Fish shell

Posted under » Ubuntu » Linux » Arch on 4 Jan 2025

I have always use bash shell but I fell in love with it when I tested Arch Garuda.

Installation to ubuntu is $ apt install fish although it is not the latest version that Garuda has.

To switch to fish, just $ fish and the exit just $ exit.

There are a few reasons why I now use fish shell instead of bash. The list below are just some of the good points. For a comprehensive list, click here

• fish suggests commands as you type based on history and completions, just like a web browser or google which you can later complete accordingly using the tab key
• Incorrect commands? You see it highlighted in red. The same goes for arguments and options that do not match with the context
• Abbreviations in Fish are like text-expanders. It is similar to bash alias .. see below explanation
• fish is more colourful as it supports 24 bit true color
• Fish shell has a private mode "$ fish -P" where the commands you enter will not be saved to the history or stored on the disk.
• In Fish shell, if you set a variable as Universal, (-U) this will be available even if the shell is restarted or even if the system is rebooted.

  $ set -U subuh "5 : 46 am"
  $ echo $subuh
  $ 5 : 46 am

This abbr feature is probably my most favorite. The difference between alias and abbreviation is that an alias works under the hood. You don't get to see the actual commands it is aliased to. Abbreviation will show the actual commands and they are also recorded into the history correctly. I use history a lot so to add (-a) one, you

$ abbr -a MJ "history | grep"

So, whenever I type MJ and press the space button, it will be replaced with history | grep