Which terminal is better: Bash vs Zsh

Commonly, when we’re speaking about Linux servers or Docker containers, we usually mean a command-line interface, shell, or terminal experience. There are two widely used shells by the community: Bash and Zsh. The Bash is considered the most widely used shell. At the same time, Z shell or Zsh is becoming increasingly popular. So, which terminal you should choose? In this article, we’ll compare Bash vs. Zsh and try to answer the question of which terminal is better.

History

Bash shell (Bourne Again Shell) was introduced in 1989 to replace Bourne Shell and quickly became the default Linux shell. Bash can perform a wide range of programming solutions and automated tasks in Linux, but that’s not the only shell you can use. Several other shells can perform similar functions as Bash.

One of them is Zsh, which was created in 1990 as an extended Bourne shell with many additional features of Bash, ksh, and tcsh. As a Linux user, you do not have to install Zsh separately since it is included in almost all modern distributions by default. Bash and Zsh share some features, but there are also many differences between these shells, which we’ll describe in this article. This article covers the following sections:

• Features comparison table
• Terminal UX Comparison
• List of differences between Bash and Zsh

Now let’s head towards the first section of this article.

Features comparison

In this part, we’ll cover the most important differences.

Zsh	Bash
It contains a lot of advanced features.	It does not contain advanced features.
Has a more complex configuration file structure.	Configuration files structure is simple.
Configuration and customization are provided by the Oh My Zsh framework.	Configuration and customization are provided by Bash-it.
Commands history is shared across all shells.	History sharing is difficult.
Zsh scripts are not so widely used.	Bash scripts are widely used.
Zsh does not load SHELLOPTS during startup.	SHELLOPTS are loaded during the start.
Environment configuration is more customizable with zshrc, zlogin, zshenv, zlogout, zprofile.	The environment is less customizable and can be implemented with fewer scripts.
Allows using expanded aliases anywhere in the file.	Bash does not support the expanded aliases by default.
zparseopts makes script arguments parsing very easy.	Parsing script arguments with getopts is a bit more challenging.
Terminal calculations can be done using zcalc.	You need to use two external calculators: bc and expr.
Terminal configuration/autostart scripts are loaded from ~/.zshrc file.	Terminal configuration/autostart scripts are loaded from ~/.bashrc file.
bindkey is used for keys binding.	bind builtin and ~/.inputrc are used for key binding.
More options to build fancy prompts.	Fewer options for fancy prompts.
setopt responsible for shell settings.	shopt configures shell settings.
# is not considered a comment unless the INTERACTIVE_COMMENTS is set.	# represents a comment string.
Extended wildcard patterns are enabled by default.	Use shopt -s extglob to enable extended wildcard patterns.
More ways to transform the variable value (parameter expansion).	Fewer methods for transforming variables.
Has auto-completion and spellings correction features embedded.	You need to use the bash-completion package.
More plugins and themes are available.	Fewer plugins and themes are available.
Zsh is more customizable.	Bash is less customizable.
POSIX compatible if emulate sh has been set.	Follow POSIX standards if the –posix command-line option is set.
Auto-completion works faster.	Auto completion is slower.
Smaller community	Wider community

Bash vs. Zsh – Internet search volume

Here’s a Google Trends chart, which shows the search volume comparison for both shells:

Bash vs Zsh – UX

This section will review the most commonly used UX shell features, which you use daily.

Docker container setup

If you just want to test the following examples, the best way of doing this is to launch the Ubuntu Docker container:

docker run -it ubuntu:20.04 /bin/bash

Docker container does not have Zsh installed by default, so you have to install it first:

apt-get update
apt-get install -y zsh

Finally, you may launch the Zsh shell:

zsh

Tab for auto-completion

The Tab key usage in Zsh and Bash is a bit different. Let’s create a couple of nested directories to illustrate this example:

mkdir -p onedrive/docs
mkdir -p onedrive/pics

In Bash, you have to use Tab key to auto-complete the path to the directory or file.

For example, type one, then press Tab, the type d and press Tab again to finalize the path in terminal:

cd onedrive/docs

The expected result should look like this:

In Zsh, usage of the Tab key will provide you a list of available options to select from.

Type one and press Tab, then press Tab again as many times as you’d like to select the required directory:

Spelling correction

The spelling correction functionality is supported by both Zsh and Bash shells. However, Zsh does it more effectively.

In the example below, you will learn how to automatically enable Zsh and Bash to correct the spelling.

Let’s create a directory named onedrive, if you did not do that in the previous part of the article:

mkdir -p onedrive

Now let’s make a typo in the Bash shell command:

cd onedrave

Bash shell will not correct the typing mistake of “drave” to “drive,” and display the error “No such file or directory.”

You have to edit the Bash configuration to enable the automatic spell-checking feature in Bash.

nano ~/.bashrc

Add the following line at the end of the file:

shopt -s cdspell

Use the source command to apply changes to the shell.

source ~/.bashrc

Execute the misspelled command again. The Bash terminal automatically corrected the typo:

cd onedrave

What about Zsh?

Let’s misspell the echo command to check if Zsh detects and corrects it for us automatically:

ehco "Hello World"

As expected, Zsh did not fix the spelling.

Now, we will make some changes to the Zsh configuration.

nano ~/.zshrc

Turn on the correctexport option for the shell. You may also specify a prompt message too:

setopt correct
export SPROMPT="Correct %R to %r? [Yes, No, Abort, Edit ]"

Do not worry if the file is empty, it is OK. It will be populated with additional configuration as soon we will install Oh My Zsh later.

Here’s what it should look like if you’re following us in the Docker container:

Execute the source command to apply changes to the shell.

source ~/.zshrc

Execute the misspelled echo command again:

ehco "Hello World"

Here you go!

Automatic spell-checking is now enabled:

Themes

You need to install Git to be able to use any Bash or Zsh themes and customizations:

apt-get install -y git

To install customizations for the Bash shell, use the following command:

git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/Bash-it/bash-it.git ~/.bash_it

The installation process is very simple:

~/.bash_it/install.sh

Now we can edit ~/.bashrc file to edit Bash theme:

nano ~/.bashrc

Change BASH_IT_THEME variable value to any theme that exists in the theme bundle. For example, try envy:

To apply changes, execute the following command:

source ~/.bashrc

Now, let’s customize Zsh.

As mentioned previously, the Oh My Zsh framework provides many useful features and an extensive themes collection.

The Oh My Zsh installation is not very difficult too:

apt install -y curl wget git
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

Just answer Y to all the questions, and you’ll get beautiful shell customization by default:

Now, Zsh themes are located in: ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes folder:

ls ~/.oh-my-zsh/themes/

Here, the names of the themes included in the bundle can be seen here.

The default theme of Zsh is robbyrussell. To modify this theme, update the ZSH_THEME variable value in ~/zshrc file:

nano ~/.zshrc

Now edit the ZSH_THEME variable value to set up a new theme for your terminal. Here’s a list of UX examples.

To apply changes, use the source command:

source ~/.zshrc

Wildcard expansion

File names are used to match with the wildcards. Bash has this built-in feature, whereas for Zsh, you have to enable the wildcard expansion by setting the global subset.

Let’s create a couple of .txt files in Bash:

touch text_file1.txt
touch text_file2.txt
ls

Now, we can list our .txt files by using the wildcard expression in a variable:

files="*.txt"
echo $files

In Zsh, such approach will not work by default:

touch text_file1.txt
touch text_file2.txt
ls
file="*.txt"
echo $file

set -o GLOB_SUBST
file="*.txt"
echo $file

Now, wildcard expressions are working!

Put this option to ~/.zshrc, if you’d like to keep such behavior of Zsh in the future:

set -o GLOB_SUBST

Summary

Zsh and Bash are extremely powerful shells with many extensions and configuration options. Zsh has robust customization, extensibility, and advanced features. Bash is still more widely used, so think about backward compatibility of your scripts with other systems you might need to manage.

My choice is Zsh when it comes to a personal laptop and Bash when it comes to server management activities.

I hope this article was useful for you. If so, please, help us to spread it to the world!

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