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Ahmad Awais

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Command-Line ZSH Syntax Highlighting Is Dope!

Ahmad AwaisAhmad Awais

I’m a command-line power-user. I do more things with command line than I probably should. So, I have built a lot of small workflows to help me with daily stuff.

For example, Command-Line ZSH Syntax Highlighting is a total win. It helps me visualize if I am about to run a dangerous command rm -rf * (anyone?) — and also if a program exists in the $PATH or not.

zsh-syntax-highlight

Syntax highlight in ZSH is awesome. It highlights what you’re tying in real time.

To use it, clone zsh-syntax-highlighting from Github and add the following commands to your .zshrc. They’ll enable the common highlighters, and add a warning highlight when you try and use rm -rf.

Happy hacking. Peace! ✌️

DevOps

Founder & CEO of ⌘ Command Code coding agent with taste. Founded Langbase.com, AI cloud to build, deploy, and scale AI agents with tools & memory · Creator of Command.new.

"Awais is an awesome example for developers" — Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter mission code contributor 8th GitHub Stars Award recipient with 5x GitHub Stars Award (Listed as GitHub's #1 JavaScript trending developer). Google Developers Expert Web DevRel.

Ex VP Eng (DevTools & DevRel) Rapid · Google Developers Advisory Board (gDAB) founding member · AI/ML/DevTools Angel Investor (Replit, Resend, Daytona, Gumroad and you?) ❯ AI/ML Advisory Board San Francisco, DevNetwork.

Award-winning Open Source Engineering leader authored hundreds of open-source dev-tools and software libraries used by millions of developers, including Shades of Purple code theme and corona-cli.

Linux Foundation (Node.js Committee Lead), OpenAPI Business Governing Board. Taught 108K+ developers via NodeCLI.com and VSCode.pro course. 274 million views, blogging for 24 yrs.

❯ Read more about Ahmad Awais or come say hi on 𝕏 @_AhmadAwais.

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Comments 1
  • noelspringer
    Posted on

    noelspringer noelspringer

    Reply Author

    Hi Ahmad, zsh is cool. You might also like skwp.github.io/dotfiles/ (YADR). It uses Prezto github.com/sorin-ionescu/prezto and the ZSH Syntax Highlighting is incorporated by Prezto.

    YADR has a lot of neat git aliases and tweaks for Homebrew. Also, a very useful vimrc file if you use vim. Just the aliases are worth a look.

    I switched to YADR some time ago from Oh My ZSH and it’s noticeably faster.

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  • noelspringer