) and
OpenIndiana (#8780 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8780>).
• nextd-or-forward-word, bound to alt-right by default, was inadvertently changed to move like
forward-bigword. This has been corrected (#8790
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8790>).
• funcsave -q and funcsave --quiet now work correctly (#8830 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8830>).
• Issues with the csharp and nmcli completions were corrected.
If you are upgrading from version 3.3.1 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.4.0
(included below).
----
fish 3.4.0 (released March 12, 2022)
Notable improvements and fixes
• fish's command substitution syntax has been extended: $(cmd) now has the same meaning as (cmd) but it
can be used inside double quotes, to prevent line splitting of the results (#159
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/159>):
foo (bar | string collect)
# can now be written as
foo "$(bar)"
# and
foo (bar)
# can now be written as
foo $(bar)
# this will still split on newlines only.
• Complementing the prompt command in 3.3.0, fish_config gained a theme subcommand to show and pick from
the sample themes (meaning color schemes) directly in the terminal, instead of having to open a Web
browser. For example fish_config theme choose Nord loads the Nord theme in the current session (#8132
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8132>). The current theme can be saved with
fish_config theme dump, and custom themes can be added by saving them in ~/.config/fish/themes/.
• set and read learned a new option, --function, to set a variable in the function's top scope. This
should be a more familiar way of scoping variables and avoids issues with --local, which is actually
block-scoped (#565 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/565>, #8145
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8145>):
function demonstration
if true
set --function foo bar
set --local baz banana
end
echo $foo # prints "bar" because $foo is still valid
echo $baz # prints nothing because $baz went out of scope
end
• string pad now excludes escape sequences like colors that fish knows about, and a new --visible flag to
string length makes it use that kind of visible width. This is useful to get the number of terminal
cells an already colored string would occupy, like in a prompt. (#8182 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8182>, #7784 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7784>, #4012
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4012>):
> string length --visible (set_color red)foo
3
• Performance improvements to globbing, especially on systems using glibc. In some cases (large
directories with files with many numbers in the names) this almost halves the time taken to expand the
glob.
• Autosuggestions can now be turned off by setting $fish_autosuggestion_enabled to 0, and (almost) all
highlighting can be turned off by choosing the new "None" theme. The exception is necessary colors,
like those which distinguish autosuggestions from the actual command line. (#8376
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8376>)
• The fish_git_prompt function, which is included in the default prompts, now overrides git to avoid
running commands set by per-repository configuration. This avoids a potential security issue in some
circumstances, and has been assigned CVE-2022-20001 (#8589 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8589>).
Deprecations and removed features
• A new feature flag, ampersand-nobg-in-token makes & only act as background operator if followed by a
separator. In combination with qmark-noglob, this allows entering most URLs at the command line without
quoting or escaping (#7991 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7991>). For example:
> echo foo&bar # will print "foo&bar", instead of running "echo foo" in the background and executing "bar"
> echo foo & bar # will still run "echo foo" in the background and then run "bar"
# with both ampersand-nobg-in-token and qmark-noglob, this argument has no special characters anymore
> open https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&feature=youtu.be
As a reminder, feature flags can be set on startup with fish --features
ampersand-nobg-in-token,qmark-noglob or with a universal variable called fish_features:
> set -Ua fish_features ampersand-nobg-in-token
• $status is now forbidden as a command, to prevent a surprisingly common error among new users: Running
if $status (#8171 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8171>). This applies only to
$status, other variables are still allowed.
• set --query now returns an exit status of 255 if given no variable names. This means if set -q $foo
will not enter the if-block if $foo is empty or unset. To restore the previous behavior, use if not set
-q foo; or set -q $foo - but this is unlikely to be desireable (#8214 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8214>).
• _ is now a reserved keyword (#8342 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8342>).
• The special input functions delete-or-exit, nextd-or-forward-word and prevd-or-backward-word replace
fish functions of the same names (#8538 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8538>).
• Mac OS X 10.9 is no longer supported. The minimum Mac version is now 10.10 "Yosemite."
Scripting improvements
• string collect supports a new --allow-empty option, which will output one empty argument in a command
substitution that has no output (#8054 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8054>). This
allows commands like test -n (echo -n | string collect --allow-empty) to work more reliably. Note this
can also be written as test -n "$(echo -n)" (see above).
• string match gained a --groups-only option, which makes it only output capturing groups, excluding the
full match. This allows string match to do simple transformations (#6056 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6056>):
> string match -r --groups-only '(.*)fish' 'catfish' 'twofish' 'blue fish' | string escape
cat
two
'blue '
• $fish_user_paths is now automatically deduplicated to fix a common user error of appending to it in
config.fish when it is universal (#8117 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8117>).
fish_add_path remains the recommended way to add to $PATH.
• return can now be used outside functions. In scripts, it does the same thing as exit. In interactive
mode,it sets $status without exiting (#8148 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8148>).
• An oversight prevented all syntax checks from running on commands given to fish -c (#8171
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8171>). This includes checks such as exec not being
allowed in a pipeline, and $$ not being a valid variable. Generally, another error was generated
anyway.
• fish_indent now correctly reformats tokens that end with a backslash followed by a newline (#8197
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8197>).
• commandline gained an --is-valid option to check if the command line is syntactically valid and
complete. This allows basic implementation of transient prompts (#8142 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8142>).
• commandline gained a --paging-full-mode option to check if the pager is showing all the possible lines
(no "7 more rows" message) (#8485 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8485>).
• List expansion correctly reports an error when used with all zero indexes (#8213
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8213>).
• Running fish with a directory instead of a script as argument (eg fish .) no longer leads to an
infinite loop. Instead it errors out immediately (#8258 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8258>)
• Some error messages occuring after fork, like "text file busy" have been replaced by bespoke error
messages for fish (like "File is currently open for writing"). This also restores error messages with
current glibc versions that removed sys_errlist (#8234 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8234>, #4183 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4183>).
• The realpath builtin now also squashes leading slashes with the --no-symlinks option (#8281
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8281>).
• When trying to cd to a dangling (broken) symbolic link, fish will print an error noting that the target
is a broken link (#8264 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8264>).
• On MacOS terminals that are not granted permissions to access a folder, cd would print a spurious
"rotten symlink" error, which has been corrected to "permission denied" (#8264
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8264>).
• Since fish 3.0, for loops would trigger a variable handler function before the loop was entered. As the
variable had not actually changed or been set, this was a spurious event and has been removed (#8384
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8384>).
• math now correctly prints negative values and values larger than 2**31 when in hex or octal bases (‐
#8417 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8417>).
• dirs always produces an exit status of 0, instead of sometimes returning 1 (#8211
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8211>).
• cd "" no longer crashes fish (#8147 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8147>).
• set --query can now query whether a variable is a path variable via --path or --unpath (#8494
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8494>).
• Tilde characters (~) produced by custom completions are no longer escaped when applied to the command
line, making it easier to use the output of a recursive complete -C in completion scripts (#4570
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4570>).
• set --show reports when a variable is read-only (#8179 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8179>).
• Erasing $fish_emoji_width will reset fish to the default guessed emoji width (#8274
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8274>).
• The la function no longer lists entries for "." and "..", matching other systems defaults (#8519
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8519>).
• abbr -q returns the correct exit status when given multiple abbreviation names as arguments (#8431
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8431>).
• command -v returns an exit status of 127 instead of 1 if no command was found (#8547
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8547>).
• argparse with --ignore-unknown no longer breaks with multiple unknown options in a short option group
(#8637 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8637>).
• Comments inside command substitutions or brackets now correctly ignore parentheses, quotes, and
brackets (#7866 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7866>, #8022 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8022>, #8695 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8695>).
• complete -C supports a new --escape option, which turns on escaping in returned completion strings (‐
#3469 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3469>).
• Invalid byte or unicode escapes like \Utest or \xNotHex are now a tokenizer error instead of causing
the token to be truncated (#8545 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8545>).
Interactive improvements
• Vi mode cursors are now set properly after ctrl-c (#8125 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8125>).
• funced will try to edit the whole file containing a function definition, if there is one (#391
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/391>).
• Running a command line consisting of just spaces now deletes an ephemeral (starting with space) history
item again (#8232 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8232>).
• Command substitutions no longer respect job control, instead running inside fish's own process group (‐
#8172 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8172>). This more closely matches other shells,
and improves ctrl-c reliability inside a command substitution.
• history and __fish_print_help now properly support less before version 530, including the version that
ships with macOS. (#8157 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8157>).
• help now knows which section is in which document again (#8245 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8245>).
• fish's highlighter will now color options (starting with - or --) with the color given in the new
$fish_color_option, up to the first --. It falls back on $fish_color_param, so nothing changes for
existing setups (#8292 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8292>).
• When executing a command, abbreviations are no longer expanded when the cursor is separated from the
command by spaces, making it easier to suppress abbreviation expansion of commands without arguments.
(#8423 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8423>).
• fish_key_reader's output was simplified. By default, it now only prints a bind statement. The previous
per-character timing information can be seen with a new --verbose switch (#8467
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8467>).
• Custom completions are now also loaded for commands that contain tildes or variables like ~/bin/fish or
$PWD/fish (#8442 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8442>).
• Command lines spanning multiple lines will not be overwritten by the completion pager when it fills the
entire terminal (#8509 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8509>, #8405
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8405>).
• When redrawing a multiline prompt, the old prompt is now properly cleared (#8163
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8163>).
• Interactive completion would occasionally ignore the last word on the command line due to a race
condition. This has been fixed (#8175 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8175>).
• Propagation of universal variables from a fish process that is closing is faster (#8209
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8209>).
• The command line is drawn in the correct place if the prompt ends with a newline (#8298
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8298>).
• history learned a new subcommand clear-session to erase all history from the current session (#5791
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5791>).
• Pressing ctrl-c in fish_key_reader will no longer print the incorrect "Press [ctrl-C] again to exit"
message (#8510 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8510>).
• The default command-not-found handler for Fedora/PackageKit now passes the whole command line, allowing
for functionality such as running the suggested command directly (#8579 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8579>).
• When looking for locale information, the Debian configuration is now used when available (#8557
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8557>).
• Pasting text containing quotes from the clipboard trims spaces more appropriately (#8550
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8550>).
• The clipboard bindings ignore X-based clipboard programs if the DISPLAY environment variable is not
set, which helps prefer the Windows clipboard when it is available (such as on WSL).
• funcsave will remove a saved copy of a function that has been erased with functions --erase.
• The Web-based configuration tool gained a number of improvements, including the ability to set pager
colors.
• The default fish_title prints a shorter title with shortened $PWD and no more redundant "fish" (#8641
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8641>).
• Holding down an arrow key won't freeze the terminal with long periods of flashing (#8610
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8610>).
• Multi-char bindings are no longer interrupted if a signal handler enqueues an event. (#8628
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8628>).
New or improved bindings
• escape can now bound without breaking arrow key bindings (#8428 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8428>).
• The alt-h binding (to open a command’s manual page) now also ignores command (#8447
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8447>).
Improved prompts
• The fish_status_to_signal helper function returns the correct signal names for the current platform,
rather than Linux (#8530 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8530>).
• The prompt_pwd helper function learned a --full-length-dirs N option to keep the last N directory
components unshortened. In addition the number of characters to shorten each component should be
shortened to can now be given as -d N or --dir-length N. (#8208 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8208>):
> prompt_pwd --full-length-dirs 2 -d 1 ~/dev/fish-shell/share/tools/web_config
~/d/f/s/tools/web_config
Completions
• Added completions for:
• Apple's shortcuts
• argparse (#8434 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8434>)
• asd (#8759 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8759>)
• az (#8141 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8141>)
• black (#8123 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8123>)
• clasp (#8373 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8373>)
• cpupower (#8302 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8302>)
• dart (#8315 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8315>)
• dscacheutil
• elvish (#8416 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8416>)
• ethtool (#8283 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8283>)
• exif (#8246 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8246>)
• findstr (#8481 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8481>)
• git-sizer (#8156 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8156>)
• gnome-extensions (#8732 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8732>)
• gping (#8181 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8181>)
• isatty (#8609 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8609>)
• istioctl (#8343 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8343>)
• kmutil
• kubectl (#8734 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8734>)
• matlab (#8505 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8505>)
• mono (#8415 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8415>) and related tools csharp,
gacutil, gendarme, ikdasm, ilasm, mkbundle, monodis, monop, sqlsharp and xsp (#8452
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8452>)
• Angular's ng (#8111 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8111>)
• nodeenv (#8533 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8533>)
• octave (#8505 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8505>)
• pabcnet_clear (#8421 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8421>)
• qmk (#8180 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8180>)
• rakudo (#8113 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8113>)
• rc-status (#8757 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8757>)
• roswell (#8330 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8330>)
• sbcl (#8330 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8330>)
• starship (#8520 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8520>)
• topgrade (#8651 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8651>)
• wine, wineboot and winemaker (#8411 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8411>)
• Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL)'s wslpath (#8364 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8364>)
• Windows' color (#8483 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8483>), attrib, attributes,
choice, clean, cleanmgr, cmd, cmdkey, comp, forfiles, powershell, reg, schtasks, setx (#8486
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8486>)
• zef (#8114 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8114>)
• Improvements to many completions, especially for git aliases (#8129 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8129>), subcommands (#8134 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8134>) and submodules (#8716 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8716>).
• Many adjustments to complete correct options for system utilities on BSD and macOS.
• When evaluating custom completions, the command line state no longer includes variable overrides
(var=val). This unbreaks completions that read commandline -op.
Improved terminal support
• Dynamic terminal titles are enabled on WezTerm (#8121 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8121>).
• Directory history navigation works out of the box with Apple Terminal's default key settings (#2330
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2330>).
• fish now assumes Unicode 9+ widths for emoji under iTerm 2 (#8200 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8200>).
• Skin-tone emoji modifiers (U+1F3FB through U+1F3FF) are now measured as width 0 (#8275
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8275>).
• fish's escape sequence removal now also knows Tmux's wrapped escapes.
• Vi mode cursors are enabled in Apple Terminal.app (#8167 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8167>).
• Vi cursor shaping and $PWD reporting is now also enabled on foot (#8422 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8422>).
• ls will use colors also on newer versions of Apple Terminal.app (#8309 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8309>).
• The delete and shift-tab keys work more reliably under st (#8352 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8352>, #8354 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8354>).
Other improvements
• Fish's test suite now uses ctest, and has become much faster to run. It is now also possible to run
only specific tests with targets named test_$filename - make test_set.fish only runs the set.fish test.
(#7851 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7851>)
• The HTML version of the documentation now includes copy buttons for code examples (#8218
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8218>).
• The HTML version of the documentation and the web-based configuration tool now pick more modern system
fonts instead of falling back to Arial and something like Courier New most of the time (#8632
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8632>).
• The Debian & Ubuntu package linked from fishshell.com is now a single package, rather than split into
fish and fish-common (#7845 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7845>).
• The macOS installer does not assert that Rosetta is required to install fish on machines with Apple
Silicon (#8566 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8566>).
• The macOS installer now cleans up previous .pkg installations when upgrading. (#2963
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2963>).
For distributors
• The minimum version of CMake required to build fish is now 3.5.0.
• The CMake installation supports absolute paths for CMAKE_INSTALL_DATADIR (#8150
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8150>).
• Building using NetBSD curses works on any platform (#8087 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8087>).
• The build system now uses the default linker instead of forcing use of the gold or lld linker (#8152
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8152>).
----
fish 3.3.1 (released July 6, 2021)
This release of fish fixes the following problems identified in fish 3.3.0:
• The prompt and command line are redrawn correctly in response to universal variable changes (#8088
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8088>).
• A superfluous error that was produced when setting the PATH or CDPATH environment variables to include
colon-delimited components that do not exist was removed (#8095 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8095>).
• The Vi mode indicator in the prompt is repainted correctly after ctrl-c cancels the current command (‐
#8103 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8103>).
• fish builds correctly on platforms that do not have a spawn.h header, such as old versions of OS X (‐
#8097 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8097>).
A number of improvements to the documentation, and fixes for completions, are included as well.
If you are upgrading from version 3.2.2 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.3.0
(included below).
----
fish 3.3.0 (released June 28, 2021)
Notable improvements and fixes
• fish_config gained a prompt subcommand to show and pick from the sample prompts directly in the
terminal, instead of having to open a webbrowser. For example fish_config prompt choose default loads
the default prompt in the current session (#7958
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7958>).
• The documentation has been reorganized to be easier to understand (#7773 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7773>).
Deprecations and removed features
• The $fish_history value "default" is no longer special. It used to be treated the same as "fish" (#7650
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7650>).
• Redirection to standard error with the ^ character has been disabled by default. It can be turned back
on using the stderr-nocaret feature flag, but will eventually be disabled completely (#7105
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7105>).
• Specifying an initial tab to fish_config now only works with fish_config browse (eg fish_config browse
variables), otherwise it would interfere with the new prompt subcommand (see below) (#7958
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7958>).
Scripting improvements
• math gained new functions log2 (like the documentation claimed), max and min (#7856
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7856>). math functions can be used without the
parentheses (eg math sin 2 + 6), and functions have the lowest precedence in the order of operations (‐
#7877 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7877>).
• Shebang (#!) lines are no longer required within shell scripts, improving support for scripts with
concatenated binary contents. If a file fails to execute and passes a (rudimentary) binary safety
check, fish will re-invoke it using /bin/sh (#7802 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7802>).
• Exit codes are better aligned with bash. A failed execution now reports $status of 127 if the file is
not found, and 126 if it is not executable.
• echo no longer writes its output one byte at a time, improving performance and allowing use with
Linux's special API files (/proc, /sys and such) (#7836 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7836>).
• fish should now better handle cd on filesystems with broken stat(3) responses (#7577
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7577>).
• Builtins now properly report a $status of 1 upon unsuccessful writes (#7857 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7857>).
• string match with unmatched capture groups and without the --all flag now sets an empty variable
instead of a variable containing the empty string. It also correctly imports the first match if
multiple arguments are provided, matching the documentation. (#7938 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7938>).
• fish produces more specific errors when a command in a command substitution wasn't found or is not
allowed. This now prints something like "Unknown command" instead of "Unknown error while evaluating
command substitution".
• fish_indent allows inline variable assignments (FOO=BAR command) to use line continuation, instead of
joining them into one line (#7955 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7955>).
• fish gained a --no-config option to disable configuration files. This applies to user-specific and the
systemwide config.fish (typically in /etc/fish/config.fish), and configuration snippets (typically in
conf.d directories). It also disables universal variables, history, and loading of functions from
system or user configuration directories (#7921 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7921>,
#1256 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1256>).
• When universal variables are unavailable for some reason, setting a universal variable now sets a
global variable instead (#7921 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7921>).
• $last_pid now contains the process ID of the last process in the pipeline, allowing it to be used in
scripts (#5036 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5036>, #5832 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5832>, #7721 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7721>).
Previously, this value contained the process group ID, but in scripts this was the same as the running
fish's process ID.
• process-exit event handlers now receive the same value as $status in all cases, instead of receiving -1
when the exit was due to a signal.
• process-exit event handlers for PID 0 also received JOB_EXIT events; this has been fixed.
• job-exit event handlers may now be created with any of the PIDs from the job. The handler is passed the
last PID in the job as its second argument, instead of the process group.
• Trying to set an empty variable name with set no longer works (these variables could not be used in
expansions anyway).
• fish_add_path handles an undefined PATH environment variable correctly (#8082 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8082>).
Interactive improvements
• Commands entered before the previous command finishes will now be properly syntax highlighted.
• fish now automatically creates config.fish and the configuration directories in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fish
(by default ~/.config/fish) if they do not already exist (#7402 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7402>).
• $SHLVL is no longer incremented in non-interactive shells. This means it won't be set to values larger
than 1 just because your environment happens to run some scripts in $SHELL in its startup path (#7864
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7864>).
• fish no longer rings the bell when flashing the command line. The flashing should already be enough
notification and the bell can be annoying (#7875
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7875>).
• fish --help is more helpful if the documentation isn't installed (#7824 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7824>).
• funced won't include an entry on where a function is defined, thanks to the new functions --no-details
option (#7879 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7879>).
• A new variable, fish_killring, containing entries from the killring, is now available (#7445
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7445>).
• fish --private prints a note on private mode on startup even if $fish_greeting is an empty list (#7974
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7974>).
• fish no longer attempts to lock history or universal variable files on remote filesystems, including
NFS and Samba mounts. In rare cases, updates to these files may be dropped if separate fish instances
modify them simultaneously. (#7968 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7968>).
• wait and on-process-exit work correctly with jobs that have already exited (#7210
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7210>).
• __fish_print_help (used for --help output for fish's builtins) now respects the LESS environment
variable, and if not set, uses better default pager settings (#7997 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7997>).
• Errors from alias are now printed to standard error, matching other builtins and functions (#7925
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7925>).
• ls output is colorized on OpenBSD if colorls utility is installed (#8035 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8035>)
• The default pager color looks better in terminals with light backgrounds (#3412
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3412>).
• Further robustness improvements to the bash history import (#7874 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7874>).
• fish now tries to find a Unicode-aware locale for encoding (LC_CTYPE) if started without any locale
information, improving the display of emoji and other non-ASCII text on misconfigured systems (#8031
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8031>). To allow a C locale, set the variable
fish_allow_singlebyte_locale to 1.
• The Web-based configuration and documentation now feature a dark mode if the browser requests it (#8043
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8043>).
• Color variables can now also be given like --background red and -b red, not just --background=red (‐
#8053 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8053>).
• exit run within fish_prompt now exits properly (#8033 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8033>).
• When attempting to execute the unsupported POSIX-style brace command group ({ ... }) fish will suggest
its equivalent begin; ...; end commands (#6415 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6415>).
New or improved bindings
• Pasting in Vi mode puts text in the right place in normal mode (#7847 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7847>).
• Vi mode's u is bound to undo instead of history-search-backward, following GNU readline's behavior.
Similarly, ctrl-r is bound to redo instead of history-search-backward, following Vim (#7908
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7908>).
• s in Vi visual mode now does the same thing as c (#8039 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8039>).
• The binding for ",*,y now uses fish_clipboard_copy, allowing it to support more than just xsel.
• The ctrl-space binding can be correctly customised (#7922 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7922>).
• exit works correctly in bindings (#7967 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7967>).
• The f1 binding, which opens the manual page for the current command, now works around a bug in certain
less versions that fail to clear the screen (#7863 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7863>).
• The binding for alt-s now toggles whether sudo is prepended, even when it took the commandline from
history instead of only adding it.
• The new functions fish_commandline_prepend and fish_commandline_append allow toggling the presence of a
prefix/suffix on the current commandline. (#7905
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7905>).
• backward-kill-path-component ctrl-w) no longer erases parts of two tokens when the cursor is positioned
immediately after /. (#6258 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6258>).
Improved prompts
• The default Vi mode prompt now uses foreground instead of background colors, making it less obtrusive
(#7880 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7880>).
• Performance of the "informative" git prompt is improved somewhat (#7871 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7871>). This is still slower than the non-informative version by its very
nature. In particular it is IO-bound, so it will be very slow on slow disks or network mounts.
• The sample prompts were updated. Some duplicated prompts, like the various classic variants, or less
useful ones, like the "justadollar" prompt were removed, some prompts were cleaned up, and in some
cases renamed. A new "simple" and "disco" prompt were added (#7884 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7884>, #7897 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7897>, #7930
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7930>). The new prompts will only take effect when
selected and existing installed prompts will remain unchanged.
• A new prompt_login helper function to describe the kind of "login" (user, host and chroot status) for
use in prompts. This replaces the old "debian chroot" prompt and has been added to the default and
terlar prompts (#7932 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7932>).
• The Web-based configuration's prompt picker now shows and installs right prompts (#7930
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7930>).
• The git prompt now has the same symbol order in normal and "informative" mode, and it's customizable
via $__fish_git_prompt_status_order (#7926 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7926>).
Completions
• Added completions for:
• firewall-cmd (#7900 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7900>)
• sv (#8069 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8069>)
• Improvements to plenty of completions!
• Commands that wrap cd (using complete --wraps cd) get the same completions as cd (#4693
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4693>).
• The --force-files option to complete works for bare arguments, not just options (#7920
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7920>).
• Completion descriptions for functions don't include the function definition, making them more concise
(#7911 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7911>).
• The kill completions no longer error on MSYS2 (#8046 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/8046>).
• Completion scripts are now loaded when calling a command via a relative path (like ./git) (#6001
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6001>, #7992 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7992>).
• When there are multiple completion candidates, fish inserts their shared prefix. This prefix was
computed in a case-insensitive way, resulting in wrong case in the completion pager. This was fixed by
only inserting prefixes with matching case (#7744 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7744>).
Improved terminal support
• fish no longer tries to detect a missing new line during startup, preventing an erroneous ⏎ from
appearing if the terminal is resized at the wrong time, which can happen in tiling window managers (‐
#7893 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7893>).
• fish behaves better when it disagrees with the terminal on the width of characters. In particular,
staircase effects with right prompts should be gone in most cases (#8011 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/8011>).
• If the prompt takes up the entire line, the last character should no longer be chopped off in certain
terminals (#8002 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8002>).
• fish's reflow handling has been disabled by default for kitty (#7961 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7961>).
• The default prompt no longer produces errors when used with a dumb terminal (#7904
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7904>).
• Terminal size variables are updated for window size change signal handlers (SIGWINCH).
• Pasting within a multi-line command using a terminal that supports bracketed paste works correctly,
instead of producing an error (#7782 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7782>).
• set_color produces an error when used with invalid arguments, rather than empty output which interacts
badly with Cartesian product expansion.
For distributors
• fish runs correctly on platforms without the O_CLOEXEC flag for open(2) (#8023
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8023>).
----
fish 3.2.2 (released April 7, 2021)
This release of fish fixes a number of additional issues identified in the fish 3.2 series:
• The command-not-found handler used suggestions from pacman on Arch Linux, but this caused major
slowdowns on some systems and has been disabled (#7841 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7841>).
• fish will no longer hang on exit if another process is in the foreground on macOS (#7901
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7901>).
• Certain programs (such as lazygit) could create situations where fish would not receive keystrokes
correctly, but it is now more robust in these situations (#7853 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7853>).
• Arguments longer than 1024 characters no longer trigger excessive CPU usage on macOS (#7837
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7837>).
• fish builds correctly on macOS when using new versions of Xcode (#7838 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7838>).
• Completions for aura (#7865 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7865>) and tshark (#7858
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7858>) should no longer produce errors.
• Background jobs no longer interfere with syntax highlighting (a regression introduced in fish 3.2.1, ‐
#7842 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7842>).
If you are upgrading from version 3.1.2 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.2.1 and
3.2.0 (included below).
----
fish 3.2.1 (released March 18, 2021)
This release of fish fixes the following problems identified in fish 3.2.0:
• Commands in key bindings are run with fish's internal terminal modes, instead of the terminal modes
typically used for commands. This fixes a bug introduced in 3.2.0, where text would unexpectedly appear
on the terminal, especially when pasting (#7770
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7770>).
• Prompts which use the internal __fish_print_pipestatus function will display correctly rather than
carrying certain modifiers (such as bold) further than intended (#7771 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7771>).
• Redirections to internal file descriptors is allowed again, reversing the changes in 3.2.0. This fixes
a problem with Midnight Commander (#7769 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7769>).
• Universal variables should be fully reliable regardless of operating system again (#7774
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7774>).
• fish_git_prompt no longer causes screen flickering in certain terminals (#7775
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7775>).
• fish_add_path manipulates the fish_user_paths variable correctly when moving multiple paths (#7776
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7776>).
• Pasting with a multi-line command no longer causes a __fish_tokenizer_state error (#7782
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7782>).
• psub inside event handlers cleans up temporary files properly (#7792 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7792>).
• Event handlers declared with --on-job-exit $fish_pid no longer run constantly (#7721
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7721>), although these functions should use --on-event
fish_exit instead.
• Changing terminal modes inside config.fish works (#7783 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7783>).
• set_color --print-colors no longer prints all colors in bold (#7805 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7805>)
• Completing commands starting with a - no longer prints an error (#7809 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7809>).
• Running fish_command_not_found directly no longer produces an error on macOS or other OSes which do not
have a handler available (#7777 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7777>).
• The new type builtin now has the (deprecated) --quiet long form of -q (#7766 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7766>).
It also includes some small enhancements:
• help and fish_config work correctly when fish is running in a Chrome OS Crostini Linux VM (#7789
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7789>).
• The history file can be made a symbolic link without it being overwritten (#7754
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7754>), matching a similar improvement for the
universal variable file in 3.2.0.
• An unhelpful error ("access: No error"), seen on Cygwin, is no longer produced (#7785
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7785>).
• Improvements to the rsync completions (#7763 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7763>),
some completion descriptions (#7788 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7788>), and
completions that use IP address (#7787 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7787>).
• Improvements to the appearance of fish_config (#7811 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7811>).
If you are upgrading from version 3.1.2 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.2.0
(included below).
----
fish 3.2.0 (released March 1, 2021)
Notable improvements and fixes
• Undo and redo support for the command-line editor and pager search (#1367 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1367>). By default, undo is bound to Control+Z, and redo to Alt+/.
• Builtins can now output before all data is read. For example, string replace no longer has to read all
of stdin before it can begin to output. This makes it usable also for pipes where the previous command
hasn't finished yet, like:
# Show all dmesg lines related to "usb"
dmesg -w | string match '*usb*'
• Prompts will now be truncated instead of replaced with "> " if they are wider than the terminal (#904
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/904>). For example:
~/dev/build/fish-shell-git/src/fish-shell/build (makepkg)>
will turn into:
…h-shell/build (makepkg)>
It is still possible to react to the COLUMNS variable inside the prompt to implement smarter behavior.
• fish completes ambiguous completions after pressing tab even when they have a common prefix, without
the user having to press tab again (#6924 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6924>).
• fish is less aggressive about resetting terminal modes, such as flow control, after every command.
Although flow control remains off by default, enterprising users can now enable it with stty (#2315
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2315>, #7704 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7704>).
• A new "fish_add_path" helper function to add paths to $PATH without producing duplicates, to be used
interactively or in config.fish (#6960 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6960>, #7028
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7028>). For example:
fish_add_path /opt/mycoolthing/bin
will add /opt/mycoolthing/bin to the beginning of $fish_user_path without creating duplicates, so it
can be called safely from config.fish or interactively, and the path will just be there, once.
• Better errors with "test" (#6030 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6030>):
> test 1 = 2 and echo true or false
test: Expected a combining operator like '-a' at index 4
1 = 2 and echo true or echo false
^
This includes numbering the index from 1 instead of 0, like fish lists.
• A new theme for the documentation and Web-based configuration (#6500 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6500>, #7371 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7371>, #7523
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7523>), matching the design on fishshell.com.
• fish --no-execute will no longer complain about unknown commands or non-matching wildcards, as these
could be defined differently at runtime (especially for functions). This makes it usable as a static
syntax checker (#977 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/977>).
• string match --regex now integrates named PCRE2 capture groups as fish variables, allowing variables to
be set directly from string match (#7459 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7459>). To
support this functionality, string is now a reserved word and can no longer be wrapped in a function.
• Globs and other expansions are limited to 512,288 results (#7226 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7226>). Because operating systems limit the number of arguments to commands, larger values
are unlikely to work anyway, and this helps to avoid hangs.
• A new "fish for bash users" documentation page gives a quick overview of the scripting differences
between bash and fish (#2382 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2382>), and the
completion tutorial has also been moved out into its own document (#6709 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6709>).
Syntax changes and new commands
• Range limits in index range expansions like $x[$start..$end] may be omitted: $start and $end default to
1 and -1 (the last item) respectively (#6574 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6574>):
echo $var[1..]
echo $var[..-1]
echo $var[..]
All print the full list $var.
• When globbing, a segment which is exactly ** may now match zero directories. For example **/foo may
match foo in the current directory (#7222 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7222>).
Scripting improvements
• The type, _ (gettext), . (source) and : (no-op) functions are now implemented builtins for performance
purposes (#7342 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7342>, #7036 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7036>, #6854 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6854>).
• set and backgrounded jobs no longer overwrite $pipestatus (#6820 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6820>), improving its use in command substitutions (#6998 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6998>).
• Computed ("electric") variables such as status are now only global in scope, so set -Uq status returns
false (#7032 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7032>).
• The output for set --show has been shortened, only mentioning the scopes in which a variable exists (‐
#6944 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6944>). In addition, it now shows if a variable
is a path variable.
• A new variable, fish_kill_signal, is set to the signal that terminated the last foreground job, or 0 if
the job exited normally (#6824 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6824>, #6822
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6822>).
• A new subcommand, string pad, allows extending strings to a given width (#7340
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7340>, #7102 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7102>).
• string sub has a new --end option to specify the end index of a substring (#6765
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6765>, #5974 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5974>).
• string split has a new --fields option to specify fields to output, similar to cut -f (#6770
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6770>).
• string trim now also trims vertical tabs by default (#6795 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6795>).
• string replace no longer prints an error if a capturing group wasn't matched, instead treating it as
empty (#7343 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7343>).
• string subcommands now quit early when used with --quiet (#7495 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7495>).
• string repeat now handles multiple arguments, repeating each one (#5988 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5988>).
• printf no longer prints an error if not given an argument (not even a format string).
• The true and false builtins ignore any arguments, like other shells (#7030 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7030>).
• fish_indent now removes unnecessary quotes in simple cases (#6722 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6722>) and gained a --check option to just check if a file is indented correctly (#7251
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7251>).
• fish_indent indents continuation lines that follow a line ending in a backslash, |, && or ||.
• pushd only adds a directory to the stack if changing to it was successful (#6947
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6947>).
• A new fish_job_summary function is called whenever a background job stops or ends, or any job
terminates from a signal (#6959 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6959>, #2727
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2727>, #4319 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4319>). The default behaviour can now be customized by redefining it.
• status gained new dirname and basename convenience subcommands to get just the directory to the running
script or the name of it, to simplify common tasks such as running (dirname (status filename)) (#7076
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7076>, #1818 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1818>).
• Broken pipelines are now handled more smoothly; in particular, bad redirection mid-pipeline results in
the job continuing to run but with the broken file descriptor replaced with a closed file descriptor.
This allows better error recovery and is more in line with other shells' behaviour (#7038
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7038>).
• jobs --quiet PID no longer prints "no suitable job" if the job for PID does not exist (eg because it
has finished) (#6809 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6809>, #6812
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6812>).
• jobs now shows continued child processes correctly (#6818 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6818>)
• disown should no longer create zombie processes when job control is off, such as in config.fish (#7183
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7183>).
• command, jobs and type builtins support --query as the long form of -q, matching other builtins. The
long form --quiet is deprecated (#7276 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7276>).
• argparse no longer requires a short flag letter for long-only options (#7585 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7585>) and only prints a backtrace with invalid options to argparse itself (‐
#6703 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6703>).
• argparse now passes the validation variables (e.g. $_flag_value) as local-exported variables, avoiding
the need for --no-scope-shadowing in validation functions.
• complete takes the first argument as the name of the command if the --command/-c option is not used, so
complete git is treated like complete --command git, and it can show the loaded completions for
specific commands with complete COMMANDNAME (#7321 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7321>).
• set_color -b (without an argument) no longer prints an error message, matching other invalid
invocations of this command (#7154 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7154>).
• exec no longer produces a syntax error when the command cannot be found (#6098
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6098>).
• set --erase and abbr --erase can now erase multiple things in one go, matching functions --erase (#7377
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7377>).
• abbr --erase no longer prints errors when used with no arguments or on an unset abbreviation (#7376
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7376>, #7732 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7732>).
• test -t, for testing whether file descriptors are connected to a terminal, works for file descriptors
0, 1, and 2 (#4766 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4766>). It can still return
incorrect results in other cases (#1228 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1228>).
• Trying to execute scripts with Windows line endings (CRLF) produces a sensible error (#2783
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2783>).
• Trying to execute commands with arguments that exceed the operating system limit now produces a
specific error (#6800 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6800>).
• An alias that delegates to a command with the same name no longer triggers an error about recursive
completion (#7389 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7389>).
• math now has a --base option to output the result in hexadecimal or octal (#7496
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7496>) and produces more specific error messages (‐
#7508 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7508>).
• math learned bitwise functions bitand, bitor and bitxor, used like math "bitand(0xFE, 5)" (#7281
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7281>).
• math learned tau for those who don't like typing "2 * pi".
• Failed redirections will now set $status (#7540
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7540>).
• fish sets exit status in a more consistent manner after errors, including invalid expansions like
$foo[.
• Using read --silent while fish is in private mode was adding these potentially-sensitive entries to the
history; this has been fixed (#7230 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7230>).
• read can now read interactively from other files, and can be used to read from the terminal via read
</dev/tty (if the operating system provides /dev/tty) (#7358 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7358>).
• A new fish_status_to_signal function for transforming exit statuses to signal names has been added (‐
#7597 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7597>, #7595 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7595>).
• The fallback realpath builtin supports the -s/--no-symlinks option, like GNU realpath (#7574
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7574>).
• functions and type now explain when a function was defined via source instead of just saying Defined in
-.
• Significant performance improvements when globbing, appending to variables or in math.
• echo no longer interprets options at the beginning of an argument (eg echo "-n foo") (#7614
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7614>).
• fish now finds user configuration even if the HOME environment variable is not set (#7620
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7620>).
• fish no longer crashes when started from a Windows-style working directory (eg F:\path) (#7636
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7636>).
• fish -c now reads the remaining arguments into $argv (#2314 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2314>).
• The pwd command supports the long options --logical and --physical, matching other implementations (‐
#6787 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6787>).
• fish --profile now only starts profiling after fish is ready to execute commands (all configuration is
completed). There is a new --profile-startup option that only profiles the startup and configuration
process (#7648 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7648>).
• Builtins return a maximum exit status of 255, rather than potentially overflowing. In particular, this
affects exit, return, functions --query, and set --query (#7698 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7698>, #7702 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7702>).
• It is no longer an error to run builtin with closed stdin. For example count <&- now prints 0, instead
of failing.
• Blocks, functions, and builtins no longer permit redirecting to file descriptors other than 0 (standard
input), 1 (standard output) and 2 (standard error). For example, echo hello >&5 is now an error. This
prevents corruption of internal state (#3303 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3303>).
Interactive improvements
• fish will now always attempt to become process group leader in interactive mode (#7060
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7060>). This helps avoid hangs in certain
circumstances, and allows tmux's current directory introspection to work (#5699
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5699>).
• The interactive reader now allows ending a line in a logical operators (&& and ||) instead of
complaining about a missing command. (This was already syntactically valid, but interactive sessions
didn't know about it yet).
• The prompt is reprinted after a background job exits (#1018 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1018>).
• fish no longer inserts a space after a completion ending in ., , or - is accepted, improving
completions for tools that provide dynamic completions (#6928 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6928>).
• If a filename is invalid when first pressing tab, but becomes valid, it will be completed properly on
the next attempt (#6863 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6863>).
• help string match/replace/<subcommand> will show the help for string subcommands (#6786
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6786>).
• fish_key_reader sets the exit status to 0 when used with --help or --version (#6964
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6964>).
• fish_key_reader and fish_indent send output from --version to standard output, matching other fish
binaries (#6964 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6964>).
• A new variable $status_generation is incremented only when the previous command produces an exit status
(#6815 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6815>). This can be used, for example, to check
whether a failure status is a holdover due to a background job, or actually produced by the last run
command.
• fish_greeting is now a function that reads a variable of the same name, and defaults to setting it
globally. This removes a universal variable by default and helps with updating the greeting. However,
to disable the greeting it is now necessary to explicitly specify universal scope (set -U
fish_greeting) or to disable it in config.fish (#7265 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7265>).
• Events are properly emitted after a job is cancelled (#2356 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2356>).
• fish_preexec and fish_postexec events are no longer triggered for empty commands (#4829
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4829>, #7085 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7085>).
• Functions triggered by the fish_exit event are correctly run when the terminal is closed or the shell
receives SIGHUP (#7014 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7014>).
• The fish_prompt event no longer fires when read is used. If you need a function to run any time read is
invoked by a script, use the new fish_read event instead (#7039 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7039>).
• A new fish_posterror event is emitted when attempting to execute a command with syntax errors (#6880
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6880>, #6816 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6816>).
• The debugging system has now fully switched from the old numbered level to the new named category
system introduced in 3.1. A number of new debugging categories have been added, including config, path,
reader and screen (#6511 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6511>). See the output of
fish --print-debug-categories for the full list.
• The warning about read-only filesystems has been moved to a new "warning-path" debug category and can
be disabled by setting a debug category of -warning-path (#6630 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6630>):
fish --debug=-warning-path
• The enabled debug categories are now printed on shell startup (#7007 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7007>).
• The -o short option to fish, for --debug-output, works correctly instead of producing an invalid option
error (#7254 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7254>).
• fish's debugging can now also be enabled via FISH_DEBUG and FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT environment variables.
This helps with debugging when no commandline options can be passed, like when fish is called in a
shebang (#7359 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7359>).
• Abbreviations are now expanded after all command terminators (eg ; or |), not just space, as in fish
2.7.1 and before (#6970 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6970>), and after closing a
command substitution (#6658 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6658>).
• The history file is now created with user-private permissions, matching other shells (#6926
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6926>). The directory containing the history file was
already private, so there should not have been any private data revealed.
• The output of time is now properly aligned in all cases (#6726 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6726>, #6714 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6714>) and no longer depends
on locale (#6757 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6757>).
• The command-not-found handling has been simplified. When it can't find a command, fish now just
executes a function called fish_command_not_found instead of firing an event, making it easier to
replace and reason about. Previously-defined __fish_command_not_found_handler functions with an
appropriate event listener will still work (#7293 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7293>).
• ctrl-c handling has been reimplemented in C++ and is therefore quicker (#5259 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5259>), no longer occasionally prints an "unknown command" error (#7145
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7145>) or overwrites multiline prompts (#3537
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3537>).
• ctrl-c no longer kills background jobs for which job control is disabled, matching POSIX semantics (‐
#6828 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6828>, #6861 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6861>).
• Autosuggestions work properly after ctrl-c cancels the current commmand line (#6937
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6937>).
• History search is now case-insensitive unless the search string contains an uppercase character (#7273
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7273>).
• fish_update_completions gained a new --keep option, which improves speed by skipping completions that
already exist (#6775 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6775>, #6796
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6796>).
• Aliases containing an embedded backslash appear properly in the output of alias (#6910
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6910>).
• open no longer hangs indefinitely on certain systems, as a bug in xdg-open has been worked around (‐
#7215 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7215>).
• Long command lines no longer add a blank line after execution (#6826 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6826>) and behave better with backspace (#6951 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6951>).
• functions -t works like the long option --handlers-type, as documented, instead of producing an error
(#6985 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6985>).
• History search now flashes when it found no more results (#7362 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7362>)
• fish now creates the path in the environment variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR if it does not exist, before
using it for runtime data storage (#7335 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7335>).
• set_color --print-colors now also respects the bold, dim, underline, reverse, italic and background
modifiers, to better show their effect (#7314 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7314>).
• The fish Web configuration tool (fish_config) shows prompts correctly on Termux for Android (#7298
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7298>) and detects Windows Services for Linux 2
properly (#7027 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7027>). It no longer shows the history
variable as it may be too large (one can use the History tab instead). It also starts the browser in
another thread, avoiding hangs in some circumstances, especially with Firefox's Developer Edition (‐
#7158 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7158>). Finally, a bug in the Source Code Pro
font may cause browsers to hang, so this font is no longer chosen by default (#7714
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7714>).
• funcsave gained a new --directory option to specify the location of the saved function (#7041
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7041>).
• help works properly on MSYS2 (#7113 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7113>) and only
uses cmd.exe if running on WSL (#6797 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6797>).
• Resuming a piped job by its number, like fg %1, works correctly (#7406 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7406>). Resumed jobs show the correct title in the terminal emulator (#7444
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7444>).
• Commands run from key bindings now use the same TTY modes as normal commands (#7483
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7483>).
• Autosuggestions from history are now case-sensitive (#3978 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3978>).
• $status from completion scripts is no longer passed outside the completion, which keeps the status
display in the prompt as the last command's status (#7555 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7555>).
• Updated localisations for pt_BR (#7480 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7480>).
• fish_trace output now starts with -> (like fish --profile), making the depth more visible (#7538
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7538>).
• Resizing the terminal window no longer produces a corrupted prompt (#6532 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6532>, #7404 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7404>).
• functions produces an error rather than crashing on certain invalid arguments (#7515
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7515>).
• A crash in completions with inline variable assignment (eg A= b) has been fixed (#7344
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7344>).
• fish_private_mode may now be changed dynamically using set (#7589 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7589>), and history is kept in memory in private mode (but not stored permanently) (#7590
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7590>).
• Commands with leading spaces may be retrieved from history with up-arrow until a new command is run,
matching zsh's HIST_IGNORE_SPACE (#1383 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1383>).
• Importing bash history or reporting errors with recursive globs (**) no longer hangs (#7407
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7407>, #7497 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7497>).
• bind now shows \x7f for the del key instead of a literal DEL character (#7631 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7631>)
• Paths containing variables or tilde expansion are only suggested when they are still valid (#7582
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7582>).
• Syntax highlighting can now color a command as invalid even if executed quickly (#5912
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5912>).
• Redirection targets are no longer highlighted as error if they contain variables which will likely be
defined by the current commandline (#6654 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6654>).
• fish is now more resilient against broken terminal modes (#7133 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7133>, #4873 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4873>).
• fish handles being in control of the TTY without owning its own process group better, avoiding some
hangs in special configurations (#7388 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7388>).
• Keywords can now be colored differently by setting the fish_color_keyword variable (fish_color_command
is used as a fallback) (#7678 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7678>).
• Just like fish_indent, the interactive reader will indent continuation lines that follow a line ending
in a backslash, |, && or || (#7694 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7694>).
• Commands with a trailing escaped space are saved in history correctly (#7661 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7661>).
• fish_prompt no longer mangles Unicode characters in the private-use range U+F600-U+F700. (#7723
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7723>).
• The universal variable file, fish_variables, can be made a symbolic link without it being overwritten
(#7466 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7466>).
• fish is now more resilient against mktemp failing (#7482 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7482>).
New or improved bindings
• As mentioned above, new special input functions undo (ctrl-_ or ctrl-z) and redo (alt-/) can be used to
revert changes to the command line or the pager search field (#6570 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6570>).
• ctrl-z is now available for binding (#7152 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7152>).
• Additionally, using the cancel special input function (bound to escape by default) right after fish
picked an unambiguous completion will undo that (#7433 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7433>).
• fish_clipboard_paste (ctrl-v) trims indentation from multiline commands, because fish already indents
(#7662 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7662>).
• Vi mode bindings now support dh, dl, c0, cf, ct, cF, cT, ch, cl, y0, ci, ca, yi, ya, di, da, d;, d,, o,
O and Control+left/right keys to navigate by word (#6648 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6648>, #6755 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6755>, #6769
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6769>, #7442 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7442>, #7516 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7516>).
• Vi mode bindings support ~ (tilde) to toggle the case of the selected character (#6908
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6908>).
• Functions up-or-search and down-or-search (up and down) can cross empty lines, and don't activate
search mode if the search fails, which makes them easier to use to move between lines in some
situations.
• If history search fails to find a match, the cursor is no longer moved. This is useful when
accidentally starting a history search on a multi-line commandline.
• The special input function beginning-of-history (pageup) now moves to the oldest search instead of the
youngest - that's end-of-history (pagedown).
• A new special input function forward-single-char moves one character to the right, and if an
autosuggestion is available, only take a single character from it (#7217 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7217>, #4984 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4984>).
• Special input functions can now be joined with or as a modifier (adding to and), though only some
commands set an exit status (#7217 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7217>). This
includes suppress-autosuggestion to reflect whether an autosuggestion was suppressed (#1419
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1419>)
• A new function __fish_preview_current_file, bound to alt-o, opens the current file at the cursor in a
pager (#6838 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6838>, #6855 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6855>).
• edit_command_buffer (alt-e and alt-v) passes the cursor position to the external editor if the editor
is recognized (#6138 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6138>, #6954
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6954>).
• __fish_prepend_sudo (alt-s) now toggles a sudo prefix (#7012 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7012>) and avoids shifting the cursor (#6542 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6542>).
• __fish_prepend_sudo (alt-s) now uses the previous commandline if the current one is empty, to simplify
rerunning the previous command with sudo (#7079
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7079>).
• __fish_toggle_comment_commandline (alt-#) now uncomments and presents the last comment from history if
the commandline is empty (#7137 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7137>).
• __fish_whatis_current_token (alt-w) prints descriptions for functions and builtins (#7191
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7191>, #2083 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2083>).
• The definition of "word" and "bigword" for movements was refined, fixing (eg) vi mode's behavior with e
on the second-to-last char, and bigword's behavior with single-character words and non-blank
non-graphical characters (#7353 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7353>, #7354
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7354>, #4025 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4025>, #7328 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7328>, #7325
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7325>)
• fish's clipboard bindings now also support Windows Subsystem for Linux via PowerShell and clip.exe (‐
#7455 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7455>, #7458 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7458>) and will properly copy newlines in multi-line commands.
• Using the *-jump special input functions before typing anything else no longer crashes fish.
• Completing variable overrides (foo=bar) could replace the entire thing with just the completion in some
circumstances. This has been fixed (#7398 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7398>).
Improved prompts
• The default and example prompts print the correct exit status for commands prefixed with not (#6566
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6566>).
• git prompts include all untracked files in the repository, not just those in the current directory (‐
#6086 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6086>).
• The git prompts correctly show stash states (#6876 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6876>, #7136 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7136>) and clean states (‐
#7471 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7471>).
• The Mercurial prompt correctly shows untracked status (#6906 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6906>), and by default only shows the branch for performance reasons. A new variable
$fish_prompt_hg_show_informative_status can be set to enable more information.
• The fish_vcs_prompt passes its arguments to the various VCS prompts that it calls (#7033
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7033>).
• The Subversion prompt was broken in a number of ways in 3.1.0 and has been restored (#6715
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6715>, #7278 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7278>).
• A new helper function fish_is_root_user simplifies checking for superuser privilege (#7031
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7031>, #7123 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7123>).
• New colorschemes - ayu Light, ayu Dark and ayu Mirage (#7596 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7596>).
• Bugs related to multiline prompts, including repainting (#5860 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5860>) or navigating directory history (#3550 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3550>) leading to graphical glitches have been fixed.
• The nim prompt now handles vi mode better (#6802
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6802>)
Improved terminal support
• A new variable, fish_vi_force_cursor, can be set to force fish_vi_cursor to attempt changing the cursor
shape in vi mode, regardless of terminal (#6968
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6968>). The fish_vi_cursor option --force-iterm has
been deprecated.
• diff will now colourize output, if supported (#7308 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7308>).
• Autosuggestions appear when the cursor passes the right prompt (#6948 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6948>) or wraps to the next line (#7213 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7213>).
• The cursor shape in Vi mode changes properly in Windows Terminal (#6999 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6999>, #6478 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6478>).
• The spurious warning about terminal size in small terminals has been removed (#6980
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6980>).
• Dynamic titles are now enabled in Alacritty (#7073 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7073>) and emacs' vterm (#7122 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7122>).
• Current working directory updates are enabled in foot (#7099 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7099>) and WezTerm (#7649 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7649>).
• The width computation for certain emoji agrees better with terminals (especially flags). (#7237
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7237>).
• Long command lines are wrapped in all cases, instead of sometimes being put on a new line (#5118
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5118>).
• The pager is properly rendered with long command lines selected (#2557 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2557>).
• Sessions with right prompts can be resized correctly in terminals that handle reflow, like GNOME
Terminal (and other VTE-based terminals), upcoming Konsole releases and Alacritty. This detection can
be overridden with the new fish_handle_reflow variable (#7491 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7491>).
• fish now sets terminal modes sooner, which stops output from appearing before the greeting and prompt
are ready (#7489 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7489>).
• Better detection of new Konsole versions for true color support and cursor shape changing.
• fish no longer attempts to modify the terminal size via TIOCSWINSZ, improving compatibility with Kitty
(#6994 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6994>).
Completions
• Added completions for
• 7z, 7za and 7zr (#7220 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7220>)
• alias (#7035 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7035>)
• alternatives (#7616 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7616>)
• apk (#7108 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7108>)
• asciidoctor (#7000 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7000>)
• avifdec and avifenc (#7674 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7674>)
• bluetoothctl (#7438 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7438>)
• cjxl and djxl (#7673 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7673>)
• cmark (#7000 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7000>)
• create_ap (#7096 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7096>)
• deno (#7138 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7138>)
• dhclient (#6684 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6684>)
• Postgres-related commands dropdb, createdb, pg_restore, pg_dump and pg_dumpall (#6620
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6620>)
• dotnet (#7558 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7558>)
• downgrade (#6751 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6751>)
• gapplication, gdbus, gio and gresource (#7300 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7300>)
• gh (#7112 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7112>)
• gitk
• groups (#6889 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6889>)
• hashcat (#7746 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7746>)
• hikari (#7083 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7083>)
• icdiff (#7503 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7503>)
• imv (#6675 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6675>)
• john (#7746 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7746>)
• julia (#7468 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7468>)
• k3d (#7202 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7202>)
• ldapsearch (#7578 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7578>)
• lightdm and dm-tool (#7624 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7624>)
• losetup (#7621 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7621>)
• micro (#7339 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7339>)
• mpc (#7169 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7169>)
• Metasploit's msfconsole, msfdb and msfvenom (#6930 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6930>)
• mtr (#7638 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7638>)
• mysql (#6819 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6819>)
• ncat, nc.openbsd, nc.traditional and nmap (#6873 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6873>)
• openssl (#6845 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6845>)
• prime-run (#7241 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7241>)
• ps2pdf{12,13,14,wr} (#6673 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6673>)
• pyenv (#6551 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6551>)
• rst2html, rst2html4, rst2html5, rst2latex, rst2man, rst2odt, rst2pseudoxml, rst2s5, rst2xetex,
rst2xml and rstpep2html (#7019 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7019>)
• spago (#7381 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7381>)
• sphinx-apidoc, sphinx-autogen, sphinx-build and sphinx-quickstart (#7000 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7000>)
• strace (#6656 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6656>)
• systemd's bootctl, coredumpctl, hostnamectl (#7428 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7428>), homectl (#7435 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7435>),
networkctl (#7668 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7668>) and userdbctl (#7667
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7667>)
• tcpdump (#6690 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6690>)
• tig
• traceroute and tracepath (#6803 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6803>)
• windscribe (#6788 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6788>)
• wireshark, tshark, and dumpcap
• xbps-* (#7239 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7239>)
• xxhsum, xxh32sum, xxh64sum and xxh128sum (#7103 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7103>)
• yadm (#7100 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7100>)
• zopfli and zopflipng (#6872 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6872>)
• Lots of improvements to completions, including:
• git completions can complete the right and left parts of a commit range like from..to or
left...right.
• Completion scripts for custom Git subcommands like git-xyz are now loaded with Git completions. The
completions can now be defined directly on the subcommand (using complete git-xyz), and completion
for git xyz will work. (#7075 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7075>, #7652
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7652>, #4358 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4358>)
• make completions no longer second-guess make's file detection, fixing target completion in some cases
(#7535 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7535>).
• Command completions now correctly print the description even if the command was fully matched (like
in ls<TAB>).
• set completions no longer hide variables starting with __, they are sorted last instead.
• Improvements to the manual page completion generator (#7086 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7086>, #6879 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6879>, #7187
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7187>).
• Significant performance improvements to completion of the available commands (#7153
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7153>), especially on macOS Big Sur where there was a
significant regression (#7365 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7365>, #7511
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7511>).
• Suffix completion using __fish_complete_suffix uses the same fuzzy matching logic as normal file
completion, and completes any file but sorts files with matching suffix first (#7040
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7040>, #7547 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7547>). Previously, it only completed files with matching suffix.
For distributors
• fish has a new interactive test driver based on pexpect, removing the optional dependency on expect
(and adding an optional dependency on pexpect) (#5451 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5451>, #6825 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6825>).
• The CHANGELOG was moved to restructured text, allowing it to be included in the documentation (#7057
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7057>).
• fish handles ncurses installed in a non-standard prefix better (#6600 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6600>, #7219 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7219>), and uses
variadic tparm on NetBSD curses (#6626 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6626>).
• The Web-based configuration tool no longer uses an obsolete Angular version (#7147
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7147>).
• The fish project has adopted the Contributor Covenant code of conduct (#7151 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7151>).
Deprecations and removed features
• The fish_color_match variable is no longer used. (Previously this controlled the color of matching
quotes and parens when using read).
• fish 3.2.0 will be the last release in which the redirection to standard error with the ^ character is
enabled. The stderr-nocaret feature flag will be changed to "on" in future releases.
• string is now a reserved word and cannot be used for function names (see above).
• fish_vi_cursor's option --force-iterm has been deprecated (see above).
• command, jobs and type long-form option --quiet is deprecated in favor of --query (see above).
• The fish_command_not_found event is no longer emitted, instead there is a function of that name. By
default it will call a previously-defined __fish_command_not_found_handler. To emit the event manually
use emit fish_command_not_found.
• The fish_prompt event no longer fires when read is used. If you need a function to run any time read is
invoked by a script, use the new fish_read event instead (#7039 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/7039>).
• To disable the greeting message permanently it is no longer enough to just run set fish_greeting
interactively as it is no longer implicitly a universal variable. Use set -U fish_greeting or disable
it in config.fish with set -g fish_greeting.
• The long-deprecated and non-functional -m/--read-mode options to read were removed in 3.1b1. Using the
short form, or a never-implemented -B option, no longer crashes fish (#7659 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7659>).
• With the addition of new categories for debug options, the old numbered debugging levels have been
removed.
For distributors and developers
• fish source tarballs are now distributed using the XZ compression method (#5460
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5460>).
• The fish source tarball contains an example FreeDesktop entry and icon.
• The CMake variable MAC_CODESIGN_ID can now be set to "off" to disable code-signing (#6952
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6952>, #6792 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6792>).
• Building on on macOS earlier than 10.13.6 succeeds, instead of failing on code-signing (#6791
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6791>).
• The pkg-config file now uses variables to ensure paths used are portable across prefixes.
• The default values for the extra_completionsdir, extra_functionsdir and extra_confdir options now use
the installation prefix rather than /usr/local (#6778 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6778>).
• A new CMake variable FISH_USE_SYSTEM_PCRE2 controls whether fish builds with the system-installed
PCRE2, or the version it bundles. By default it prefers the system library if available, unless Mac
codesigning is enabled (#6952 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6952>).
• Running the full interactive test suite now requires Python 3.5+ and the pexpect package (#6825
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6825>); the expect package is no longer required.
• Support for Python 2 in fish's tools (fish_config and the manual page completion generator) is no
longer guaranteed. Please use Python 3.5 or later (#6537 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6537>).
• The Web-based configuration tool is compatible with Python 3.10 (#7600 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/7600>) and no longer requires Python's distutils package (#7514
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/7514>).
• fish 3.2 is the last release to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux & CentOS version 6.
----
fish 3.1.2 (released April 29, 2020)
This release of fish fixes a major issue discovered in fish 3.1.1:
• Commands such as fzf and enhancd, when used with eval, would hang. eval buffered output too
aggressively, which has been fixed (#6955 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6955>).
If you are upgrading from version 3.0.0 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.1.1, 3.1.0
and 3.1b1 (included below).
----
fish 3.1.1 (released April 27, 2020)
This release of fish fixes a number of major issues discovered in fish 3.1.0.
• Commands which involve . ( ... | psub) now work correctly, as a bug in the function --on-job-exit
option has been fixed (#6613 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6613>).
• Conflicts between upstream packages for ripgrep and bat, and the fish packages, have been resolved (‐
#5822 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5822>).
• Starting fish in a directory without read access, such as via su, no longer crashes (#6597
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6597>).
• Glob ordering changes which were introduced in 3.1.0 have been reverted, returning the order of globs
to the previous state (#6593 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6593>).
• Redirections using the deprecated caret syntax to a file descriptor (eg ^&2) work correctly (#6591
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6591>).
• Redirections that append to a file descriptor (eg 2>>&1) work correctly (#6614
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6614>).
• Building fish on macOS (#6602 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6602>) or with new
versions of GCC (#6604 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6604>, #6609
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6609>) is now successful.
• time is now correctly listed in the output of builtin -n, and time --help works correctly (#6598
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6598>).
• Exported universal variables now update properly (#6612 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6612>).
• status current-command gives the expected output when used with an environment override - that is, F=B
status current-command returns status instead of F=B (#6635 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6635>).
• test no longer crashes when used with “nan” or “inf” arguments, erroring out instead (#6655
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6655>).
• Copying from the end of the command line no longer crashes fish (#6680 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6680>).
• read no longer removes multiple separators when splitting a variable into a list, restoring the
previous behaviour from fish 3.0 and before (#6650 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6650>).
• Functions using --on-job-exit and --on-process-exit work reliably again (#6679
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6679>).
• Functions using --on-signal INT work reliably in interactive sessions, as they did in fish 2.7 and
before (#6649 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6649>). These handlers have never worked
in non-interactive sessions, and making them work is an ongoing process.
• Functions using --on-variable work reliably with variables which are set implicitly (rather than with
set), such as “fish_bind_mode” and “PWD” (#6653
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6653>).
• 256 colors are properly enabled under certain conditions that were incorrectly detected in fish 3.1.0
($TERM begins with xterm, does not include “256color”, and $TERM_PROGRAM is not set) (#6701
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6701>).
• The Mercurial (hg) prompt no longer produces an error when the current working directory is removed (‐
#6699 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6699>). Also, for performance reasons it shows
only basic information by default; to restore the detailed status, set
$fish_prompt_hg_show_informative_status.
• The VCS prompt, fish_vcs_prompt, no longer displays Subversion (svn) status by default, due to the
potential slowness of this operation (#6681 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6681>).
• Pasting of commands has been sped up (#6713 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6713>).
• Using extended Unicode characters, such as emoji, in a non-Unicode capable locale (such as the C or
POSIX locale) no longer renders all output blank (#6736 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6736>).
• help prefers to use xdg-open, avoiding the use of open on Debian systems where this command is actually
openvt (#6739 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6739>).
• Command lines starting with a space, which are not saved in history, now do not get autosuggestions.
This fixes an issue with Midnight Commander integration (#6763 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6763>), but may be changed in a future version.
• Copying to the clipboard no longer inserts a newline at the end of the content, matching fish 2.7 and
earlier (#6927 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6927>).
• fzf in complex pipes no longer hangs. More generally, code run as part of command substitutions or eval
will no longer have separate process groups. (#6624 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6624>, #6806 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6806>).
This release also includes:
• several changes to improve macOS compatibility with code signing and notarization;
• several improvements to completions; and
• several content and formatting improvements to the documentation.
If you are upgrading from version 3.0.0 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.1.0 and
3.1b1 (included below).
Errata for fish 3.1
A new builtin, time, was introduced in the fish 3.1 releases. This builtin is a reserved word (like test,
function, and others) because of the way it is implemented, and functions can no longer be named time.
This was not clear in the fish 3.1b1 changelog.
----
fish 3.1.0 (released February 12, 2020)
Compared to the beta release of fish 3.1b1, fish version 3.1.0:
• Fixes a regression where spaces after a brace were removed despite brace expansion not occurring (#6564
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6564>).
• Fixes a number of problems in compiling and testing on Cygwin (#6549 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6549>) and Solaris-derived systems such as Illumos (#6553
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6553>, #6554 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6554>, #6555 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6555>, #6556
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6556>, and #6558 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6558>).
• Fixes the process for building macOS packages.
• Fixes a regression where excessive error messages are printed if Unicode characters are emitted in
non-Unicode-capable locales (#6584 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6584>).
• Contains some improvements to the documentation and a small number of completions.
If you are upgrading from version 3.0.0 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.1b1
(included below).
----
fish 3.1b1 (released January 26, 2020)
Notable improvements and fixes
• A new $pipestatus variable contains a list of exit statuses of the previous job, for each of the
separate commands in a pipeline (#5632 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5632>).
• fish no longer buffers pipes to the last function in a pipeline, improving many cases where pipes
appeared to block or hang (#1396 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1396>).
• An overhaul of error messages for builtin commands, including a removal of the overwhelming usage
summary, more readable stack traces (#3404 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3404>, ‐
#5434 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5434>), and stack traces for test (aka [) (#5771
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5771>).
• fish’s debugging arguments have been significantly improved. The --debug-level option has been removed,
and a new --debug option replaces it. This option accepts various categories, which may be listed via
fish --print-debug-categories (#5879 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5879>). A new
--debug-output option allows for redirection of debug output.
• string has a new collect subcommand for use in command substitutions, producing a single output instead
of splitting on new lines (similar to "$(cmd)" in other shells) (#159 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/159>).
• The fish manual, tutorial and FAQ are now available in man format as fish-doc, fish-tutorial and
fish-faq respectively (#5521 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5521>).
• Like other shells, cd now always looks for its argument in the current directory as a last resort, even
if the CDPATH variable does not include it or “.” (#4484 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4484>).
• fish now correctly handles CDPATH entries that start with .. (#6220 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6220>) or contain ./ (#5887 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5887>).
• The fish_trace variable may be set to trace execution (#3427 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3427>). This performs a similar role as set -x in other shells.
• fish uses the temporary directory determined by the system, rather than relying on /tmp (#3845
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3845>).
• The fish Web configuration tool (fish_config) prints a list of commands it is executing, to help
understanding and debugging (#5584 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5584>).
• Major performance improvements when pasting (#5866 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5866>), executing lots of commands (#5905 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5905>), importing history from bash (#6295 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6295>), and when completing variables that might match $history (#6288
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6288>).
Syntax changes and new commands
• A new builtin command, time, which allows timing of fish functions and builtins as well as external
commands (#117 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/117>).
• Brace expansion now only takes place if the braces include a “,” or a variable expansion, meaning
common commands such as git reset HEAD@{0} do not require escaping (#5869 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5869>).
• New redirections &> and &| may be used to redirect or pipe stdout, and also redirect stderr to stdout
(#6192 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6192>).
• switch now allows arguments that expand to nothing, like empty variables (#5677
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5677>).
• The VAR=val cmd syntax can now be used to run a command in a modified environment (#6287
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6287>).
• and is no longer recognised as a command, so that nonsensical constructs like and and and produce a
syntax error (#6089 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6089>).
• math‘s exponent operator,’^‘, was previously left-associative, but now uses the more commonly-used
right-associative behaviour (#6280 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6280>). This means
that math '3^0.5^2' was previously calculated as’(30.5)2’, but is now calculated as ‘3(0.52)’.
• In fish 3.0, the variable used with for loops inside command substitutions could leak into enclosing
scopes; this was an inadvertent behaviour change and has been reverted (#6480 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6480>).
Scripting improvements
• string split0 now returns 0 if it split something (#5701 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5701>).
• In the interest of consistency, builtin -q and command -q can now be used to query if a builtin or
command exists (#5631 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5631>).
• math now accepts --scale=max for the maximum scale (#5579 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5579>).
• builtin $var now works correctly, allowing a variable as the builtin name (#5639
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5639>).
• cd understands the -- argument to make it possible to change to directories starting with a hyphen (‐
#6071 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6071>).
• complete --do-complete now also does fuzzy matches (#5467 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5467>).
• complete --do-complete can be used inside completions, allowing limited recursion (#3474
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3474>).
• count now also counts lines fed on standard input (#5744 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5744>).
• eval produces an exit status of 0 when given no arguments, like other shells (#5692
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5692>).
• printf prints what it can when input hasn’t been fully converted to a number, but still prints an error
(#5532 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5532>).
• complete -C foo now works as expected, rather than requiring complete -Cfoo.
• complete has a new --force-files option, to re-enable file completions. This allows sudo -E and pacman
-Qo to complete correctly (#5646 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5646>).
• argparse now defaults to showing the current function name (instead of argparse) in its errors, making
--name often superfluous (#5835 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5835>).
• argparse has a new --ignore-unknown option to keep unrecognized options, allowing multiple argparse
passes to parse options (#5367 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5367>).
• argparse correctly handles flag value validation of options that only have short names (#5864
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5864>).
• read -S (short option of --shell) is recognised correctly (#5660 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5660>).
• read understands --list, which acts like --array in reading all arguments into a list inside a single
variable, but is better named (#5846 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5846>).
• read has a new option, --tokenize, which splits a string into variables according to the shell’s
tokenization rules, considering quoting, escaping, and so on (#3823 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3823>).
• read interacts more correctly with the deprecated $IFS variable, in particular removing multiple
separators when splitting a variable into a list (#6406 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6406>), matching other shells.
• fish_indent now handles semicolons better, including leaving them in place for ; and and ; or instead
of breaking the line (#5859 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5859>).
• fish_indent --write now supports multiple file arguments, indenting them in turn.
• The default read limit has been increased to 100MiB (#5267 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5267>).
• math now also understands x for multiplication, provided it is followed by whitespace (#5906
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5906>).
• math reports the right error when incorrect syntax is used inside parentheses (#6063
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6063>), and warns when unsupported logical operations
are used (#6096 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6096>).
• functions --erase now also prevents fish from autoloading a function for the first time (#5951
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5951>).
• jobs --last returns 0 to indicate success when a job is found (#6104 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6104>).
• commandline -p and commandline -j now split on && and || in addition to ; and & (#6214
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6214>).
• A bug where string split would drop empty strings if the output was only empty strings has been fixed
(#5987 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5987>).
• eval no long creates a new local variable scope, but affects variables in the scope it is called from
(#4443 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4443>). source still creates a new local scope.
• abbr has a new --query option to check for the existence of an abbreviation.
• Local values for fish_complete_path and fish_function_path are now ignored; only their global values
are respected.
• Syntax error reports now display a marker in the correct position (#5812 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5812>).
• Empty universal variables may now be exported (#5992 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5992>).
• Exported universal variables are no longer imported into the global scope, preventing shadowing. This
makes it easier to change such variables for all fish sessions and avoids breakage when the value is a
list of multiple elements (#5258 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5258>).
• A bug where for could use invalid variable names has been fixed (#5800 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5800>).
• A bug where local variables would not be exported to functions has been fixed (#6153
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6153>).
• The null command (:) now always exits successfully, rather than passing through the previous exit
status (#6022 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6022>).
• The output of functions FUNCTION matches the declaration of the function, correctly including comments
or blank lines (#5285 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5285>), and correctly includes
any --wraps flags (#1625 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1625>).
• type supports a new option, --short, which suppress function expansion (#6403 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6403>).
• type --path with a function argument will now output the path to the file containing the definition of
that function, if it exists.
• type --force-path with an argument that cannot be found now correctly outputs nothing, as documented (‐
#6411 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6411>).
• The $hostname variable is no longer truncated to 32 characters (#5758 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5758>).
• Line numbers in function backtraces are calculated correctly (#6350 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6350>).
• A new fish_cancel event is emitted when the command line is cancelled, which is useful for terminal
integration (#5973 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5973>).
Interactive improvements
• New Base16 color options are available through the Web-based configuration (#6504
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6504>).
• fish only parses /etc/paths on macOS in login shells, matching the bash implementation (#5637
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5637>) and avoiding changes to path ordering in child
shells (#5456 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5456>). It now ignores blank lines like
the bash implementation (#5809 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5809>).
• The locale is now reloaded when the LOCPATH variable is changed (#5815 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5815>).
• read no longer keeps a history, making it suitable for operations that shouldn’t end up there, like
password entry (#5904 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5904>).
• dirh outputs its stack in the correct order (#5477 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5477>), and behaves as documented when universal variables are used for its stack (#5797
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5797>).
• funced and the edit-commandline-in-buffer bindings did not work in fish 3.0 when the $EDITOR variable
contained spaces; this has been corrected (#5625
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5625>).
• Builtins now pipe their help output to a pager automatically (#6227 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6227>).
• set_color now colors the --print-colors output in the matching colors if it is going to a terminal.
• fish now underlines every valid entered path instead of just the last one (#5872
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5872>).
• When syntax highlighting a string with an unclosed quote, only the quote itself will be shown as an
error, instead of the whole argument.
• Syntax highlighting works correctly with variables as commands (#5658 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5658>) and redirections to close file descriptors (#6092
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6092>).
• help works properly on Windows Subsytem for Linux (#5759 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5759>, #6338 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6338>).
• A bug where disown could crash the shell has been fixed (#5720 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5720>).
• fish will not autosuggest files ending with ~ unless there are no other candidates, as these are
generally backup files (#985 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/985>).
• Escape in the pager works correctly (#5818 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5818>).
• Key bindings that call fg no longer leave the terminal in a broken state (#2114
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2114>).
• Brackets (#5831 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5831>) and filenames containing $ (‐
#6060 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6060>) are completed with appropriate escaping.
• The output of complete and functions is now colorized in interactive terminals.
• The Web-based configuration handles aliases that include single quotes correctly (#6120
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6120>), and launches correctly under Termux (#6248
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6248>) and OpenBSD (#6522 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6522>).
• function now correctly validates parameters for --argument-names as valid variable names (#6147
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6147>) and correctly parses options following
--argument-names, as in “--argument-names foo --description bar” (#6186 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6186>).
• History newly imported from bash includes command lines using && or ||.
• The automatic generation of completions from manual pages is better described in job and process
listings, and no longer produces a warning when exiting fish (#6269 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6269>).
• In private mode, setting $fish_greeting to an empty string before starting the private session will
prevent the warning about history not being saved from being printed (#6299 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6299>).
• In the interactive editor, a line break (Enter) inside unclosed brackets will insert a new line, rather
than executing the command and producing an error (#6316 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6316>).
• Ctrl-C always repaints the prompt (#6394 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6394>).
• When run interactively from another program (such as Python), fish will correctly start a new process
group, like other shells (#5909 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5909>).
• Job identifiers (for example, for background jobs) are assigned more logically (#6053
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6053>).
• A bug where history would appear truncated if an empty command was executed was fixed (#6032
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6032>).
New or improved bindings
• Pasting strips leading spaces to avoid pasted commands being omitted from the history (#4327
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4327>).
• Shift-Left and Shift-Right now default to moving backwards and forwards by one bigword (words separated
by whitespace) (#1505 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1505>).
• The default escape delay (to differentiate between the escape key and an alt-combination) has been
reduced to 30ms, down from 300ms for the default mode and 100ms for Vi mode (#3904
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3904>).
• The forward-bigword binding now interacts correctly with autosuggestions (#5336
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5336>).
• The fish_clipboard_* functions support Wayland by using wl-clipboard <https://github.com/bugaevc/wl-
clipboard> (#5450 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5450>).
• The nextd and prevd functions no longer print “Hit end of history”, instead using a bell. They
correctly store working directories containing symbolic links (#6395 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/6395>).
• If a fish_mode_prompt function exists, Vi mode will only execute it on mode-switch instead of the
entire prompt. This should make it much more responsive with slow prompts (#5783
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5783>).
• The path-component bindings (like Ctrl-w) now also stop at “:” and “@”, because those are used to
denote user and host in commands such as ssh (#5841 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5841>).
• The NULL character can now be bound via bind -k nul. Terminals often generate this character via
control-space. (#3189 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3189>).
• A new readline command expand-abbr can be used to trigger abbreviation expansion (#5762
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5762>).
• A new readline command, delete-or-exit, removes a character to the right of the cursor or exits the
shell if the command line is empty (moving this functionality out of the delete-or-exit function).
• The self-insert readline command will now insert the binding sequence, if not empty.
• A new binding to prepend sudo, bound to Alt-S by default (#6140 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6140>).
• The Alt-W binding to describe a command should now work better with multiline prompts (#6110
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6110>)
• The Alt-H binding to open a command’s man page now tries to ignore sudo (#6122
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6122>).
• A new pair of bind functions, history-prefix-search-backward (and forward), was introduced (#6143
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6143>).
• Vi mode now supports R to enter replace mode (#6342 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6342>), and d0 to delete the current line (#6292 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6292>).
• In Vi mode, hitting Enter in replace-one mode no longer erases the prompt (#6298
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6298>).
• Selections in Vi mode are inclusive, matching the actual behaviour of Vi (#5770
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5770>).
Improved prompts
• The Git prompt in informative mode now shows the number of stashes if enabled.
• The Git prompt now has an option ($__fish_git_prompt_use_informative_chars) to use the (more modern)
informative characters without enabling informative mode.
• The default prompt now also features VCS integration and will color the host if running via SSH (#6375
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6375>).
• The default and example prompts print the pipe status if an earlier command in the pipe fails.
• The default and example prompts try to resolve exit statuses to signal names when appropriate.
Improved terminal output
• New fish_pager_color_ options have been added to control more elements of the pager’s colors (#5524
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5524>).
• Better detection and support for using fish from various system consoles, where limited colors and
special characters are supported (#5552 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5552>).
• fish now tries to guess if the system supports Unicode 9 (and displays emoji as wide), eliminating the
need to set $fish_emoji_width in most cases (#5722 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5722>).
• Improvements to the display of wide characters, particularly Korean characters and emoji (#5583
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5583>, #5729 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5729>).
• The Vi mode cursor is correctly redrawn when regaining focus under terminals that report focus (eg
tmux) (#4788 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4788>).
• Variables that control background colors (such as fish_pager_color_search_match) can now use --reverse.
Completions
• Added completions for
• aws
• bat (#6052 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6052>)
• bosh (#5700 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5700>)
• btrfs
• camcontrol
• cf (#5700 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5700>)
• chronyc (#6496 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6496>)
• code (#6205 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6205>)
• cryptsetup (#6488 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6488>)
• csc and csi (#6016 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6016>)
• cwebp (#6034 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6034>)
• cygpath and cygstart (#6239 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6239>)
• epkginfo (#5829 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5829>)
• ffmpeg, ffplay, and ffprobe (#5922 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5922>)
• fsharpc and fsharpi (#6016 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6016>)
• fzf (#6178 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6178>)
• g++ (#6217 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6217>)
• gpg1 (#6139 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6139>)
• gpg2 (#6062 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6062>)
• grub-mkrescue (#6182 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6182>)
• hledger (#6043 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6043>)
• hwinfo (#6496 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6496>)
• irb (#6260 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6260>)
• iw (#6232 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6232>)
• kak
• keepassxc-cli (#6505 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6505>)
• keybase (#6410 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6410>)
• loginctl (#6501 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6501>)
• lz4, lz4c and lz4cat (#6364 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6364>)
• mariner (#5718 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5718>)
• nethack (#6240 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6240>)
• patool (#6083 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6083>)
• phpunit (#6197 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6197>)
• plutil (#6301 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6301>)
• pzstd (#6364 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6364>)
• qubes-gpg-client (#6067 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6067>)
• resolvectl (#6501 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6501>)
• rg
• rustup
• sfdx (#6149 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6149>)
• speedtest and speedtest-cli (#5840 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5840>)
• src (#6026 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6026>)
• tokei (#6085 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6085>)
• tsc (#6016 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6016>)
• unlz4 (#6364 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6364>)
• unzstd (#6364 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6364>)
• vbc (#6016 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6016>)
• zpaq (#6245 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6245>)
• zstd, zstdcat, zstdgrep, zstdless and zstdmt (#6364 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6364>)
• Lots of improvements to completions.
• Selecting short options which also have a long name from the completion pager is possible (#5634
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5634>).
• Tab completion will no longer add trailing spaces if they already exist (#6107
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6107>).
• Completion of subcommands to builtins like and or not now works correctly (#6249
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6249>).
• Completion of arguments to short options works correctly when multiple short options are used together
(#332 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/332>).
• Activating completion in the middle of an invalid completion does not move the cursor any more, making
it easier to fix a mistake (#4124 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4124>).
• Completion in empty commandlines now lists all available commands.
• Functions listed as completions could previously leak parts of the function as other completions; this
has been fixed.
Deprecations and removed features
• The vcs-prompt functions have been promoted to names without double-underscore, so __fish_git_prompt is
now fish_git_prompt, __fish_vcs_prompt is now fish_vcs_prompt, __fish_hg_prompt is now fish_hg_prompt
and __fish_svn_prompt is now fish_svn_prompt. Shims at the old names have been added, and the variables
have kept their old names (#5586 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5586>).
• string replace has an additional round of escaping in the replacement expression, so escaping
backslashes requires many escapes (eg string replace -ra '([ab])' '\\\\\\\$1' a). The new feature flag
regex-easyesc can be used to disable this, so that the same effect can be achieved with string replace
-ra '([ab])' '\\\\$1' a (#5556 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5556>). As a reminder,
the intention behind feature flags is that this will eventually become the default and then only
option, so scripts should be updated.
• The fish_vi_mode function, deprecated in fish 2.3, has been removed. Use fish_vi_key_bindings instead
(#6372 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/6372>).
For distributors and developers
• fish 3.0 introduced a CMake-based build system. In fish 3.1, both the Autotools-based build and legacy
Xcode build system have been removed, leaving only the CMake build system. All distributors and
developers must install CMake.
• fish now depends on the common tee external command, for the psub process substitution function.
• The documentation is now built with Sphinx. The old Doxygen-based documentation system has been
removed. Developers, and distributors who wish to rebuild the documentation, must install Sphinx.
• The INTERNAL_WCWIDTH build option has been removed, as fish now always uses an internal wcwidth
function. It has a number of configuration options that make it more suitable for general use (#5777
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5777>).
• mandoc can now be used to format the output from --help if nroff is not installed, reducing the number
of external dependencies on systems with mandoc installed (#5489 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5489>).
• Some bugs preventing building on Solaris-derived systems such as Illumos were fixed (#5458
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5458>, #5461 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5461>, #5611 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5611>).
• Completions for npm, bower and yarn no longer require the jq utility for full functionality, but will
use Python instead if it is available.
• The paths for completions, functions and configuration snippets have been extended. On systems that
define XDG_DATA_DIRS, each of the directories in this variable are searched in the subdirectories
fish/vendor_completions.d, fish/vendor_functions.d, and fish/vendor_conf.d respectively. On systems
that do not define this variable in the environment, the vendor directories are searched for in both
the installation prefix and the default “extra” directory, which now defaults to /usr/local (#5029
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5029>).
----
fish 3.0.2 (released February 19, 2019)
This release of fish fixes an issue discovered in fish 3.0.1.
Fixes and improvements
• The PWD environment variable is now ignored if it does not resolve to the true working directory,
fixing strange behaviour in terminals started by editors and IDEs (#5647 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5647>).
If you are upgrading from version 2.7.1 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.0.1, 3.0.0
and 3.0b1 (included below).
fish 3.0.1 (released February 11, 2019)
This release of fish fixes a number of major issues discovered in fish 3.0.0.
Fixes and improvements
• exec does not complain about running foreground jobs when called (#5449 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5449>).
• while loops now evaluate to the last executed command in the loop body (or zero if the body was empty),
matching POSIX semantics (#4982 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4982>).
• read --silent no longer echoes to the tty when run from a non-interactive script (#5519
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5519>).
• On macOS, path entries with spaces in /etc/paths and /etc/paths.d now correctly set path entries with
spaces. Likewise, MANPATH is correctly set from /etc/manpaths and /etc/manpaths.d (#5481
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5481>).
• fish starts correctly under Cygwin/MSYS2 (#5426
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5426>).
• The pager-toggle-search binding (Ctrl-S by default) will now activate the search field, even when the
pager is not focused.
• The error when a command is not found is now printed a single time, instead of once per argument (#5588
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5588>).
• Fixes and improvements to the git completions, including printing correct paths with older git
versions, fuzzy matching again, reducing unnecessary offers of root paths (starting with :/) (#5578
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5578>, #5574 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5574>, #5476 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5476>), and ignoring shell
aliases, so enterprising users can set up the wrapping command (via set -g __fish_git_alias_$command
$whatitwraps) (#5412 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5412>).
• Significant performance improvements to core shell functions (#5447 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5447>) and to the kill completions (#5541 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5541>).
• Starting in symbolically-linked working directories works correctly (#5525 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5525>).
• The default fish_title function no longer contains extra spaces (#5517 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5517>).
• The nim prompt now works correctly when chosen in the Web-based configuration (#5490
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5490>).
• string now prints help to stdout, like other builtins (#5495 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5495>).
• Killing the terminal while fish is in vi normal mode will no longer send it spinning and eating CPU. (‐
#5528 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5528>)
• A number of crashes have been fixed (#5550 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5550>, ‐
#5548 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5548>, #5479 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5479>, #5453 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5453>).
• Improvements to the documentation and certain completions.
Known issues
There is one significant known issue that was not corrected before the release:
• fish does not run correctly under Windows Services for Linux before Windows 10 version 1809/17763, and
the message warning of this may not be displayed (#5619 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5619>).
If you are upgrading from version 2.7.1 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.0.0 and
3.0b1 (included below).
----
fish 3.0.0 (released December 28, 2018)
fish 3 is a major release, which introduces some breaking changes alongside improved functionality.
Although most existing scripts will continue to work, they should be reviewed against the list contained
in the 3.0b1 release notes below.
Compared to the beta release of fish 3.0b1, fish version 3.0.0:
• builds correctly against musl libc (#5407 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5407>)
• handles huge numeric arguments to test correctly (#5414 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5414>)
• removes the history colouring introduced in 3.0b1, which did not always work correctly
There is one significant known issue which was not able to be corrected before the release:
• fish 3.0.0 builds on Cygwin (#5423 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5423>), but does
not run correctly (#5426 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5426>) and will result in a
hanging terminal when started. Cygwin users are encouraged to continue using 2.7.1 until a release
which corrects this is available.
If you are upgrading from version 2.7.1 or before, please also review the release notes for 3.0b1
(included below).
----
fish 3.0b1 (released December 11, 2018)
fish 3 is a major release, which introduces some breaking changes alongside improved functionality.
Although most existing scripts will continue to work, they should be reviewed against the list below.
Notable non-backward compatible changes
• Process and job expansion has largely been removed. % will no longer perform these expansions, except
for %self for the PID of the current shell. Additionally, job management commands (disown, wait, bg, fg
and kill) will expand job specifiers starting with % (#4230 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4230>, #1202 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1202>).
• set x[1] x[2] a b, to set multiple elements of an array at once, is no longer valid syntax (#4236
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4236>).
• A literal {} now expands to itself, rather than nothing. This makes working with find -exec easier (‐
#1109 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1109>, #4632 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4632>).
• Literally accessing a zero-index is now illegal syntax and is caught by the parser (#4862
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4862>). (fish indices start at 1)
• Successive commas in brace expansions are handled in less surprising manner. For example, {,,,} expands
to four empty strings rather than an empty string, a comma and an empty string again (#3002
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3002>, #4632 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4632>).
• for loop control variables are no longer local to the for block (#1935 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1935>).
• Variables set in if and while conditions are available outside the block (#4820
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4820>).
• Local exported (set -lx) vars are now visible to functions (#1091 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1091>).
• The new math builtin (see below) does not support logical expressions; test should be used instead (‐
#4777 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4777>).
• Range expansion will now behave sensibly when given a single positive and negative index ($foo[5..-1]
or $foo[-1..5]), clamping to the last valid index without changing direction if the list has fewer
elements than expected.
• read now uses -s as short for --silent (à la bash); --shell’s abbreviation (formerly -s) is now -S
instead (#4490 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4490>).
• cd no longer resolves symlinks. fish now maintains a virtual path, matching other shells (#3350
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3350>).
• source now requires an explicit - as the filename to read from the terminal (#2633
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2633>).
• Arguments to end are now errors, instead of being silently ignored.
• The names argparse, read, set, status, test and [ are now reserved and not allowed as function names.
This prevents users unintentionally breaking stuff (#3000 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3000>).
• The fish_user_abbreviations variable is no longer used; abbreviations will be migrated to the new
storage format automatically.
• The FISH_READ_BYTE_LIMIT variable is now called fish_byte_limit (#4414 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4414>).
• Environment variables are no longer split into arrays based on the record separator character on
startup. Instead, variables are not split, unless their name ends in PATH, in which case they are split
on colons (#436 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/436>).
• The history builtin’s --with-time option has been removed; this has been deprecated in favor of
--show-time since 2.7.0 (#4403 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4403>).
• The internal variables __fish_datadir and __fish_sysconfdir are now known as __fish_data_dir and
__fish_sysconf_dir respectively.
Deprecations
With the release of fish 3, a number of features have been marked for removal in the future. All users
are encouraged to explore alternatives. A small number of these features are currently behind feature
flags, which are turned on at present but may be turned off by default in the future.
A new feature flags mechanism is added for staging deprecations and breaking changes. Feature flags may
be specified at launch with fish --features ... or by setting the universal fish_features variable. (‐
#4940 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4940>)
• The use of the IFS variable for read is deprecated; IFS will be ignored in the future (#4156
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4156>). Use the read --delimiter option instead.
• The function --on-process-exit switch will be removed in future (#4700 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4700>). Use the fish_exit event instead: function --on-event fish_exit.
• $_ is deprecated and will removed in the future (#813 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/813>). Use status current-command in a command substitution instead.
• ^ as a redirection deprecated and will be removed in the future. (#4394 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4394>). Use 2> to redirect stderr. This is controlled by the stderr-nocaret
feature flag.
• ? as a glob (wildcard) is deprecated and will be removed in the future (#4520 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4520>). This is controlled by the qmark-noglob feature flag.
Notable fixes and improvements
Syntax changes and new commands
• fish now supports && (like and), || (like or), and ! (like not), for better migration from
POSIX-compliant shells (#4620 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4620>).
• Variables may be used as commands (#154 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/154>).
• fish may be started in private mode via fish --private. Private mode fish sessions do not have access
to the history file and any commands evaluated in private mode are not persisted for future sessions. A
session variable $fish_private_mode can be queried to detect private mode and adjust the behavior of
scripts accordingly to respect the user’s wish for privacy.
• A new wait command for waiting on backgrounded processes (#4498 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4498>).
• math is now a builtin rather than a wrapper around bc (#3157 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3157>). Floating point computations is now used by default, and can be controlled with the
new --scale option (#4478 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4478>).
• Setting $PATH no longer warns on non-existent directories, allowing for a single $PATH to be shared
across machines (eg via dotfiles) (#2969 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2969>).
• while sets $status to a non-zero value if the loop is not executed (#4982 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4982>).
• Command substitution output is now limited to 10 MB by default, controlled by the fish_read_limit
variable (#3822 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3822>). Notably, this is larger than
most operating systems’ argument size limit, so trying to pass argument lists this size to external
commands has never worked.
• The machine hostname, where available, is now exposed as the $hostname reserved variable. This removes
the dependency on the hostname executable (#4422
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4422>).
• Bare bind invocations in config.fish now work. The fish_user_key_bindings function is no longer
necessary, but will still be executed if it exists (#5191 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5191>).
• $fish_pid and $last_pid are available as replacements for %self and %last.
New features in commands
• alias has a new --save option to save the generated function immediately (#4878
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4878>).
• bind has a new --silent option to ignore bind requests for named keys not available under the current
terminal (#4188 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4188>, #4431 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4431>).
• complete has a new --keep-order option to show the provided or dynamically-generated argument list in
the same order as specified, rather than alphabetically (#361 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/361>).
• exec prompts for confirmation if background jobs are running.
• funced has a new --save option to automatically save the edited function after successfully editing (‐
#4668 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4668>).
• functions has a new --handlers option to show functions registered as event handlers (#4694
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4694>).
• history search supports globs for wildcard searching (#3136 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3136>) and has a new --reverse option to show entries from oldest to newest (#4375
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4375>).
• jobs has a new --quiet option to silence the output.
• read has a new --delimiter option for splitting input into arrays (#4256 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4256>).
• read writes directly to stdout if called without arguments (#4407 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4407>).
• read can now read individual lines into separate variables without consuming the input in its entirety
via the new /--line option.
• set has new --append and --prepend options (#1326 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1326>).
• string match with an empty pattern and --entire in glob mode now matches everything instead of nothing
(#4971 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4971>).
• string split supports a new --no-empty option to exclude empty strings from the result (#4779
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4779>).
• string has new subcommands split0 and join0 for working with NUL-delimited output.
• string no longer stops processing text after NUL characters (#4605 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4605>)
• string escape has a new --style regex option for escaping strings to be matched literally in string
regex operations.
• test now supports floating point values in numeric comparisons.
Interactive improvements
• A pipe at the end of a line now allows the job to continue on the next line (#1285
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1285>).
• Italics and dim support out of the box on macOS for Terminal.app and iTerm (#4436
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4436>).
• cd tab completions no longer descend into the deepest unambiguous path (#4649 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4649>).
• Pager navigation has been improved. Most notably, moving down now wraps around, moving up from the
commandline now jumps to the last element and moving right and left now reverse each other even when
wrapping around (#4680 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4680>).
• Typing normal characters while the completion pager is active no longer shows the search field. Instead
it enters them into the command line, and ends paging (#2249 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2249>).
• A new input binding pager-toggle-search toggles the search field in the completions pager on and off.
By default, this is bound to Ctrl-S.
• Searching in the pager now does a full fuzzy search (#5213 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5213>).
• The pager will now show the full command instead of just its last line if the number of completions is
large (#4702 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4702>).
• Abbreviations can be tab-completed (#3233 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3233>).
• Tildes in file names are now properly escaped in completions (#2274 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2274>).
• Wrapping completions (from complete --wraps or function --wraps) can now inject arguments. For example,
complete gco --wraps 'git checkout' now works properly (#1976 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1976>). The alias function has been updated to respect this behavior.
• Path completions now support expansions, meaning expressions like python ~/<TAB> now provides file
suggestions just like any other relative or absolute path. (This includes support for other expansions,
too.)
• Autosuggestions try to avoid arguments that are already present in the command line.
• Notifications about crashed processes are now always shown, even in command substitutions (#4962
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4962>).
• The screen is no longer reset after a BEL, fixing graphical glitches (#3693 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3693>).
• vi-mode now supports ‘;’ and ‘,’ motions. This introduces new {forward,backward}-jump-till and
repeat-jump{,-reverse} bind functions (#5140 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5140>).
• The *y vi-mode binding now works (#5100 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5100>).
• True color is now enabled in neovim by default (#2792 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2792>).
• Terminal size variables ($COLUMNS/$LINES) are now updated before fish_prompt is called, allowing the
prompt to react (#904 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/904>).
• Multi-line prompts no longer repeat when the terminal is resized (#2320 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2320>).
• xclip support has been added to the clipboard integration (#5020 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5020>).
• The Alt-P keybinding paginates the last command if the command line is empty.
• $cmd_duration is no longer reset when no command is executed (#5011 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5011>).
• Deleting a one-character word no longer erases the next word as well (#4747 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4747>).
• Token history search (Alt-Up) omits duplicate entries (#4795 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4795>).
• The fish_escape_delay_ms timeout, allowing the use of the escape key both on its own and as part of a
control sequence, was applied to all control characters; this has been reduced to just the escape key.
• Completing a function shows the description properly (#5206 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5206>).
• commandline can now be used to set the commandline for the next command, restoring a behavior in 3.4.1
(#8807 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/8807>).
• Added completions for
• ansible, including ansible-galaxy, ansible-playbook and ansible-vault (#4697
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4697>)
• bb-power (#4800 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4800>)
• bd (#4472 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4472>)
• bower
• clang and clang++ (#4174 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4174>)
• conda (#4837 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4837>)
• configure (for autoconf-generated files only)
• curl
• doas (#5196 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5196>)
• ebuild (#4911 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4911>)
• emaint (#4758 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4758>)
• eopkg (#4600 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4600>)
• exercism (#4495 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4495>)
• hjson
• hugo (#4529 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4529>)
• j (from autojump #4344 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4344>)
• jbake (#4814 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4814>)
• jhipster (#4472 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4472>)
• kitty
• kldload
• kldunload
• makensis (#5242 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5242>)
• meson
• mkdocs (#4906 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4906>)
• ngrok (#4642 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4642>)
• OpenBSD’s pkg_add, pkg_delete, pkg_info, pfctl, rcctl, signify, and vmctl (#4584
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4584>)
• openocd
• optipng
• opkg (#5168 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5168>)
• pandoc (#2937 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2937>)
• port (#4737 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4737>)
• powerpill (#4800 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4800>)
• pstack (#5135 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5135>)
• serve (#5026 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5026>)
• ttx
• unzip
• virsh (#5113 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5113>)
• xclip (#5126 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5126>)
• xsv
• zfs and zpool (#4608 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4608>)
• Lots of improvements to completions (especially darcs (#5112 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5112>), git, hg and sudo).
• Completions for yarn and npm now require the all-the-package-names NPM package for full functionality.
• Completions for bower and yarn now require the jq utility for full functionality.
• Improved French translations.
Other fixes and improvements
• Significant performance improvements to abbr (#4048 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4048>), setting variables (#4200 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4200>, ‐
#4341 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4341>), executing functions, globs (#4579
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4579>), string reading from standard input (#4610
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4610>), and slicing history (in particular,
$history[1] for the last executed command).
• Fish’s internal wcwidth function has been updated to deal with newer Unicode, and the width of some
characters can be configured via the fish_ambiguous_width (#5149 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/5149>) and fish_emoji_width (#2652 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2652>)
variables. Alternatively, a new build-time option INTERNAL_WCWIDTH can be used to use the system’s
wcwidth instead (#4816 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4816>).
• functions correctly supports -d as the short form of --description. (#5105 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5105>)
• /etc/paths is now parsed like macOS’ bash path_helper, fixing $PATH order (#4336
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4336>, #4852 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4852>) on macOS.
• Using a read-only variable in a for loop produces an error, rather than silently producing incorrect
results (#4342 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4342>).
• The universal variables filename no longer contains the hostname or MAC address. It is now at the fixed
location .config/fish/fish_variables (#1912 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1912>).
• Exported variables in the global or universal scope no longer have their exported status affected by
local variables (#2611 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2611>).
• Major rework of terminal and job handling to eliminate bugs (#3805 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3805>, #3952 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3952>, #4178
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4178>, #4235 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4235>, #4238 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4238>, #4540
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4540>, #4929 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4929>, #5210 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/5210>).
• Improvements to the manual page completion generator (#2937 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2937>, #4313 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4313>).
• suspend --force now works correctly (#4672 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4672>).
• Pressing Ctrl-C while running a script now reliably terminates fish (#5253 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/5253>).
For distributors and developers
• fish ships with a new build system based on CMake. CMake 3.2 is the minimum required version. Although
the autotools-based Makefile and the Xcode project are still shipped with this release, they will be
removed in the near future. All distributors and developers are encouraged to migrate to the CMake
build.
• Build scripts for most platforms no longer require bash, using the standard sh instead.
• The hostname command is no longer required for fish to operate.
–
fish 2.7.1 (released December 23, 2017)
This release of fish fixes an issue where iTerm 2 on macOS would display a warning about paste bracketing
being left on when starting a new fish session (#4521 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4521>).
If you are upgrading from version 2.6.0 or before, please also review the release notes for 2.7.0 and
2.7b1 (included below).
–
fish 2.7.0 (released November 23, 2017)
There are no major changes between 2.7b1 and 2.7.0. If you are upgrading from version 2.6.0 or before,
please also review the release notes for 2.7b1 (included below).
Xcode builds and macOS packages could not be produced with 2.7b1, but this is fixed in 2.7.0.
–
fish 2.7b1 (released October 31, 2017)
Notable improvements
• A new cdh (change directory using recent history) command provides a more friendly alternative to
prevd/nextd and pushd/popd (#2847 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2847>).
• A new argparse command is available to allow fish script to parse arguments with the same behavior as
builtin commands. This also includes the fish_opt helper command. (#4190 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4190>).
• Invalid array indexes are now silently ignored (#826 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/826>, #4127 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4127>).
• Improvements to the debugging facility, including a prompt specific to the debugger
(fish_breakpoint_prompt) and a status is-breakpoint subcommand (#1310 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1310>).
• string supports new lower and upper subcommands, for altering the case of strings (#4080
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4080>). The case changing is not locale-aware yet.-
string escape has a new --style=xxx flag where xxx can be script, var, or url (#4150
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4150>), and can be reversed with string unescape (‐
#3543 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3543>).
• History can now be split into sessions with the fish_history variable, or not saved to disk at all (‐
#102 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/102>).
• Read history is now controlled by the fish_history variable rather than the --mode-name flag (#1504
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1504>).
• command now supports an --all flag to report all directories with the command. which is no longer a
runtime dependency (#2778 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2778>).
• fish can run commands before starting an interactive session using the new --init-command/-C options (‐
#4164 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4164>).
• set has a new --show option to show lots of information about variables (#4265
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4265>).
Other significant changes
• The COLUMNS and LINES environment variables are now correctly set the first time fish_prompt is run (‐
#4141 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4141>).
• complete’s --no-files option works as intended (#112 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/112>).
• echo -h now correctly echoes -h in line with other shells (#4120 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4120>).
• The export compatibility function now returns zero on success, rather than always returning 1 (#4435
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4435>).
• Stop converting empty elements in MANPATH to “.” (#4158 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/4158>). The behavior being changed was introduced in fish 2.6.0.
• count -h and count --help now return 1 rather than produce command help output (#4189
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4189>).
• An attempt to read which stops because too much data is available still defines the variables given as
parameters (#4180 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4180>).
• A regression in fish 2.4.0 which prevented pushd +1 from working has been fixed (#4091
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4091>).
• A regression in fish 2.6.0 where multiple read commands in non-interactive scripts were broken has been
fixed (#4206 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4206>).
• A regression in fish 2.6.0 involving universal variables with side-effects at startup such as set -U
fish_escape_delay_ms 10 has been fixed (#4196 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4196>).
• Added completions for:
• as (#4130 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4130>)
• cdh (#2847 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2847>)
• dhcpd (#4115 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4115>)
• ezjail-admin (#4324 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4324>)
• Fabric’s fab (#4153 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4153>)
• grub-file (#4119 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4119>)
• grub-install (#4119 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4119>)
• jest (#4142 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4142>)
• kdeconnect-cli
• magneto (#4043 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4043>, #4108
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4108>)
• mdadm (#4198 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4198>)
• passwd (#4209 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4209>)
• pip and pipenv (#4448 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4448>)
• s3cmd (#4332 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4332>)
• sbt (#4347 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4347>)
• snap (#4215 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4215>)
• Sublime Text 3’s subl (#4277 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4277>)
• Lots of improvements to completions.
• Updated Chinese and French translations.
• Improved completions for:
• apt
• cd (#4061 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4061>)
• composer (#4295 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4295>)
• eopkg
• flatpak (#4456 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4456>)
• git (#4117 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4117>, #4147 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/4147>, #4329 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4329>, #4368
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4368>)
• gphoto2
• killall (#4052 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4052>)
• ln
• npm (#4241 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4241>)
• ssh (#4377 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4377>)
• tail
• xdg-mime (#4333 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4333>)
• zypper (#4325 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4325>)
fish 2.6.0 (released June 3, 2017)
Since the beta release of fish 2.6b1, fish version 2.6.0 contains a number of minor fixes, new
completions for magneto (#4043 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4043>), and improvements
to the documentation.
Known issues
• Apple macOS Sierra 10.12.5 introduced a problem with launching web browsers from other programs using
AppleScript. This affects the fish Web configuration (fish_config); users on these platforms will need
to manually open the address displayed in the terminal, such as by copying and pasting it into a
browser. This problem will be fixed with macOS 10.12.6.
If you are upgrading from version 2.5.0 or before, please also review the release notes for 2.6b1
(included below).
----
fish 2.6b1 (released May 14, 2017)
Notable fixes and improvements
• Jobs running in the background can now be removed from the list of jobs with the new disown builtin,
which behaves like the same command in other shells (#2810 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2810>).
• Command substitutions now have access to the terminal, like in other shells. This allows tools like fzf
to work properly (#1362 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1362>, #3922
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3922>).
• In cases where the operating system does not report the size of the terminal, the COLUMNS and LINES
environment variables are used; if they are unset, a default of 80x24 is assumed.
• New French (#3772 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3772> & #3788
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3788>) and improved German (#3834
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3834>) translations.
• fish no longer depends on the which external command.
Other significant changes
• Performance improvements in launching processes, including major reductions in signal blocking.
Although this has been heavily tested, it may cause problems in some circumstances; set the
FISH_NO_SIGNAL_BLOCK variable to 0 in your fish configuration file to return to the old behaviour (‐
#2007 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2007>).
• Performance improvements in prompts and functions that set lots of colours (#3793
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3793>).
• The Delete key no longer deletes backwards (a regression in 2.5.0).
• functions supports a new --details option, which identifies where the function was loaded from (#3295
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3295>), and a --details --verbose option which
includes the function description (#597 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/597>).
• read will read up to 10 MiB by default, leaving the target variable empty and exiting with status 122
if the line is too long. You can set a different limit with the FISH_READ_BYTE_LIMIT variable.
• read supports a new --silent option to hide the characters typed (#838 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/838>), for when reading sensitive data from the terminal. read also now
accepts simple strings for the prompt (rather than scripts) with the new -P and --prompt-str options (‐
#802 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/802>).
• export and setenv now understand colon-separated PATH, CDPATH and MANPATH variables.
• setenv is no longer a simple alias for set -gx and will complain, just like the csh version, if given
more than one value (#4103 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4103>).
• bind supports a new --list-modes option (#3872 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3872>).
• bg will check all of its arguments before backgrounding any jobs; any invalid arguments will cause a
failure, but non-existent (eg recently exited) jobs are ignored (#3909 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3909>).
• funced warns if the function being edited has not been modified (#3961 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3961>).
• printf correctly outputs “long long” integers (#3352 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3352>).
• status supports a new current-function subcommand to print the current function name (#1743
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1743>).
• string supports a new repeat subcommand (#3864 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3864>).
string match supports a new --entire option to emit the entire line matched by a pattern (#3957
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3957>). string replace supports a new --filter option
to only emit lines which underwent a replacement (#3348 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3348>).
• test supports the -k option to test for sticky bits (#733 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/733>).
• umask understands symbolic modes (#738 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/738>).
• Empty components in the CDPATH, MANPATH and PATH variables are now converted to “.” (#2106
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2106>, #3914 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3914>).
• New versions of ncurses (6.0 and up) wipe terminal scrollback buffers with certain commands; the C-l
binding tries to avoid this (#2855 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2855>).
• Some systems’ su implementations do not set the USER environment variable; it is now reset for root
users (#3916 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3916>).
• Under terminals which support it, bracketed paste is enabled, escaping problematic characters for
security and convience (#3871 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3871>). Inside single
quotes ('), single quotes and backslashes in pasted text are escaped (#967 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/967>). The fish_clipboard_paste function (bound to C-v by default) is still the
recommended pasting method where possible as it includes this functionality and more.
• Processes in pipelines are no longer signalled as soon as one command in the pipeline has completed (‐
#1926 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1926>). This behaviour matches other shells mre
closely.
• All functions requiring Python work with whichever version of Python is installed (#3970
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3970>). Python 3 is preferred, but Python 2.6 remains
the minimum version required.
• The color of the cancellation character can be controlled by the fish_color_cancel variable (#3963
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3963>).
• Added completions for:
• caddy (#4008 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4008>)
• castnow (#3744 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3744>)
• climate (#3760 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3760>)
• flatpak
• gradle (#3859 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3859>)
• gsettings (#4001 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4001>)
• helm (#3829 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3829>)
• i3-msg (#3787 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3787>)
• ipset (#3924 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3924>)
• jq (#3804 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3804>)
• light (#3752 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3752>)
• minikube (#3778 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3778>)
• mocha (#3828 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3828>)
• mkdosfs (#4017 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/4017>)
• pv (#3773 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3773>)
• setsid (#3791 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3791>)
• terraform (#3960 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3960>)
• usermod (#3775 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3775>)
• xinput
• yarn (#3816 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3816>)
• Improved completions for adb (#3853 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3853>), apt (#3771
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3771>), bzr (#3769 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3769>), dconf, git (including #3743 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3743>), grep (#3789 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3789>), go (#3789
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3789>), help (#3789 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3789>), hg (#3975 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3975>), htop
(#3789 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3789>), killall (#3996
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3996>), lua, man (#3762 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3762>), mount (#3764 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3764> & ‐
#3841 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3841>), obnam (#3924 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3924>), perl (#3856 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3856>),
portmaster (#3950 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3950>), python (#3840
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3840>), ssh (#3781 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3781>), scp (#3781 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3781>),
systemctl (#3757 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3757>) and udisks (#3764
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3764>).
----
fish 2.5.0 (released February 3, 2017)
There are no major changes between 2.5b1 and 2.5.0. If you are upgrading from version 2.4.0 or before,
please also review the release notes for 2.5b1 (included below).
Notable fixes and improvements
• The Home, End, Insert, Delete, Page Up and Page Down keys work in Vi-style key bindings (#3731
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3731>).
----
fish 2.5b1 (released January 14, 2017)
Platform Changes
Starting with version 2.5, fish requires a more up-to-date version of C++, specifically C++11 (from
2011). This affects some older platforms:
Linux
For users building from source, GCC’s g++ 4.8 or later, or LLVM’s clang 3.3 or later, are known to work.
Older platforms may require a newer compiler installed.
Unfortunately, because of the complexity of the toolchain, binary packages are no longer published by the
fish-shell developers for the following platforms:
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux and CentOS 5 & 6 for 64-bit builds
• Ubuntu 12.04 (EoLTS April 2017)
• Debian 7 (EoLTS May 2018)
Installing newer version of fish on these systems will require building from source.
OS X SnowLeopard
Starting with version 2.5, fish requires a C++11 standard library on OS X 10.6 (“SnowLeopard”). If this
library is not installed, you will see this error: dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib
MacPorts is the easiest way to obtain this library. After installing the SnowLeopard MacPorts release
from the install page, run:
sudo port -v install libcxx
Now fish should launch successfully. (Please open an issue if it does not.)
This is only necessary on 10.6. OS X 10.7 and later include the required library by default.
Other significant changes
• Attempting to exit with running processes in the background produces a warning, then signals them to
terminate if a second attempt to exit is made. This brings the behaviour for running background
processes into line with stopped processes. (#3497 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3497>)
• random can now have start, stop and step values specified, or the new choice subcommand can be used to
pick an argument from a list (#3619 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3619>).
• A new key bindings preset, fish_hybrid_key_bindings, including all the Emacs-style and Vi-style
bindings, which behaves like fish_vi_key_bindings in fish 2.3.0 (#3556 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3556>).
• function now returns an error when called with invalid options, rather than defining the function
anyway (#3574 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3574>). This was a regression present in
fish 2.3 and 2.4.0.
• fish no longer prints a warning when it identifies a running instance of an old version (2.1.0 and
earlier). Changes to universal variables may not propagate between these old versions and 2.5b1.
• Improved compatiblity with Android (#3585 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3585>),
MSYS/mingw (#2360 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2360>), and Solaris (#3456
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3456>, #3340 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3340>).
• Like other shells, the test builting now returns an error for numeric operations on invalid integers (‐
#3346 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3346>, #3581 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3581>).
• complete no longer recognises --authoritative and --unauthoritative options, and they are marked as
obsolete.
• status accepts subcommands, and should be used like status is-interactive. The old options continue to
be supported for the foreseeable future (#3526 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3526>),
although only one subcommand or option can be specified at a time.
• Selection mode (used with “begin-selection”) no longer selects a character the cursor does not move
over (#3684 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3684>).
• List indexes are handled better, and a bit more liberally in some cases (echo $PATH[1 .. 3] is now
valid) (#3579 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3579>).
• The fish_mode_prompt function is now simply a stub around fish_default_mode_prompt, which allows the
mode prompt to be included more easily in customised prompt functions (#3641 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3641>).
Notable fixes and improvements
• alias, run without options or arguments, lists all defined aliases, and aliases now include a
description in the function signature that identifies them.
• complete accepts empty strings as descriptions (#3557 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3557>).
• command accepts -q/--quiet in combination with --search (#3591 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3591>), providing a simple way of checking whether a command exists in scripts.
• Abbreviations can now be renamed with abbr --rename OLD_KEY NEW_KEY (#3610 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3610>).
• The command synopses printed by --help options work better with copying and pasting (#2673
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2673>).
• help launches the browser specified by the $fish_help_browser variable if it is set (#3131
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3131>).
• History merging could lose items under certain circumstances and is now fixed (#3496
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3496>).
• The $status variable is now set to 123 when a syntactically invalid command is entered (#3616
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3616>).
• Exiting fish now signals all background processes to terminate, not just stopped jobs (#3497
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3497>).
• A new prompt_hostname function which prints a hostname suitable for use in prompts (#3482
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3482>).
• The __fish_man_page function (bound to Alt-h by default) now tries to recognize subcommands (e.g. git
add will now open the “git-add” man page) (#3678
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3678>).
• A new function edit_command_buffer (bound to Alt-e & Alt-v by default) to edit the command buffer in an
external editor (#1215 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1215>, #3627
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3627>).
• set_color now supports italics (--italics), dim (--dim) and reverse (--reverse) modes (#3650
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3650>).
• Filesystems with very slow locking (eg incorrectly-configured NFS) will no longer slow fish down (#685
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/685>).
• Improved completions for apt (#3695 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3695>), fusermount
(#3642 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3642>), make (#3628 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3628>), netctl-auto (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3378>), nmcli (#3648 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3648>), pygmentize
(#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>), and tar (#3719
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3719>).
• Added completions for:
• VBoxHeadless (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• VBoxSDL (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• base64 (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• caffeinate (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• dconf (#3638 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3638>)
• dig (#3495 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3495>)
• dpkg-reconfigure (#3521 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3521> & #3522
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3522>)
• feh (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• launchctl (#3682 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3682>)
• lxc (#3554 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3554> & #3564 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3564>),
• mddiagnose (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• mdfind (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• mdimport (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• mdls (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• mdutil (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• mkvextract (#3492 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3492>)
• nvram (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
• objdump (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• sysbench (#3491 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3491>)
• tmutil (#3524 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3524>)
----
fish 2.4.0 (released November 8, 2016)
There are no major changes between 2.4b1 and 2.4.0.
Notable fixes and improvements
• The documentation is now generated properly and with the correct version identifier.
• Automatic cursor changes are now only enabled on the subset of XTerm versions known to support them,
resolving a problem where older versions printed garbage to the terminal before and after every prompt
(#3499 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3499>).
• Improved the title set in Apple Terminal.app.
• Added completions for defaults and improved completions for diskutil (#3478 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3478>).
----
fish 2.4b1 (released October 18, 2016)
Significant changes
• The clipboard integration has been revamped with explicit bindings. The killring commands no longer
copy from, or paste to, the X11 clipboard - use the new copy (C-x) and paste (C-v) bindings instead.
The clipboard is now available on OS X as well as systems using X11 (e.g. Linux). (#3061
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3061>)
• history uses subcommands (history delete) rather than options (history --delete) for its actions (#3367
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3367>). You can no longer specify multiple actions via
flags (e.g., history --delete --save something).
• New history options have been added, including --max=n to limit the number of history entries,
--show-time option to show timestamps (#3175 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3175>, ‐
#3244 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3244>), and --null to null terminate history
entries in the search output.
• history search is now case-insensitive by default (which also affects history delete) (#3236
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3236>).
• history delete now correctly handles multiline commands (#31 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/31>).
• Vi-style bindings no longer include all of the default emacs-style bindings; instead, they share some
definitions (#3068 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3068>).
• If there is no locale set in the environment, various known system configuration files will be checked
for a default. If no locale can be found, en_US-UTF.8 will be used (#277 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/277>).
• A number followed by a caret (e.g. 5^) is no longer treated as a redirection (#1873
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1873>).
• The $version special variable can be overwritten, so that it can be used for other purposes if
required.
Notable fixes and improvements
• The fish_realpath builtin has been renamed to realpath and made compatible with GNU realpath when run
without arguments (#3400 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3400>). It is used only for
systems without a realpath or grealpath utility (#3374 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3374>).
• Improved color handling on terminals/consoles with 8-16 colors, particularly the use of bright named
color (#3176 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3176>, #3260 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3260>).
• fish_indent can now read from files given as arguments, rather than just standard input (#3037
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3037>).
• Fuzzy tab completions behave in a less surprising manner (#3090 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3090>, #3211 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3211>).
• jobs should only print its header line once (#3127 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3127>).
• Wildcards in redirections are highlighted appropriately (#2789 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2789>).
• Suggestions will be offered more often, like after removing characters (#3069 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3069>).
• history --merge now correctly interleaves items in chronological order (#2312 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2312>).
• Options for fish_indent have been aligned with the other binaries - in particular, -d now means
--debug. The --dump option has been renamed to --dump-parse-tree (#3191 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3191>).
• The display of bindings in the Web-based configuration has been greatly improved (#3325
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3325>), as has the rendering of prompts (#2924
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2924>).
• fish should no longer hang using 100% CPU in the C locale (#3214 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3214>).
• A bug in FreeBSD 11 & 12, Dragonfly BSD & illumos prevented fish from working correctly on these
platforms under UTF-8 locales; fish now avoids the buggy behaviour (#3050 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3050>).
• Prompts which show git repository information (via __fish_git_prompt) are faster in large repositories
(#3294 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3294>) and slow filesystems (#3083
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3083>).
• fish 2.3.0 reintroduced a problem where the greeting was printed even when using read; this has been
corrected again (#3261 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3261>).
• Vi mode changes the cursor depending on the current mode (#3215 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3215>).
• Command lines with escaped space characters at the end tab-complete correctly (#2447
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2447>).
• Added completions for:
• arcanist (#3256 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3256>)
• connmanctl (#3419 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3419>)
• figlet (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• mdbook (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• ninja (#3415 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3415>)
• p4, the Perforce client (#3314 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3314>)
• pygmentize (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• ranger (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>)
• Improved completions for aura (#3297 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3297>), abbr (‐
#3267 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3267>), brew (#3309 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3309>), chown (#3380 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3380>, ‐
#3383 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3383>),cygport (#3392 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3392>), git (#3274 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3274>, ‐
#3226 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3226>, #3225 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3225>, #3094 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3094>, #3087
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3087>, #3035 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3035>, #3021 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3021>, #2982
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2982>, #3230 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3230>), kill & pkill (#3200 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3200>),
screen (#3271 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3271>), wget (#3470
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3470>), and xz (#3378 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3378>).
• Distributors, packagers and developers will notice that the build process produces more succinct output
by default; use make V=1 to get verbose output (#3248 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3248>).
• Improved compatibility with minor platforms including musl (#2988 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2988>), Cygwin (#2993 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2993>), Android (‐
#3441 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3441>, #3442 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3442>), Haiku (#3322 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3322>)
and Solaris .
----
fish 2.3.1 (released July 3, 2016)
This is a functionality and bugfix release. This release does not contain all the changes to fish since
the last release, but fixes a number of issues directly affecting users at present and includes a small
number of new features.
Significant changes
• A new fish_key_reader binary for decoding interactive keypresses (#2991 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2991>).
• fish_mode_prompt has been updated to reflect the changes in the way the Vi input mode is set up (#3067
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3067>), making this more reliable.
• fish_config can now properly be launched from the OS X app bundle (#3140 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3140>).
Notable fixes and improvements
• Extra lines were sometimes inserted into the output under Windows (Cygwin and Microsoft Windows
Subsystem for Linux) due to TTY timestamps not being updated (#2859 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2859>).
• The string builtin’s match mode now handles the combination of -rnv (match, invert and count) correctly
(#3098 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3098>).
• Improvements to TTY special character handling (#3064 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/3064>), locale handling (#3124 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3124>) and
terminal environment variable handling (#3060 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3060>).
• Work towards handling the terminal modes for external commands launched from initialisation files (‐
#2980 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2980>).
• Ease the upgrade path from fish 2.2.0 and before by warning users to restart fish if the string builtin
is not available (#3057 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3057>).
• type -a now syntax-colorizes function source output.
• Added completions for alsamixer, godoc, gofmt, goimports, gorename, lscpu, mkdir, modinfo, netctl-auto,
poweroff, termite, udisksctl and xz (#3123 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3123>).
• Improved completions for apt (#3097 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3097>), aura (‐
#3102 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3102>),git (#3114 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/3114>), npm (#3158 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3158>),
string and suspend (#3154 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3154>).
----
fish 2.3.0 (released May 20, 2016)
There are no significant changes between 2.3.0 and 2.3b2.
Other notable fixes and improvements
• abbr now allows non-letter keys (#2996 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2996>).
• Define a few extra colours on first start (#2987
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2987>).
• Multiple documentation updates.
• Added completions for rmmod (#3007 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/3007>).
• Improved completions for git (#2998 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2998>).
Known issues
• Interactive commands started from fish configuration files or from the -c option may, under certain
circumstances, be started with incorrect terminal modes and fail to behave as expected. A fix is
planned but requires further testing (#2619 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2619>).
----
fish 2.3b2 (released May 5, 2016)
Significant changes
• A new fish_realpath builtin and associated function to allow the use of realpath even on those
platforms that don’t ship an appropriate command (#2932 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2932>).
• Alt-# toggles the current command line between commented and uncommented states, making it easy to save
a command in history without executing it.
• The fish_vi_mode function is now deprecated in favour of fish_vi_key_bindings.
Other notable fixes and improvements
• Fix the build on Cygwin (#2952 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2952>) and RedHat
Enterprise Linux/CentOS 5 (#2955 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2955>).
• Avoid confusing the terminal line driver with non-printing characters in fish_title (#2453
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2453>).
• Improved completions for busctl, git (#2585 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2585>, ‐
#2879 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2879>, #2984 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2984>), and netctl.
----
fish 2.3b1 (released April 19, 2016)
Significant Changes
• A new string builtin to handle… strings! This builtin will measure, split, search and replace text
strings, including using regular expressions. It can also be used to turn lists into plain strings
using join. string can be used in place of sed, grep, tr, cut, and awk in many situations. (#2296
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2296>)
• Allow using escape as the Meta modifier key, by waiting after seeing an escape character wait up to
300ms for an additional character. This is consistent with readline (e.g. bash) and can be configured
via the fish_escape_delay_ms variable. This allows using escape as the Meta modifier. (#1356
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1356>)
• Add new directories for vendor functions and configuration snippets (#2500 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2500>)
• A new fish_realpath builtin and associated realpath function should allow scripts to resolve path names
via realpath regardless of whether there is an external command of that name; albeit with some
limitations. See the associated documentation.
Backward-incompatible changes
• Unmatched globs will now cause an error, except when used with for, set or count (#2719
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2719>)
• and and or will now bind to the closest if or while, allowing compound conditions without begin and end
(#1428 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1428>)
• set -ql now searches up to function scope for variables (#2502 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2502>)
• status -f will now behave the same when run as the main script or using source (#2643
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2643>)
• source no longer puts the file name in $argv if no arguments are given (#139 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/139>)
• History files are stored under the XDG_DATA_HOME hierarchy (by default, in ~/.local/share), and
existing history will be moved on first use (#744
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/744>)
Other notable fixes and improvements
• Fish no longer silences errors in config.fish (#2702 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2702>)
• Directory autosuggestions will now descend as far as possible if there is only one child directory (‐
#2531 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2531>)
• Add support for bright colors (#1464 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1464>)
• Allow Ctrl-J (\cj) to be bound separately from Ctrl-M (\cm) (#217 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/217>)
• psub now has a “-s”/“–suffix” option to name the temporary file with that suffix
• Enable 24-bit colors on select terminals (#2495 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2495>)
• Support for SVN status in the prompt (#2582 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2582>)
• Mercurial and SVN support have been added to the Classic + Git (now Classic + VCS) prompt (via the new
__fish_vcs_prompt function) (#2592 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2592>)
• export now handles variables with a “=” in the value (#2403 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2403>)
• New completions for:
• alsactl
• Archlinux’s asp, makepkg
• Atom’s apm (#2390 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2390>)
• entr - the “Event Notify Test Runner” (#2265 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2265>)
• Fedora’s dnf (#2638 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2638>)
• OSX diskutil (#2738 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2738>)
• pkgng (#2395 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2395>)
• pulseaudio’s pacmd and pactl
• rust’s rustc and cargo (#2409 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2409>)
• sysctl (#2214 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2214>)
• systemd’s machinectl (#2158 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2158>), busctl (#2144
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2144>), systemd-nspawn, systemd-analyze, localectl,
timedatectl
• and more
• Fish no longer has a function called sgrep, freeing it for user customization (#2245
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2245>)
• A rewrite of the completions for cd, fixing a few bugs (#2299 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2299>, #2300 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2300>, #562
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/562>)
• Linux VTs now run in a simplified mode to avoid issues (#2311 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2311>)
• The vi-bindings now inherit from the emacs bindings
• Fish will also execute fish_user_key_bindings when in vi-mode
• funced will now also check $VISUAL (#2268 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2268>)
• A new suspend function (#2269 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2269>)
• Subcommand completion now works better with split /usr (#2141 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2141>)
• The command-not-found-handler can now be overridden by defining a function called
__fish_command_not_found_handler in config.fish (#2332 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/2332>)
• A few fixes to the Sorin theme
• PWD shortening in the prompt can now be configured via the fish_prompt_pwd_dir_length variable, set to
the length per path component (#2473 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2473>)
• fish no longer requires /etc/fish/config.fish to correctly start, and now ships a skeleton file that
only contains some documentation (#2799 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/2799>)
----
fish 2.2.0 (released July 12, 2015)
Significant changes
• Abbreviations: the new abbr command allows for interactively-expanded abbreviations, allowing quick
access to frequently-used commands (#731 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/731>).
• Vi mode: run fish_vi_mode to switch fish into the key bindings and prompt familiar to users of the Vi
editor (#65 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/65>).
• New inline and interactive pager, which will be familiar to users of zsh (#291
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/291>).
• Underlying architectural changes: the fishd universal variable server has been removed as it was a
source of many bugs and security problems. Notably, old fish sessions will not be able to communicate
universal variable changes with new fish sessions. For best results, restart all running instances of
fish.
• The web-based configuration tool has been redesigned, featuring a prompt theme chooser and other
improvements.
• New German, Brazilian Portuguese, and Chinese translations.
Backward-incompatible changes
These are kept to a minimum, but either change undocumented features or are too hard to use in their
existing forms. These changes may break existing scripts.
• commandline no longer interprets functions “in reverse”, instead behaving as expected (#1567
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1567>).
• The previously-undocumented CMD_DURATION variable is now set for all commands and contains the
execution time of the last command in milliseconds (#1585 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1585>). It is no longer exported to other commands (#1896 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1896>).
• if / else conditional statements now return values consistent with the Single Unix Specification, like
other shells (#1443 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1443>).
• A new “top-level” local scope has been added, allowing local variables declared on the commandline to
be visible to subsequent commands. (#1908 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1908>)
Other notable fixes and improvements
• New documentation design (#1662 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1662>), which requires
a Doxygen version 1.8.7 or newer to build.
• Fish now defines a default directory for other packages to provide completions. By default this is
/usr/share/fish/vendor-completions.d; on systems with pkgconfig installed this path is discoverable
with pkg-config --variable completionsdir fish.
• A new parser removes many bugs; all existing syntax should keep working.
• New fish_preexec and fish_postexec events are fired before and after job execution respectively (#1549
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1549>).
• Unmatched wildcards no longer prevent a job from running. Wildcards used interactively will still print
an error, but the job will proceed and the wildcard will expand to zero arguments (#1482
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1482>).
• The . command is deprecated and the source command is preferred (#310 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/310>).
• bind supports “bind modes”, which allows bindings to be set for a particular named mode, to support the
implementation of Vi mode.
• A new export alias, which behaves like other shells (#1833 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1833>).
• command has a new --search option to print the name of the disk file that would be executed, like other
shells’ command -v (#1540 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1540>).
• commandline has a new --paging-mode option to support the new pager.
• complete has a new --wraps option, which allows a command to (recursively) inherit the completions of a
wrapped command (#393 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/393>), and complete -e now
correctly erases completions (#380 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/380>).
• Completions are now generated from manual pages by default on the first run of fish (#997
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/997>).
• fish_indent can now produce colorized (--ansi) and HTML (--html) output (#1827
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1827>).
• functions --erase now prevents autoloaded functions from being reloaded in the current session.
• history has a new --merge option, to incorporate history from other sessions into the current session
(#825 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/825>).
• jobs returns 1 if there are no active jobs (#1484 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1484>).
• read has several new options:
• --array to break input into an array (#1540 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1540>)
• --null to break lines on NUL characters rather than newlines (#1694 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1694>)
• --nchars to read a specific number of characters (#1616 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1616>)
• --right-prompt to display a right-hand-side prompt during interactive read (#1698
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1698>).
• type has a new -q option to suppress output (#1540 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1540> and, like other shells, type -a now prints all matches for a command (#261
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/261>).
• Pressing f1 now shows the manual page for the current command (#1063 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1063>).
• fish_title functions have access to the arguments of the currently running argument as $argv[1] (#1542
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1542>).
• The OS command-not-found handler is used on Arch Linux (#1925 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1925>), nixOS (#1852 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1852>), openSUSE and
Fedora (#1280 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1280>).
• Alt+. searches backwards in the token history, mapping to the same behavior as inserting the last
argument of the previous command, like other shells (#89 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/89>).
• The SHLVL environment variable is incremented correctly (#1634 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1634> & #1693 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1693>).
• Added completions for adb (#1165 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1165> & #1211
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1211>), apt (#2018 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2018>), aura (#1292 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1292>),
composer (#1607 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1607>), cygport (#1841
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1841>), dropbox (#1533 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1533>), elixir (#1167 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1167>),
fossil, heroku (#1790 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1790>), iex (#1167
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1167>), kitchen (#2000 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/2000>), nix (#1167 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1167>),
node/npm (#1566 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1566>), opam (#1615
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1615>), setfacl (#1752 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1752>), tmuxinator (#1863 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1863>), and yast2 (#1739 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1739>).
• Improved completions for brew (#1090 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1090> & #1810
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1810>), bundler (#1779 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1779>), cd (#1135 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1135>),
emerge (#1840 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1840>),git (#1680
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1680>, #1834 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1834> & #1951 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1951>), man (#960
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/960>), modprobe (#1124 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1124>), pacman (#1292 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1292>),
rpm (#1236 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1236>), rsync (#1872
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1872>), scp (#1145 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1145>), ssh (#1234 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1234>),
sshfs (#1268 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1268>), systemctl (#1462
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1462>, #1950 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1950> & #1972 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1972>), tmux (#1853
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1853>), vagrant (#1748 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/1748>), yum (#1269 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1269>), and
zypper (#1787 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1787>).
----
fish 2.1.2 (released Feb 24, 2015)
fish 2.1.2 contains a workaround for a filesystem bug in Mac OS X Yosemite. #1859
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1859>
Specifically, after installing fish 2.1.1 and then rebooting, “Verify Disk” in Disk Utility will report
“Invalid number of hard links.” We don’t have any reports of data loss or other adverse consequences.
fish 2.1.2 avoids triggering the bug, but does not repair an already affected filesystem. To repair the
filesystem, you can boot into Recovery Mode and use Repair Disk from Disk Utility. Linux and versions of
OS X prior to Yosemite are believed to be unaffected.
There are no other changes in this release.
----
fish 2.1.1 (released September 26, 2014)
Important: if you are upgrading, stop all running instances of fishd as soon as possible after installing
this release; it will be restarted automatically. On most systems, there will be no further action
required. Note that some environments (where XDG_RUNTIME_DIR is set), such as Fedora 20, will require a
restart of all running fish processes before universal variables work as intended.
Distributors are highly encouraged to call killall fishd, pkill fishd or similar in installation scripts,
or to warn their users to do so.
Security fixes
• The fish_config web interface now uses an authentication token to protect requests and only responds to
requests from the local machine with this token, preventing a remote code execution attack. (closing
CVE-2014-2914). #1438 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1438>
• psub and funced are no longer vulnerable to attacks which allow local privilege escalation and data
tampering (closing CVE-2014-2906 and CVE-2014-3856). #1437 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1437>
• fishd uses a secure path for its socket, preventing a local privilege escalation attack (closing
CVE-2014-2905). #1436 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1436>
• __fish_print_packages is no longer vulnerable to attacks which would allow local privilege escalation
and data tampering (closing CVE-2014-3219). #1440 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1440>
Other fixes
• fishd now ignores SIGPIPE, fixing crashes using tools like GNU Parallel and which occurred more often
as a result of the other fishd changes. #1084 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1084> &
#1690 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/1690>
----
fish 2.1.0
Significant Changes
• Tab completions will fuzzy-match files. #568 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/568>
When tab-completing a file, fish will first attempt prefix matches (foo matches foobar), then substring
matches (ooba matches foobar), and lastly subsequence matches (fbr matches foobar). For example, in a
directory with files foo1.txt, foo2.txt, foo3.txt…, you can type only the numeric part and hit tab to
fill in the rest.
This feature is implemented for files and executables. It is not yet implemented for options (like
--foobar), and not yet implemented across path components (like /u/l/b to match /usr/local/bin).
• Redirections now work better across pipelines. #110 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/110>, #877 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/877>
In particular, you can pipe stderr and stdout together, for example, with cmd ^&1 | tee log.txt, or the
more familiar cmd 2>&1 | tee log.txt.
• A single ``%`` now expands to the last job backgrounded. #1008 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/1008>
Previously, a single % would pid-expand to either all backgrounded jobs, or all jobs owned by your
user. Now it expands to the last job backgrounded. If no job is in the background, it will fail to
expand. In particular, fg % can be used to put the most recent background job in the foreground.
Other Notable Fixes
• alt-U and alt+C now uppercase and capitalize words, respectively. #995 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/995>
• VTE based terminals should now know the working directory. #906 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/906>
• The autotools build now works on Mavericks. #968 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/968>
• The end-of-line binding (ctrl+E) now accepts autosuggestions. #932 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/932>
• Directories in /etc/paths (used on OS X) are now prepended instead of appended, similar to other
shells. #927 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/927>
• Option-right-arrow (used for partial autosuggestion completion) now works on iTerm2. #920
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/920>
• Tab completions now work properly within nested subcommands. #913 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/913>
• printf supports \e, the escape character. #910 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/910>
• fish_config history no longer shows duplicate items. #900 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/900>
• $fish_user_paths is now prepended to $PATH instead of appended. #888 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/888>
• Jobs complete when all processes complete. #876 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/876>
For example, in previous versions of fish, sleep 10 | echo Done returns control immediately, because
echo does not read from stdin. Now it does not complete until sleep exits (presumably after 10
seconds).
• Better error reporting for square brackets. #875 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/875>
• fish no longer tries to add /bin to $PATH unless PATH is totally empty. #852 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/852>
• History token substitution (alt-up) now works correctly inside subshells. #833
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/833>
• Flow control is now disabled, freeing up ctrl-S and ctrl-Q for other uses. #814
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/814>
• sh-style variable setting like foo=bar now produces better error messages. #809
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/809>
• Commands with wildcards no longer produce autosuggestions. #785 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/785>
• funced no longer freaks out when supplied with no arguments. #780 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/780>
• fish.app now works correctly in a directory containing spaces. #774 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/774>
• Tab completion cycling no longer occasionally fails to repaint. #765 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/765>
• Comments now work in eval’d strings. #684 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/684>
• History search (up-arrow) now shows the item matching the autosuggestion, if that autosuggestion was
truncated. #650 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/650>
• Ctrl-T now transposes characters, as in other shells. #128 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/128>
----
fish 2.0.0
Significant Changes
• Command substitutions now modify ``$status`` :issue:`547`. Previously the exit status of command
substitutions (like (pwd)) was ignored; however now it modifies $status. Furthermore, the set command
now only sets $status on failure; it is untouched on success. This allows for the following pattern:
if set python_path (which python)
...
end
Because set does not modify $status on success, the if branch effectively tests whether which
succeeded, and if so, whether the set also succeeded.
• Improvements to PATH handling. There is a new variable, fish_user_paths, which can be set universally,
and whose contents are appended to $PATH #527 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/527>
• /etc/paths and /etc/paths.d are now respected on OS X
• fish no longer modifies $PATH to find its own binaries
• Long lines no longer use ellipsis for line breaks, and copy and paste should no longer include a
newline even if the line was broken #300 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/300>
• New syntax for index ranges (sometimes known as “slices”) #212 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/212>
• fish now supports an ``else if`` statement #134 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/134>
• Process and pid completion now works on OS X #129 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/129>
• fish is now relocatable, and no longer depends on compiled-in paths #125 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/125>
• fish now supports a right prompt (RPROMPT) through the fish_right_prompt function #80
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/80>
• fish now uses posix_spawn instead of fork when possible, which is much faster on BSD and OS X #11
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/11>
Other Notable Fixes
• Updated VCS completions (darcs, cvs, svn, etc.)
• Avoid calling getcwd on the main thread, as it can hang #696 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/696>
• Control-D (forward delete) no longer stops at a period #667 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/667>
• Completions for many new commands
• fish now respects rxvt’s unique keybindings #657 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/657>
• xsel is no longer built as part of fish. It will still be invoked if installed separately #633
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/633>
• __fish_filter_mime no longer spews #628 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/628>
• The –no-execute option to fish no longer falls over when reaching the end of a block #624
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/624>
• fish_config knows how to find fish even if it’s not in the $PATH #621 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/621>
• A leading space now prevents writing to history, as is done in bash and zsh #615
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/615>
• Hitting enter after a backslash only goes to a new line if it is followed by whitespace or the end of
the line #613 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/613>
• printf is now a builtin #611 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/611>
• Event handlers should no longer fire if signals are blocked #608 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/608>
• set_color is now a builtin #578 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/578>
• man page completions are now located in a new generated_completions directory, instead of your
completions directory #576 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/576>
• tab now clears autosuggestions #561 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/561>
• tab completion from within a pair of quotes now attempts to “appropriate” the closing quote #552
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/552>
• $EDITOR can now be a list: for example, set EDITOR gvim -f) #541 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/541>
• case bodies are now indented #530 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/530>
• The profile switch -p no longer crashes #517 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/517>
• You can now control-C out of read #516 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/516>
• umask is now functional on OS X #515 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/515>
• Avoid calling getpwnam on the main thread, as it can hang #512 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/512>
• Alt-F or Alt-right-arrow (Option-F or option-right-arrow) now accepts one word of an autosuggestion ‐
#435 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/435>
• Setting fish as your login shell no longer kills OpenSUSE #367 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/367>
• Backslashes now join lines, instead of creating multiple commands #347 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/347>
• echo now implements the -e flag to interpret escapes #337 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/337>
• When the last token in the user’s input contains capital letters, use its case in preference to that of
the autosuggestion #335 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/335>
• Descriptions now have their own muted color #279 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/279>
• Wildcards beginning with a . (for example, ls .*) no longer match . and .. #270
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/270>
• Recursive wildcards now handle symlink loops #268 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/268>
• You can now delete history items from the fish_config web interface #250 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/250>
• The OS X build now weak links wcsdup and wcscasecmp #240 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/240>
• fish now saves and restores the process group, which prevents certain processes from being erroneously
reported as stopped #197 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/197>
• funced now takes an editor option #187 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/187>
• Alternating row colors are available in fish pager through fish_pager_color_secondary #186
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/186>
• Universal variable values are now stored based on your MAC address, not your hostname #183
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/183>
• The caret ^ now only does a stderr redirection if it is the first character of a token, making git
users happy #168 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/168>
• Autosuggestions will no longer cause line wrapping #167 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/167>
• Better handling of Unicode combining characters #155 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/155>
• fish SIGHUPs processes more often #138 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/138>
• fish no longer causes sudo to ask for a password every time
• fish behaves better under Midnight Commander #121 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/121>
• set -e no longer crashes #100 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/100>
• fish now will automatically import history from bash, if there is no fish history #66
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/66>
• Backslashed-newlines inside quoted strings now behave more intuitively #52 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/52>
• Tab titles should be shown correctly in iTerm2 #47 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/47>
• scp remote path completion now sometimes works #42 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/42>
• The read builtin no longer shows autosuggestions #29 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/29>
• Custom key bindings can now be set via the fish_user_key_bindings function #21
<https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/issues/21>
• All Python scripts now run correctly under both Python 2 and Python 3 #14 <https://github.com/fish-
shell/fish-shell/issues/14>
• The “accept autosuggestion” key can now be configured #19 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/19>
• Autosuggestions will no longer suggest invalid commands #6 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/6>
----
fishfish Beta r2
Bug Fixes
• Implicit cd is back, for paths that start with one or two dots, a slash, or a tilde.
• Overrides of default functions should be fixed. The “internalized scripts” feature is disabled for now.
• Disabled delayed suspend. This is a strange job-control feature of BSD systems, including OS X.
Disabling it frees up Control Y for other purposes; in particular, for yank, which now works on OS X.
• fish_indent is fixed. In particular, the funced and funcsave functions work again.
• A SIGTERM now ends the whole execution stack again (resolving #13 <https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-
shell/issues/13>).
• Bumped the __fish_config_interactive version number so the default fish_color_autosuggestion kicks in.
• fish_config better handles combined term256 and classic colors like “555 yellow”.
New Features
• A history builtin, and associated interactive function that enables deleting history items. Example
usage: * Print all history items beginning with echo: history --prefix echo * Print all history items
containing foo: history --contains foo * Interactively delete some items containing foo: history
--delete --contains foo
Credit to @siteshwar for implementation. Thanks @siteshwar!
----
fishfish Beta r1
Scripting
• No changes! All existing fish scripts, config files, completions, etc. from trunk should continue to
work.
New Features
• Autosuggestions. Think URL fields in browsers. When you type a command, fish will suggest the rest of
the command after the cursor, in a muted gray when possible. You can accept the suggestion with the
right arrow key or Ctrl-F. Suggestions come from command history, completions, and some custom code for
cd; there’s a lot of potential for improvement here. The suggestions are computed on a background
pthread, so they never slow down your typing. The autosuggestion feature is incredible. I miss it
dearly every time I use anything else.
• term256 support where available, specifically modern xterms and OS X Lion. You can specify colors the
old way (‘set_color cyan’) or by specifying RGB hex values (‘set_color FF3333’); fish will pick the
closest supported color. Some xterms do not advertise term256 support either in the $TERM or terminfo
max_colors field, but nevertheless support it. For that reason, fish will default into using it on any
xterm (but it can be disabled with an environment variable).
• Web-based configuration page. There is a new function ‘fish_config’. This spins up a simple Python web
server and opens a browser window to it. From this web page, you can set your shell colors and view
your functions, variables, and history; all changes apply immediately to all running shells. Eventually
all configuration ought to be supported via this mechanism (but in addition to, not instead of, command
line mechanisms).
• Man page completions. There is a new function ‘fish_update_completions’. This function reads all the
man1 files from your manpath, removes the roff formatting, parses them to find the commands and
options, and outputs fish completions into ~/.config/fish/completions. It won’t overwrite existing
completion files (except ones that it generated itself).
Programmatic Changes
• fish is now entirely in C++. I have no particular love for C++, but it provides a ready memory-model to
replace halloc. We’ve made an effort to keep it to a sane and portable subset (no C++11, no boost, no
going crazy with templates or smart pointers), but we do use the STL and a little tr1.
• halloc is entirely gone, replaced by normal C++ ownership semantics. If you don’t know what halloc is,
well, now you have two reasons to be happy.
• All the crufty C data structures are entirely gone. array_list_t, priority_queue_t, hash_table_t,
string_buffer_t have been removed and replaced by STL equivalents like std::vector, std::map, and
std::wstring. A lot of the string handling now uses std::wstring instead of wchar_t *
• fish now spawns pthreads for tasks like syntax highlighting that require blocking I/O.
• History has been completely rewritten. History files now use an extensible YAML-style syntax. History
“merging” (multiple shells writing to the same history file) now works better. There is now a maximum
history length of about 250k items (256 * 1024).
• The parser has been “instanced,” so you can now create more than one.
• Total #LoC has shrunk slightly even with the new features.
Performance
• fish now runs syntax highlighting in a background thread, so typing commands is always responsive even
on slow filesystems.
• echo, test, and pwd are now builtins, which eliminates many forks.
• The files in share/functions and share/completions now get ‘internalized’ into C strings that get
compiled in with fish. This substantially reduces the number of files touched at startup. A consequence
is that you cannot change these functions without recompiling, but often other functions depend on
these “standard” functions, so changing them is perhaps not a good idea anyways.
Here are some system call counts for launching and then exiting fish with the default configuration, on
OS X. The first column is fish trunk, the next column is with our changes, and the last column is bash
for comparison. This data was collected via dtrace.
before
after
bash
open
9
4
5
fork
28
14
0
stat
131
85
11
lstat
670
0
0
read
332
80
4
write
172
149
0
The large number of forks relative to bash are due to fish’s insanely expensive default prompt, which is
unchanged in my version. If we switch to a prompt comparable to bash’s (lame) default, the forks drop to
16 with trunk, 4 after our changes.
The large reduction in lstat() numbers is due to fish no longer needing to call ttyname() on OS X.
We’ve got some work to do to be as lean as bash, but we’re on the right track.
Contributing To Fish
This document tells you how you can contribute to fish.
Fish is free and open source software, distributed under the terms of the GPLv2.
Contributions are welcome, and there are many ways to contribute!
Whether you want to change some of the core Rust source, enhance or add a completion script or function,
improve the documentation or translate something, this document will tell you how.
Getting Set Up
Fish is developed on Github, at https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell.
First, you'll need an account there, and you'll need a git clone of fish. Fork it on Github and then
run:
git clone https://github.com/<USERNAME>/fish-shell.git
This will create a copy of the fish repository in the directory fish-shell in your current working
directory.
Also, for most changes you want to run the tests and so you'd get a setup to compile fish. For that,
you'll require:
• Rust - when in doubt, try rustup
• CMake
• PCRE2 (headers and libraries) - optional, this will be downloaded if missing
• gettext (headers and libraries) - optional, for translation support
• Sphinx - optional, to build the documentation
Of course not everything is required always - if you just want to contribute something to the
documentation you'll just need Sphinx, and if the change is very simple and obvious you can just send it
in. Use your judgement!
Once you have your changes, open a pull request on https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/pulls.
Guidelines
In short:
• Be conservative in what you need (keep to the agreed minimum supported Rust version, limit new
dependencies)
• Use automated tools to help you (including make fish_run_tests and build_tools/style.fish)
Contributing completions
Completion scripts are the most common contribution to fish, and they are very welcome.
In general, we'll take all well-written completion scripts for a command that is publically available.
This means no private tools or personal scripts, and we do reserve the right to reject for other reasons.
Before you try to contribute them to fish, consider if the authors of the tool you are completing want to
maintain the script instead. Often that makes more sense, specifically because they can add new options
to the script immediately once they add them, and don't have to maintain one completion script for
multiple versions. If the authors no longer wish to maintain the script, they can of course always
contact the fish maintainers to hand it over, preferably by opening a PR. This isn't a requirement - if
the authors don't want to maintain it, or you simply don't want to contact them, you can contribute your
script to fish.
Completion scripts should
1. Use as few dependencies as possible - try to use fish's builtins like string instead of grep and awk,
use python to read json instead of jq (because it's already a soft dependency for fish's tools)
2. If it uses a common unix tool, use posix-compatible invocations - ideally it would work on GNU/Linux,
macOS, the BSDs and other systems
3. Option and argument descriptions should be kept short. The shorter the description, the more likely
it is that fish can use more columns.
4. Function names should start with __fish, and functions should be kept in the completion file unless
they're used elsewhere.
5. Run fish_indent on your script.
6. Try not to use minor convenience features right after they are available in fish - we do try to keep
completion scripts backportable. If something has a real impact on the correctness or performance,
feel free to use it, but if it is just a shortcut, please leave it.
Put your completion script into share/completions/name-of-command.fish. If you have multiple commands,
you need multiple files.
If you want to add tests, you probably want to add a littlecheck test. See below for details.
Contributing documentation
The documentation is stored in doc_src/, and written in ReStructured Text and built with Sphinx.
To build it locally, run from the main fish-shell directory:
sphinx-build -j 8 -b html -n doc_src/ /tmp/fish-doc/
which will build the docs as html in /tmp/fish-doc. You can open it in a browser and see that it looks
okay.
The builtins and various functions shipped with fish are documented in doc_src/cmds/.
Code Style
To ensure your changes conform to the style rules run
build_tools/style.fish
before committing your change. That will run our autoformatters:
• rustfmt for Rust
• fish_indent (shipped with fish) for fish script
• black for python
If you’ve already committed your changes that’s okay since it will then check the files in the most
recent commit. This can be useful after you’ve merged another person’s change and want to check that it’s
style is acceptable. However, in that case it will run clang-format to ensure the entire file, not just
the lines modified by the commit, conform to the style.
If you want to check the style of the entire code base run
build_tools/style.fish --all
That command will refuse to restyle any files if you have uncommitted changes.
Fish Script Style Guide
1. All fish scripts, such as those in the share/functions and tests directories, should be formatted
using the fish_indent command.
2. Function names should be in all lowercase with words separated by underscores. Private functions
should begin with an underscore. The first word should be fish if the function is unique to fish.
3. The first word of global variable names should generally be fish for public vars or _fish for private
vars to minimize the possibility of name clashes with user defined vars.
Configuring Your Editor for Fish Scripts
If you use Vim: Install vim-fish <https://github.com/dag/vim-fish>, make sure you have syntax and
filetype functionality in ~/.vimrc:
syntax enable
filetype plugin indent on
Then turn on some options for nicer display of fish scripts in ~/.vim/ftplugin/fish.vim:
" Set up :make to use fish for syntax checking.
compiler fish
" Set this to have long lines wrap inside comments.
setlocal textwidth=79
" Enable folding of block structures in fish.
setlocal foldmethod=expr
If you use Emacs: Install fish-mode <https://github.com/wwwjfy/emacs-fish> (also available in melpa and
melpa-stable) and (setq-default indent-tabs-mode nil) for it (via a hook or in use-packages “:init”
block). It can also be made to run fish_indent via e.g.
(add-hook 'fish-mode-hook (lambda ()
(add-hook 'before-save-hook 'fish_indent-before-save)))
Rust Style Guide
Use cargo fmt and cargo clippy. Clippy warnings can be turned off if there's a good reason to.
Testing
The source code for fish includes a large collection of tests. If you are making any changes to fish,
running these tests is a good way to make sure the behaviour remains consistent and regressions are not
introduced. Even if you don’t run the tests on your machine, they will still be run via Github Actions.
You are strongly encouraged to add tests when changing the functionality of fish, especially if you are
fixing a bug to help ensure there are no regressions in the future (i.e., we don’t reintroduce the bug).
The tests can be found in three places:
• src/tests for unit tests.
• tests/checks for script tests, run by littlecheck <https://github.com/ridiculousfish/littlecheck>
• tests/pexpects for interactive tests using pexpect <https://pexpect.readthedocs.io/en/stable/>
When in doubt, the bulk of the tests should be added as a littlecheck test in tests/checks, as they are
the easiest to modify and run, and much faster and more dependable than pexpect tests. The syntax is
fairly self-explanatory. It's a fish script with the expected output in # CHECK: or # CHECKERR: (for
stderr) comments.
The pexpects are written in python and can simulate input and output to/from a terminal, so they are
needed for anything that needs actual interactivity. The runner is in build_tools/pexpect_helper.py, in
case you need to modify something there.
Local testing
The tests can be run on your local computer on all operating systems.
cmake path/to/fish-shell
make fish_run_tests
Git hooks
Since developers sometimes forget to run the tests, it can be helpful to use git hooks (see githooks(5))
to automate it.
One possibility is a pre-push hook script like this one:
#!/bin/sh
#### A pre-push hook for the fish-shell project
# This will run the tests when a push to master is detected, and will stop that if the tests fail
# Save this as .git/hooks/pre-push and make it executable
protected_branch='master'
# Git gives us lines like "refs/heads/frombranch SOMESHA1 refs/heads/tobranch SOMESHA1"
# We're only interested in the branches
while read from _ to _; do
if [ "x$to" = "xrefs/heads/$protected_branch" ]; then
isprotected=1
fi
done
if [ "x$isprotected" = x1 ]; then
echo "Running tests before push to master"
make fish_run_tests
RESULT=$?
if [ $RESULT -ne 0 ]; then
echo "Tests failed for a push to master, we can't let you do that" >&2
exit 1
fi
fi
exit 0
This will check if the push is to the master branch and, if it is, only allow the push if running make
fish_run_tests succeeds. In some circumstances it may be advisable to circumvent this check with git push
--no-verify, but usually that isn’t necessary.
To install the hook, place the code in a new file .git/hooks/pre-push and make it executable.
Coverity Scan
We use Coverity’s static analysis tool which offers free access to open source projects. While access to
the tool itself is restricted, fish-shell organization members should know that they can login here
<https://scan.coverity.com/projects/fish-shell-fish-shell?tab=overview> with their GitHub account.
Currently, tests are triggered upon merging the master branch into coverity_scan_master. Even if you are
not a fish developer, you can keep an eye on our statistics there.
Contributing Translations
Fish uses the GNU gettext library to translate messages from English to other languages.
Creating and updating translations requires the Gettext tools, including xgettext, msgfmt and msgmerge.
Translation sources are stored in the po directory, named LANG.po, where LANG is the two letter ISO 639-1
language code of the target language (eg de for German).
To create a new translation:
• generate a messages.pot file by running build_tools/fish_xgettext.fish from the source tree
• copy messages.pot to po/LANG.po
To update a translation:
• generate a messages.pot file by running build_tools/fish_xgettext.fish from the source tree
• update the existing translation by running msgmerge --update --no-fuzzy-matching po/LANG.po
messages.pot
The --no-fuzzy-matching is important as we have had terrible experiences with gettext's "fuzzy"
translations in the past.
Many tools are available for editing translation files, including command-line and graphical user
interface programs. For simple use, you can just use your text editor.
Open up the po file, for example po/sv.po, and you'll see something like:
msgid "%ls: No suitable job\n"
msgstr ""
The msgid here is the "name" of the string to translate, typically the english string to translate. The
second line (msgstr) is where your translation goes.
For example:
msgid "%ls: No suitable job\n"
msgstr "%ls: Inget passande jobb\n"
Any %s / %ls or %d are placeholders that fish will use for formatting at runtime. It is important that
they match - the translated string should have the same placeholders in the same order.
Also any escaped characters, like that \n newline at the end, should be kept so the translation has the
same behavior.
Our tests run msgfmt --check-format /path/to/file, so they would catch mismatched placeholders -
otherwise fish would crash at runtime when the string is about to be used.
Be cautious about blindly updating an existing translation file. Trivial changes to an existing message
(eg changing the punctuation) will cause existing translations to be removed, since the tools do literal
string matching. Therefore, in general, you need to carefully review any recommended deletions.
Setting Code Up For Translations
All non-debug messages output for user consumption should be marked for translation. In Rust, this
requires the use of the wgettext! or wgettext_fmt! macros:
streams.out.append(wgettext_fmt!("%ls: There are no jobs\n", argv[0]));
All messages in fish script must be enclosed in single or double quote characters for our message
extraction script to find them. They must also be translated via a command substitution. This means that
the following are not valid:
echo (_ hello)
_ "goodbye"
Above should be written like this instead:
echo (_ "hello")
echo (_ "goodbye")
You can use either single or double quotes to enclose the message to be translated. You can also
optionally include spaces after the opening parentheses or before the closing parentheses.
Versioning
The fish version is constructed by the build_tools/git_version_gen.sh script. For developers the version
is the branch name plus the output of git describe --always --dirty. Normally the main part of the
version will be the closest annotated tag. Which itself is usually the most recent release number (e.g.,
2.6.0).
License
License for fish
fish Copyright © 2005-2009 Axel Liljencrantz, 2009-2024 fish-shell contributors. fish is released under
the GNU General Public License, version 2.
fish includes other code licensed under the GNU General Public License, version 2, including GNU printf.
Copyright © 1990-2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Printf (from GNU Coreutils 6.9) is released under
the GNU General Public License, version 2.
The GNU General Public License agreement follows.
GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
02110-1301, USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document, but changing it
is not allowed.
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By
contrast, the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software - to make sure the software is free for all its users. This General Public License applies to
most of the Free Software Foundation's software and to any other program whose authors commit to using
it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License
instead.) You can apply it to your programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are
designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change
the software or use pieces of it in new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to
ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
distribute copies of the software, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the
recipients all the rights that you have. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
source code. And you must show them these terms so they know their rights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and (2) offer you this license which
gives you legal permission to copy, distribute and/or modify the software.
Also, for each author's protection and ours, we want to make certain that everyone understands that there
is no warranty for this free software. If the software is modified by someone else and passed on, we
want its recipients to know that what they have is not the original, so that any problems introduced by
others will not reflect on the original authors' reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software patents. We wish to avoid the danger that
redistributors of a free program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the program
proprietary. To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free
use or not licensed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution and modification follow.
TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION
• This License applies to any program or other work which contains a notice placed by the copyright
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1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program's source code as you receive it, in any
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You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer
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These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are
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NO WARRANTY
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License for the Python docs theme
In doc_src/python_docs_theme/, taken from https://pypi.org/project/python-docs-theme/2020.1/.
PYTHON SOFTWARE FOUNDATION LICENSE VERSION 2
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MIT License
fish includes a copy of Alpine.js, which is copyright 2019-2021 Caleb Porzio and contributors, and
licensed under the MIT License. It also uses FindRust.cmake, from the Corrosion project, which is
copyright 2018 Andrew Gaspar and licensed under the MIT license. It also includes the Dracula theme,
which is copyright 2018 Dracula Team, and the Nord theme, which is copyright 2016-present Sven Greb.
These themes are also used under the MIT license.
fish contains code derived from musl-libc <https://www.musl-libc.org>, which is copyright 2006-2020 Rich
Felker, et al., to implement printf. This code is used under the terms of the MIT license.
The MIT license follows.
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and
associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
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The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial
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THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
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EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER
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THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
GNU Library General Public License
fish contains code derived from the GNU C Library, licensed under the GNU Library General Public License.
This code is copyright © 1989-1994 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
The GNU Library General Public License agreement follows.
GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE
Version 2, June 1991
Copyright (C) 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc. 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA
02110-1301 USA Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this license document,
but changing it is not allowed.
[This is the first released version of the library GPL. It is
numbered 2 because it goes with version 2 of the ordinary GPL.]
Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By
contrast, the GNU General Public Licenses are intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free
software--to make sure the software is free for all its users.
This license, the Library General Public License, applies to some specially designated Free Software
Foundation software, and to any other libraries whose authors decide to use it. You can use it for your
libraries, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price. Our General Public Licenses are
designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software (and charge for
this service if you wish), that you receive source code or can get it if you want it, that you can change
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To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to
ask you to surrender the rights. These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you
distribute copies of the library, or if you modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of the library, whether gratis or for a fee, you must give the
recipients all the rights that we gave you. You must make sure that they, too, receive or can get the
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Our method of protecting your rights has two steps: (1) copyright the library, and (2) offer you this
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AUTHOR
fish-shell developers
COPYRIGHT
2024, fish-shell developers
4.0 Apr 20, 2025 FISH-DOC(1)