Padding a string with zsh

To pad a string with leading spaces in zs, you can use ${(r(15)( ))variableName).

• r(15) pads on the right (use l for left padding)
• The 15 defines the maximum length of the string
• ( ) defines the character to use for padding (here, a space)

Proxy command completion in zsh

Commands like sudo take other commands as input and run them in a specific context. I also have a command similar, called lazyloadNvm that runs nvm use when needed.

I wanted zsh to suggest completion for the passed commands instead of completion for the initial command (sudo or lazyloadNvm).

The solution was to create a _nvm-lazyload comdef file like this:

#compdef

function _nvm-lazyload() {
  # Remove the first word (lazyloadNvm)
  shift words
  # Update which word is currently being focused for tab completion
  (( CURRENT-- ))
  # Re-run completion with the new input
  _normal
}

• shift words removes the first element of the words array (sudo git status becomes git status)
• (( CURRENT-- )) decreases the index of the word focused by tab completion. Updating words doesn't automatically updates CURRENT
• _normal re-runs the completion functions with the current words and CURRENT context.

Debugging performance issues in zsh

If I add too much code in my .zshrc, my zsh takes longer to load. As I use a lot of different terminal windows (splitting one main tmux window), I want those split to happen quickly. This is why I'm trying very hard to keep the loading time of zsh under 150ms.

Hyperfine

One way to evaluate the current loading speed and track potential regressions and improvement is to use hyperfine

hyperfine --warmup 3 "zsh -i -c exit"

This will benchmark how long it will take on average to load zsh. The -i makes it load in interactive mode (so, by sourcing ~/.zshrc), and -c exit makes it execute the exit command.

Note that if you have any commands running asynchronously in the background (like prompt optimization), they will purposefuly not be included in the time.

zprof

The other debugging tool is to use zprof, which is the zsh profiler.

Include zmodload zsh/zprof at the top of your ~/.zshrc file, and zprof at the bottom. Next time you'll open zsh, you'll see a table like this:

num  calls                time                       self            name
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 1)    1         240,22   240,22   65,76%    240,22   240,22   65,76%  oroshi_tools_pyenv
 2)    1          72,98    72,98   19,98%     72,98    72,98   19,98%  oroshi_theming_index
 3)    1          14,77    14,77    4,04%     14,77    14,77    4,04%  compinit
 4)    1          14,12    14,12    3,86%     14,12    14,12    3,86%  oroshi-completion-styling
 5)    1           5,85     5,85    1,60%      5,85     5,85    1,60%  oroshi_tools_fzf
 6)    1           4,95     4,95    1,35%      4,95     4,95    1,35%  _zsh_highlight_bind_widgets
 7)    1           4,56     4,56    1,25%      3,01     3,01    0,82%  oroshi_tools_z
 8)    1           2,27     2,27    0,62%      2,27     2,27    0,62%  _zsh_highlight_load_highlighters
 9)    2           2,17     1,09    0,60%      2,17     1,09    0,60%  promptinit
10)    1           2,10     2,10    0,58%      2,10     2,10    0,58%  oroshi_tools_ls
11)    7           1,51     0,22    0,41%      1,51     0,22    0,41%  add-zsh-hook
12)    7           0,64     0,09    0,17%      0,64     0,09    0,17%  compdef
13)    2           0,63     0,31    0,17%      0,63     0,31    0,17%  is-at-least
14)    1          14,85    14,85    4,07%      0,09     0,09    0,02%  oroshi_completion_compinit

This shows where most of the time is spend, the number of times a specific function is called, and if you scroll down you'll see details of the stacktrace of each sub command.

In this example, it is clear that my oroshi_tools_pyenv method is too slow, and I need to optimize it.

Note that this only tracks the time to run functions, not the time to source files, so if you need to benchmark a specific sourced file, wrap it in a function that you invoke immediatly.

Substrings in zsh

To get only parts of a specific string in zsh, you can use the ${var:start:stop} syntax.

If stop is omitted, it will cut until the end of the string. You can also pass negative values.

Path to the current script folder in zsh

To get the path of the folder of the script currently running in zsh, use ${0:a:h}. $0 is the path to the currently running script, a forces it to absolute, and h to keep the head (the folder).

This is useful when you need to reference scripts that are not in your $PATH, but are stored close to your initial script.