3. Working with Your Shell

Chapter Contents

Discovering which shell you’re using Understanding shells and options Changing your shell Changing your shell temporarily Using completion in the bash shell Viewing session history in the bash shell Using completion in the zsh shell Viewing session history in the zsh shell Changing your identity Fixing terminal settings Exiting the shell

When you access a Unix system, the first thing you see is the prompt, called the shell prompt, which is where you interact with Unix. The shell determines how easily you can enter and reenter commands and how you can control your environment. What’s cool about Unix is that you’re not stuck with one shell—that is, on most systems you can choose to use shells that have different features and capabilities.