Top 5 Z-Shell Productivity Tips

As a programmer, I use terminal on daily basis. So, every single improvement I make on it is important to increase my productivity. As a result, I decided to use ZSH as my main shell. At first, I don’t immediately notice a huge improvement, however after using it for a while it significantly increased my productivity. In this brief article, I will show you the 5 commands that boosted my productivity. If you prefer to watch a video you can find it down below.

1. “dirs -v” : This command will list the directory stack, which helps you to see the recent directories that you have visited.
2. “history” : The history command lists all the commands that you’ve used previously. Using so will help you to find a specific command or show you the execution list. As a result, you get brief overview of what you have done. To pick a command, type “!” followed by the <command id>. For instance, if you want to fetch the 3rd command in the list, you need to type “!3”. This will fetch the command and makes it ready for execution. If you press enter after that, the command will be executed.
3. “CTRL + L” : This is actually a well known command and it is frequently used. It is basically an alternative shortcut for the command “clear”.
4. Tab Completion: This is actually a great feature. To make it easier to understand let’s pick the command “ls”. what many people generally do is type “ls + TAB” to get the brief list. But in zsh, if put space after the command and then press TAB, you can hover over command values and pick one of them. This feature of ZSH will improve your productivity significantly.
5. Git Aliases: This is also one of the most frequent features that I use. his enables you to type “gaa” instead of “git add -all”. To see all available aliases about git, you can use the following command: “ alias | grep git”.

Helpful Resources:

• 10 Zsh Tips & Tricks: Configuration, Customization & Usage by James Hibbard: https://www.sitepoint.com/zsh-tips-tr...
• 5 tips to improve productivity with zsh by Ricardo Gerardi: https://opensource.com/article/18/9/t...
• ZSH / .oh-my-zsh My top tips for daily use by encodes: https://coderwall.com/p/1y_j0q/zsh-oh...
• Shell Configuration: Hack Your ZSH by Mikołaj Młodzikowski: https://apptension.com/blog/2018/08/3...