zsh vs Ion (shell)

When you start typing a command, you can press the tab key and it will complete the command you started typing. If there are multiple potential commands, you can choose which one to run by simply pressing tab again. Case-insensitive by default, too.

Oh-my-zsh is a community-driven framework, which helps users with their zsh configuration and plugins. 400 plugins, 200+ themes and auto-updates to always be up to date.

Zsh intelligently determines if you are trying to complete a file path or an option, and pressing tab after typing - will reliably bring up a list of options.

Things you've learned using bash will largely apply to zsh. Scripts written in bash will run with little to no modification.

Unlike Bash, zsh does not split unquoted variables by default, making it less error-prone.

ls **/*.log for example is supported by ZSH.

Zsh will take you through a procedure which is roughly 30 minutes in length before during install. Through this procedure it asks you to set different options and customize the shell the way you want it to. Most of these settings are also found in other shells, but to customize them you have to go dig configuration files while zsh allows you to do it in the beginning.

If you spend a lot of time in the terminal, most likely you will have several terminal windows open. Zsh has great support for command line histories. The history is unique and shared through all the different instances.

Zsh can determine the context of the command you're typing in and determine if it should escape characters if you're typing in a URI.

Some programs don't support loading from stdin, but ZSH can store outputs to a temporary file, example: unzip =(curl http://example.com/someZipFile.zip)

Zsh' s correct (or correctall) is vastly superior to Bash's attempt at spelling correction.

All variable assignments may optionally specify a type, which will enforce that the supplies value is compatible with that type before storing it, returning an error if there's a mis-match.

Arrays are sliced by elements, and strings are sliced by graphemes.

The entire Rust ecosystem is known for having excellent, modern documentation, and Ion is no exception. Couple that with it having far less cruft (ie fewer things to learn) some syntactic and conceptual inspiration from Rust, and suddenly you have a very easy to learn (and still very powerful) shell.

Generally more type-safe, enabling explicitness, and allowing for powerful slicing and method syntax.

Ion actually manages to be faster than Dash -- simultaneously using less memory and packing much more functionality.

Syntax is much simpler than other shells, leading to very elegant and succinct scripts and command invocations.

Shells written in C are often riddled with memory-based vulnerabilities that lead to high profile security flaws that are continually discovered decades later. GNU Bash's Shellshock vulnerability, for example, is an example of a vulnerability that Rust prevents. Rust raises the bar for minimum code quality standards by enforcing various restrictions on type/variable usage, and therefore Ion provides a high quality code base from the start.

There are no dependencies on C or C libraries (except for the minimum required to run on Linux). By opting for the MUSL target toolchain, a fully static binary can be generated and distributed to systems.

It is exceptionally easy to use 24-bit colors in the shell with Ion's c/color namespace.

echo ${c::0x09F}Bluish text${c::0x630bg}with a brownish background${c::reset}

Offers a unique concept of string and array methods, whereby invoking the name of a method, and supplying arguments to it, you can perform otherwise complex text manipulation at expansion time. Also supports recursively processing the results of method expansions within method expansions.

A special syntax allows for obtaining values from within special namespaces -- either namespaces that are built into the shell, such as the color namespace, or from plugins, such as the git plugin.

Plugins may be integrated within Ion using a C FFI. These plugins can add additional methods and namespaces.

Ion shell is featured within the distributed Concurr application, by the same author of Ion, which creates embedded instances of the Ion shell in the server for executing commands locally.