abbr - manage fish abbreviations¶
Synopsis¶
abbr --add [SCOPE] WORD EXPANSION
abbr --erase WORD
abbr --rename [SCOPE] OLD_WORD NEW_WORD
abbr --show
abbr --list
abbr --query WORD...
Description¶
abbr
manages abbreviations - user-defined words that are replaced with longer phrases after they are entered.
For example, a frequently-run command like git checkout
can be abbreviated to gco
. After entering gco
and pressing Space or Enter, the full text git checkout
will appear in the command line.
Options¶
The following options are available:
-a WORD EXPANSION
or--add WORD EXPANSION
Adds a new abbreviation, causing WORD to be expanded to EXPANSION.-r OLD_WORD NEW_WORD
or--rename OLD_WORD NEW_WORD
Renames an abbreviation, from OLD_WORD to NEW_WORD.-s
or--show
Show all abbreviations in a manner suitable for export and import.-l
or--list
Lists all abbreviated words.-e WORD
or--erase WORD
Erase the abbreviation WORD.-q
or--query
Return 0 (true) if one of the WORDs is an abbreviation.
In addition, when adding or renaming abbreviations:
-g
or--global
to use a global variable.-U
or--universal
to use a universal variable (default).
See the "Internals" section for more on them.
Examples¶
abbr -a -g gco git checkout
Add a new abbreviation where gco
will be replaced with git checkout
global to the current shell. This abbreviation will not be automatically visible to other shells unless the same command is run in those shells (such as when executing the commands in config.fish).
abbr -a -U l less
Add a new abbreviation where l
will be replaced with less
universal so all shells. Note that you omit the -U
since it is the default.
abbr -r gco gch
Renames an existing abbreviation from gco
to gch
.
abbr -e gco
Erase the gco
abbreviation.
ssh another_host abbr -s | source
Import the abbreviations defined on another_host over SSH.
Internals¶
Each abbreviation is stored in its own global or universal variable. The name consists of the prefix _fish_abbr_
followed by the WORD after being transformed by string escape style=var
. The WORD cannot contain a space but all other characters are legal.
Defining an abbreviation with global scope is slightly faster than universal scope (which is the default). But in general you'll only want to use the global scope when defining abbreviations in a startup script like ~/.config/fish/config.fish
like this:
if status --is-interactive
abbr --add --global first 'echo my first abbreviation'
abbr --add --global second 'echo my second abbreviation'
abbr --add --global gco git checkout
# etcetera
end
You can create abbreviations interactively and they will be visible to other fish sessions if you use the -U
or --universal
flag or don't explicitly specify the scope and the abbreviation isn't already defined with global scope. If you want it to be visible only to the current shell use the -g
or --global
flag.