Fish
Fish shell (Friendly Interactive SHell) is a smart and user-friendly command line shell for macOS, Linux, and other Unix-like operating systems. Designed with usability in mind, it offers powerful features like syntax highlighting, sophisticated auto-completion, and a scripting language that…
Key facts
- First appeared
- 2005
- Category
- technology
- Problem solved
- Fish shell emerged from a prevalent frustration among developers and system administrators with the traditional Unix shells. Before Fish, users often grappled with shells like Bash and Zsh that, while powerful, demanded significant time and effort for customization to achieve a pleasant and productive environment. Features like command auto-completion were rudimentary or required complex configuration files, syntax highlighting was non-existent by default, and shell scripting often felt like wrestling with arcane syntax and obscure rules. Fish set out to solve this by offering a 'friendly' experience out-of-the-box, providing intelligent auto-suggestions, rich syntax highlighting, and a sane scripting language, making the command line less of a chore and more of an intuitive tool from the moment it was installed.
- Platforms
- Windows (via WSL or Cygwin/MSYS2), OpenBSD, Solaris, FreeBSD, macOS, Linux, NetBSD
Related technologies
Notable users
- Open-source contributors
- Students
- Individual developers and programmers
- DevOps engineers
- System administrators