Commands, functions and builtins bundled with fish

These are all described below.

and - conditionally execute a command

Synopsis

Description

The and command does not change the current exit status.

The exit status of the last foreground command to exit can always be accessed using the $status variable.

Example

make; and make install; or make clean

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begin - start a new block of code

Synopsis

Description

The begin command does not change the current exit status.

Example

begin
	set -x PIRATE Yarrr
	...
end
# This will not output anything, since PIRATE went out of scope at the end of
# the block and was killed
echo $PIRATE

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

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bg - send to background

Synopsis

Description

The PID of the desired process is usually found by using process globbing.

Example

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bind - handle key bindings

Synopsis

The bind builtin causes fish to add the readline style bindings specified by BINDINGS to the list of key bindings, as if they appeared in your ~/.fish_inputrc file.

For more information on the syntax keyboard bindings, use man readline to access the readline documentation. The availiable commands are listed in the Command Line Editor section of the fish manual - but you may also use any fish command! To write such commands, see the commandline builtin. It's good practice to put the code into a function -b and bind to the function name.

Description

• -M MODE or --set-mode=MODE sets the current input mode to MODE.

Example

bind '"\M-j": jobs' Binds the jobs command to the Alt-j keyboard shortcut

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block - temporarily block delivery of events

Synopsis

Description

• -l or --local Release the block at the end of the currently innermost block scope
• -g or --global Never automatically release the lock
• -e or --erase Release global block

Example

block -g
#Do something that should not be interrupted
block -e

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break - stop the innermost currently evaluated loop

Synopsis

Description

Example

for i in *.c
    if grep smurf $i
        echo Smurfs are present in $i
        break
    end
end

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builtin - run a builtin command

Synopsis

Description

• -n or --names List the names of all defined builtins

Prefixing a command with the word 'builtin' forces fish to ignore any aliases with the same name.

Example

causes fish to execute the jobs builtin, even if a function named jobs exists.

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case - conditionally execute a block of commands

Synopsis

Description

Each case command is given one or more parameter. 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. Though the syntax may look a bit like C switch statements, it behaves more like the case stamantes of traditional shells.

Also note that command substitutions in a case statement will be evaluated even if it's body is not taken. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it is unavoidable, since it would be impossible to know if a case command will evaluate to true before all forms of parameter expansion have been performed for the case command.

Example

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.

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cd - change directory

Synopsis

Description Changes the current

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commandline - set or get the current commandline buffer

Synopsis

Description

• CMD is the new value of the commandline. If unspecified, the current value of the commandline is written to standard output.

The following switches change what the commandline builtin does

• -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.
• -f or --function inject readline functions into the reader. This option can not be combined with any other option. It will cause any additional arguments to be interpreted as readline functions, and these functions will be injected into the reader, so that they will be returned to the reader before any additional actual keypresses are read.

The following switches change the way commandline updates the commandline 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 switches change what part of the commandline is printed or updated

• -b or --current-buffer select the entire buffer (default)
• -j or --current-job select the current job
• -p or --current-process select the current process
• -t or --current-token select the current token.

The following switch changes the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer

• -c or --cut-at-cursor only print selection up until the current cursor position
• -o or --tokenize tokenize the selection and print one string-type token per line

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 commandline.

Example

replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the commandline history.

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command - run a program

Synopsis

Description

Example

causes fish to execute the ls program, even if there exists a 'ls' alias.

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complete - edit command specific tab-completions.

Synopsis

Description

• COMMAND is the name of the command for which to add a completion
• SHORT_OPTION is a one character option for the command
• LONG_OPTION is a multi character option for the command
• OPTION_ARGUMENTS is parameter containing a space-separated list of possible option-arguments, which may contain subshells
• DESCRIPTION is a description of what the option and/or option arguments do
• -C STRING or --do-complete=STRING makes complete try to find all possible completions for the specified string
• -e or --erase implies that the specified completion should be deleted
• -f or --no-files specifies that the option specified by this completion may not be followed by a filename
• -n or --condition specifies a shell command that must return 0 if the completion is to be used. This makes it possible to specify completions that should only be used in some cases.
• -o or --old-option implies that the command uses old long style options with only one dash
• -p or --path implies that the string COMMAND is the full path of the command
• -r or --require-parameter specifies that the option specified by this completion always must have an option argument, i.e. may not be followed by another option
• -u or --unauthorative implies that there may be more options than the ones specified, and that fish should not assume that options not listed are spelling errors
• -x or --exclusive implies both -r and -f

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 version of the getopt library. These styles are:

• Short options, like '-a'. Short options are a single character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may be grouped together (like '-la', which is equivalent to '-l -a'). Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('-w 32') or by appending the option with the value ('-w32').
• Old style long options, like '-Wall'. Old style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may not be grouped together. Option arguments are specified in the following parameter ('-ao null').
• GNU style long options, like '--colors'. GNU style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by two hyphens, and may not be grouped together. Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('--quoting-style shell') or by appending the option with a '=' and the value ('--quoting-style=shell'). GNU style long options may be abbreviated so long as the abbreviation is unique ('--h' is equivalent to '--help' if help is the only long option beginning with an 'h').

The options for specifying command name, command path, or command switches may all be used multiple times to specify multiple commands which have the same completion or multiple switches accepted by a command.

When erasing completions, it is possible to either erase all completions for a specific command by specifying complete -e -c COMMAND, or by specifying a specific completion option to delete by specifying either a long, short or old style option.

Example

The short style option -d for the grep command requires that one of the strings 'read', 'skip' or 'recurse' is used. This can be specified writing 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 commandline buffer for the presence of a specified set of options.

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contains - test if a word is present in a list

Synopsis

Description

• -h or --help display this message

Test if the set VALUES contains the string KEY. Return status is 0 if yes, 1 otherwise

Example

for i in ~/bin /usr/local/bin
	if not contains $i $PATH
		set PATH $PATH i
	end
end

The above code tests if ~/bin and /usr/local/bin are in the path and if they are not, they are added.

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continue - skip the rest of the current lap of the innermost currently evaluated loop

Synopsis

Description

Example

for i in *.tmp
    if grep smurf $i
        continue
    end
    rm $i
end

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count - count the number of elements of an array

Synopsis

Description

The count command does not accept any options, not even '-h'. This way the user does not have to worry about an array containing elements such as dashes. fish performs a special check when invoking the count program, and if the user uses a help option, this help page is displayed, but if a help option is contained inside of a variable or is the result of expansion, it will be passed on to the count program.

Count exits with a non-zero exit status if no arguments where passed to it, with zero otherwise.

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'.

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dirh - print directory history

Synopsis

Description

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dirs - print directory stack

Synopsis

Description

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else - execute command if a condition is not met

Synopsis

Description

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case - conditionally execute a block of commands

Synopsis

Description

Each case command is given one or more parameter. 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. Though the syntax may look a bit like C switch statements, it behaves more like the case stamantes of traditional shells.

Also note that command substitutions in a case statement will be evaluated even if it's body is not taken. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it is unavoidable, since it would be impossible to know if a case command will evaluate to true before all forms of parameter expansion have been performed for the case command.

Example

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.

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cd - change directory

Synopsis

Description Changes the current

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commandline - set or get the current commandline buffer

Synopsis

Description

• CMD is the new value of the commandline. If unspecified, the current value of the commandline is written to standard output.

The following switches change what the commandline builtin does

• -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.
• -f or --function inject readline functions into the reader. This option can not be combined with any other option. It will cause any additional arguments to be interpreted as readline functions, and these functions will be injected into the reader, so that they will be returned to the reader before any additional actual keypresses are read.

The following switches change the way commandline updates the commandline 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 switches change what part of the commandline is printed or updated

• -b or --current-buffer select the entire buffer (default)
• -j or --current-job select the current job
• -p or --current-process select the current process
• -t or --current-token select the current token.

The following switch changes the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer

• -c or --cut-at-cursor only print selection up until the current cursor position
• -o or --tokenize tokenize the selection and print one string-type token per line

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 commandline.

Example

replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the commandline history.

Back to index.

command - run a program

Synopsis

Description

Example

causes fish to execute the ls program, even if there exists a 'ls' alias.

Back to index.

complete - edit command specific tab-completions.

Synopsis

Description

• COMMAND is the name of the command for which to add a completion
• SHORT_OPTION is a one character option for the command
• LONG_OPTION is a multi character option for the command
• OPTION_ARGUMENTS is parameter containing a space-separated list of possible option-arguments, which may contain subshells
• DESCRIPTION is a description of what the option and/or option arguments do
• -C STRING or --do-complete=STRING makes complete try to find all possible completions for the specified string
• -e or --erase implies that the specified completion should be deleted
• -f or --no-files specifies that the option specified by this completion may not be followed by a filename
• -n or --condition specifies a shell command that must return 0 if the completion is to be used. This makes it possible to specify completions that should only be used in some cases.
• -o or --old-option implies that the command uses old long style options with only one dash
• -p or --path implies that the string COMMAND is the full path of the command
• -r or --require-parameter specifies that the option specified by this completion always must have an option argument, i.e. may not be followed by another option
• -u or --unauthorative implies that there may be more options than the ones specified, and that fish should not assume that options not listed are spelling errors
• -x or --exclusive implies both -r and -f

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 version of the getopt library. These styles are:

• Short options, like '-a'. Short options are a single character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may be grouped together (like '-la', which is equivalent to '-l -a'). Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('-w 32') or by appending the option with the value ('-w32').
• Old style long options, like '-Wall'. Old style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may not be grouped together. Option arguments are specified in the following parameter ('-ao null').
• GNU style long options, like '--colors'. GNU style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by two hyphens, and may not be grouped together. Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('--quoting-style shell') or by appending the option with a '=' and the value ('--quoting-style=shell'). GNU style long options may be abbreviated so long as the abbreviation is unique ('--h' is equivalent to '--help' if help is the only long option beginning with an 'h').

The options for specifying command name, command path, or command switches may all be used multiple times to specify multiple commands which have the same completion or multiple switches accepted by a command.

When erasing completions, it is possible to either erase all completions for a specific command by specifying complete -e -c COMMAND, or by specifying a specific completion option to delete by specifying either a long, short or old style option.

Example

The short style option -d for the grep command requires that one of the strings 'read', 'skip' or 'recurse' is used. This can be specified writing 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 commandline buffer for the presence of a specified set of options.

Back to index.

contains - test if a word is present in a list

Synopsis

Description

• -h or --help display this message

Test if the set VALUES contains the string KEY. Return status is 0 if yes, 1 otherwise

Example

for i in ~/bin /usr/local/bin
	if not contains $i $PATH
		set PATH $PATH i
	end
end

The above code tests if ~/bin and /usr/local/bin are in the path and if they are not, they are added.

Back to index.

continue - skip the rest of the current lap of the innermost currently evaluated loop

Synopsis

Description

Example

for i in *.tmp
    if grep smurf $i
        continue
    end
    rm $i
end

Back to index.

count - count the number of elements of an array

Synopsis

Description

The count command does not accept any options, not even '-h'. This way the user does not have to worry about an array containing elements such as dashes. fish performs a special check when invoking the count program, and if the user uses a help option, this help page is displayed, but if a help option is contained inside of a variable or is the result of expansion, it will be passed on to the count program.

Count exits with a non-zero exit status if no arguments where passed to it, with zero otherwise.

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'.

Back to index.

dirh - print directory history

Synopsis

Description

Back to index.

dirs - print directory stack

Synopsis

Description

Back to index.

else - execute command if a condition is not met

Synopsis

Description

Back to index.

case - conditionally execute a block of commands

Synopsis

Description

Each case command is given one or more parameter. 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. Though the syntax may look a bit like C switch statements, it behaves more like the case stamantes of traditional shells.

Also note that command substitutions in a case statement will be evaluated even if it's body is not taken. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it is unavoidable, since it would be impossible to know if a case command will evaluate to true before all forms of parameter expansion have been performed for the case command.

Example

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.

Back to index.

cd - change directory

Synopsis

Description Changes the current

Back to index.

commandline - set or get the current commandline buffer

Synopsis

Description

• CMD is the new value of the commandline. If unspecified, the current value of the commandline is written to standard output.

The following switches change what the commandline builtin does

• -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.
• -f or --function inject readline functions into the reader. This option can not be combined with any other option. It will cause any additional arguments to be interpreted as readline functions, and these functions will be injected into the reader, so that they will be returned to the reader before any additional actual keypresses are read.

The following switches change the way commandline updates the commandline 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 switches change what part of the commandline is printed or updated

• -b or --current-buffer select the entire buffer (default)
• -j or --current-job select the current job
• -p or --current-process select the current process
• -t or --current-token select the current token.

The following switch changes the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer

• -c or --cut-at-cursor only print selection up until the current cursor position
• -o or --tokenize tokenize the selection and print one string-type token per line

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 commandline.

Example

replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the commandline history.

Back to index.

command - run a program

Synopsis

Description

Example

causes fish to execute the ls program, even if there exists a 'ls' alias.

Back to index.

complete - edit command specific tab-completions.

Synopsis

Description

• COMMAND is the name of the command for which to add a completion
• SHORT_OPTION is a one character option for the command
• LONG_OPTION is a multi character option for the command
• OPTION_ARGUMENTS is parameter containing a space-separated list of possible option-arguments, which may contain subshells
• DESCRIPTION is a description of what the option and/or option arguments do
• -C STRING or --do-complete=STRING makes complete try to find all possible completions for the specified string
• -e or --erase implies that the specified completion should be deleted
• -f or --no-files specifies that the option specified by this completion may not be followed by a filename
• -n or --condition specifies a shell command that must return 0 if the completion is to be used. This makes it possible to specify completions that should only be used in some cases.
• -o or --old-option implies that the command uses old long style options with only one dash
• -p or --path implies that the string COMMAND is the full path of the command
• -r or --require-parameter specifies that the option specified by this completion always must have an option argument, i.e. may not be followed by another option
• -u or --unauthorative implies that there may be more options than the ones specified, and that fish should not assume that options not listed are spelling errors
• -x or --exclusive implies both -r and -f

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 version of the getopt library. These styles are:

• Short options, like '-a'. Short options are a single character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may be grouped together (like '-la', which is equivalent to '-l -a'). Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('-w 32') or by appending the option with the value ('-w32').
• Old style long options, like '-Wall'. Old style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may not be grouped together. Option arguments are specified in the following parameter ('-ao null').
• GNU style long options, like '--colors'. GNU style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by two hyphens, and may not be grouped together. Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('--quoting-style shell') or by appending the option with a '=' and the value ('--quoting-style=shell'). GNU style long options may be abbreviated so long as the abbreviation is unique ('--h' is equivalent to '--help' if help is the only long option beginning with an 'h').

The options for specifying command name, command path, or command switches may all be used multiple times to specify multiple commands which have the same completion or multiple switches accepted by a command.

When erasing completions, it is possible to either erase all completions for a specific command by specifying complete -e -c COMMAND, or by specifying a specific completion option to delete by specifying either a long, short or old style option.

Example

The short style option -d for the grep command requires that one of the strings 'read', 'skip' or 'recurse' is used. This can be specified writing 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 commandline buffer for the presence of a specified set of options.

Back to index.

contains - test if a word is present in a list

Synopsis

Description

• -h or --help display this message

Test if the set VALUES contains the string KEY. Return status is 0 if yes, 1 otherwise

Example

for i in ~/bin /usr/local/bin
	if not contains $i $PATH
		set PATH $PATH i
	end
end

The above code tests if ~/bin and /usr/local/bin are in the path and if they are not, they are added.

Back to index.

continue - skip the rest of the current lap of the innermost currently evaluated loop

Synopsis

Description

Example

for i in *.tmp
    if grep smurf $i
        continue
    end
    rm $i
end

Back to index.

count - count the number of elements of an array

Synopsis

Description

The count command does not accept any options, not even '-h'. This way the user does not have to worry about an array containing elements such as dashes. fish performs a special check when invoking the count program, and if the user uses a help option, this help page is displayed, but if a help option is contained inside of a variable or is the result of expansion, it will be passed on to the count program.

Count exits with a non-zero exit status if no arguments where passed to it, with zero otherwise.

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'.

Back to index.

dirh - print directory history

Synopsis

Description

Back to index.

dirs - print directory stack

Synopsis

Description

Back to index.

else - execute command if a condition is not met

Synopsis

Description

Back to index.

case - conditionally execute a block of commands

Synopsis

Description

Each case command is given one or more parameter. 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. Though the syntax may look a bit like C switch statements, it behaves more like the case stamantes of traditional shells.

Also note that command substitutions in a case statement will be evaluated even if it's body is not taken. This may seem counterintuitive at first, but it is unavoidable, since it would be impossible to know if a case command will evaluate to true before all forms of parameter expansion have been performed for the case command.

Example

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.

Back to index.

cd - change directory

Synopsis

Description Changes the current

Back to index.

commandline - set or get the current commandline buffer

Synopsis

Description

• CMD is the new value of the commandline. If unspecified, the current value of the commandline is written to standard output.

The following switches change what the commandline builtin does

• -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.
• -f or --function inject readline functions into the reader. This option can not be combined with any other option. It will cause any additional arguments to be interpreted as readline functions, and these functions will be injected into the reader, so that they will be returned to the reader before any additional actual keypresses are read.

The following switches change the way commandline updates the commandline 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 switches change what part of the commandline is printed or updated

• -b or --current-buffer select the entire buffer (default)
• -j or --current-job select the current job
• -p or --current-process select the current process
• -t or --current-token select the current token.

The following switch changes the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer

• -c or --cut-at-cursor only print selection up until the current cursor position
• -o or --tokenize tokenize the selection and print one string-type token per line

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 commandline.

Example

replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the commandline history.

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command - run a program

Synopsis

Description

Example

causes fish to execute the ls program, even if there exists a 'ls' alias.

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complete - edit command specific tab-completions.

Synopsis

Description

• COMMAND is the name of the command for which to add a completion
• SHORT_OPTION is a one character option for the command
• LONG_OPTION is a multi character option for the command
• OPTION_ARGUMENTS is parameter containing a space-separated list of possible option-arguments, which may contain subshells
• DESCRIPTION is a description of what the option and/or option arguments do
• -C STRING or --do-complete=STRING makes complete try to find all possible completions for the specified string
• -e or --erase implies that the specified completion should be deleted
• -f or --no-files specifies that the option specified by this completion may not be followed by a filename
• -n or --condition specifies a shell command that must return 0 if the completion is to be used. This makes it possible to specify completions that should only be used in some cases.
• -o or --old-option implies that the command uses old long style options with only one dash
• -p or --path implies that the string COMMAND is the full path of the command
• -r or --require-parameter specifies that the option specified by this completion always must have an option argument, i.e. may not be followed by another option
• -u or --unauthorative implies that there may be more options than the ones specified, and that fish should not assume that options not listed are spelling errors
• -x or --exclusive implies both -r and -f

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 version of the getopt library. These styles are:

• Short options, like '-a'. Short options are a single character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may be grouped together (like '-la', which is equivalent to '-l -a'). Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('-w 32') or by appending the option with the value ('-w32').
• Old style long options, like '-Wall'. Old style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may not be grouped together. Option arguments are specified in the following parameter ('-ao null').
• GNU style long options, like '--colors'. GNU style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by two hyphens, and may not be grouped together. Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('--quoting-style shell') or by appending the option with a '=' and the value ('--quoting-style=shell'). GNU style long options may be abbreviated so long as the abbreviation is unique ('--h' is equivalent to '--help' if help is the only long option beginning with an 'h').

The options for specifying command name, command path, or command switches may all be used multiple times to specify multiple commands which have the same completion or multiple switches accepted by a command.

When erasing completions, it is possible to either erase all completions for a specific command by specifying complete -e -c COMMAND, or by specifying a specific completion option to delete by specifying either a long, short or old style option.

Example

The short style option -d for the grep command requires that one of the strings 'read', 'skip' or 'recurse' is used. This can be specified writing 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 commandline buffer for the presence of a specified set of options.

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contains - test if a word is present in a list

Synopsis

Description

• -h or --help display this message

Test if the set VALUES contains the string KEY. Return status is 0 if yes, 1 otherwise

Example

for i in ~/bin /usr/local/bin
	if not contains $i $PATH
		set PATH $PATH i
	end
end

The above code tests if ~/bin and /usr/local/bin are in the path and if they are not, they are added.

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continue - skip the rest of the current lap of the innermost currently evaluated loop

Synopsis

Description

Example

for i in *.tmp
    if grep smurf $i
        continue
    end
    rm $i
end

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count - count the number of elements of an array

Synopsis

Description

The count command does not accept any options, not even '-h'. This way the user does not have to worry about an array containing elements such as dashes. fish performs a special check when invoking the count program, and if the user uses a help option, this help page is displayed, but if a help option is contained inside of a variable or is the result of expansion, it will be passed on to the count program.

Count exits with a non-zero exit status if no arguments where passed to it, with zero otherwise.

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'.

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dirh - print directory history

Synopsis

Description

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dirs - print directory stack

Synopsis

Description

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else - execute command if a condition is not met

Synopsis

Description

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