ZSH – Why ZSH Ends a Line with a Highlighted Percent Symbol

bashnewlinespromptzsh

I've noticed this on occasion with a variety of applications. I've often thought it was because the output was cancelled early (ctrl+c, for example) or something similar, and zsh is filling in a new line character. But now curiosity has gotten the best of me, since it doesn't seem to do this in bash.

zsh

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The Sequence program is something I pulled from a book while reading on Java certifications and just wanted to see if it would compile and run. I did notice that it does not use the println() method from the System.out package/class. Instead it uses plain old print().

Is the lack of a new line character the reason I get this symbol?

Best Answer

Yes, this happens because it is a "partial line". And by default zsh goes to the next line to avoid covering it with the prompt.

When a partial line is preserved, by default you will see an inverse+bold character at the end of the partial line: a "%" for a normal user or a "#" for root. If set, the shell parameter PROMPT_EOL_MARK can be used to customize how the end of partial lines are shown.

Related Solutions

Bash – How to delete a trailing newline in bash

This should work:

printf "one\ntwo\n" | awk 'NR>1{print PREV} {PREV=$0} END{printf("%s",$0)}' ; echo " done"

The script always prints previous line instead of current, and the last line is treated differently.

What it does in more detail:

NR>1{print PREV} Print previous line (except the first time).
{PREV=$0} Stores current line in PREV variable.
END{printf("%s",$0)} Finally, print last line withtout line break.

Also note this would remove at most one empty line at the end (no support for removing "one\ntwo\n\n\n").

How to expand all variables at the command line in Zsh

You can set up compinit to expand parameters in your ~/.zshrc:

zstyle ':completion:*' completer _expand _complete
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit

This is a minimal setting, if you have compinit already enabled, it should be sufficient to add _expand to the settings of completer

There is also the expand-word widget that is by default bound to ^X* (Ctrl+x *) that essentially does the same as the same binding in bash.

Note: Both methods only work on the current word.

As an alternative, in zsh you can actually do what you asked for in your original question: turn a relative path into an absolute path. Here is a slightly modified example from the zshcontrib(1) manpage:

# load necessary utility function
autoload -Uz modify-current-argument

# define helper function for actual work
expand-and-abspath () {
    # expand the path (for example `~` -> `/home/youruser`)
    REPLY=${~1}
    # transform into absolute path (use `:A` if you want to resolve symlinks)
    REPLY=${REPLY:a}
}

# actual widget function
abspath-word() {
    # use helper function on current word
    modify-current-argument expand-and-abspath
}

# create zle widget `abspath-word` (with function of the same name)
zle -N abspath-word

# bind widget to "Ctrl+x p"
bindkey '^Xp' abspath-word

This defines the abspath-word widget, which replaces the current word with an absolute path representation and binds it to Ctrl+xp.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – How to delete a trailing newline in bash

How to expand all variables at the command line in Zsh

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