Configuring Zsh with Options

Throughout this workshop, you will see links to descriptions of options. There are over 100 options that control different aspects of zsh's behavior. Each option has a name, and it can be either on or off.

Zsh offers several ways to turn options on and off. Perhaps the easiest to remember is:

setopt OPTION_NAME <--- Turn an option on unsetopt OPTION_NAME <--- Turn an option off

zsh options are case-insensitive, and underscores are ignored. This allows option names to be easily readable. It is good convention to use all caps when specifying options.

Any option can be turned off by preceeding its name with 'NO'. So, if there is an option that enables beeping called BEEP, you can run setopt NO_BEEP to disable beeping. (Remember, underscores are ignored in option names.)

Some options are actually alternative names for other zsh options. They aid in backward-compatibility with ksh and/or bash. (See the man page for details.)