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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! ✌️

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Founder & CEO of ⌘ Command Code, the most used coding agent for open models: 160K+ users, 50K+ paying customers. Founded Langbase (AI cloud for agents with memory & tools).

"What an awesome example for developers." — Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, on my NASA Ingenuity code.

NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter code contributor · 6× GitHub Star, one of the first 8 Gold Stars · #1 trending JavaScript developer on GitHub · 6× Google Developer Expert · 6× Microsoft MVP.

Ex VP DevRel & DevTools at RapidAPI · Google Developers Advisory Board (gDAB) founding member · OpenAPI Business Governing Board, Linux Foundation · SF DevNetwork AI/ML Advisory Board · Angel investor (Replit, Resend, Daytona, Gumroad and you?).

Award-winning open source engineering leader: 300+ projects, 50–100M downloads a year, including Shades of Purple (5M+ developers) and corona-cli (10B+ queries).

Taught 217K+ developers via NodeCLI.com and VSCode.pro. 160+ talks. Blogging since 2000, billions of views.

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

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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.