zsh-autoquoter

zsh-autoquoter is a zle widget ("zsh plugin") that will automatically put quotes around arguments to certain commands. So instead of having to decide which type of quotes to suffer through:

$ git commit -m 'we haven'\''t seen the last of this "feature"'
$ git commit -m "we haven't seen the last of this \"feature\""

You can just write English:

$ git commit -m we haven't seen the last of this "feature"

And let zsh-autoquoter do the rest.

Behavior

Configure command prefixes that you want to be autoquoted by setting the ZAQ_PREFIXES array in your ~/.zshrc:

ZAQ_PREFIXES=('git commit -m' 'note' 'todo')

By default this array is empty. You need to opt into autoquote behavior.

Note that ZAQ_PREFIXES is an array of exact string prefixes: they are sensitive to whitespace, and zsh-autoquoter has no understanding of commands or flags or other shell syntax. If you have "git commit -m" as a prefix, and you type:

$ git commit -a -m hi hello

Then zsh-autoquoter will not fire, even though you probably want it to. A future version of zsh-autoquoter might have an option to parse commands more intelligently, but it currently does not.

Special characters

zsh-autoquoter runs before your shell has a chance to expand or glob or parse the command you typed, so it works to quote any shell syntax:

$ git commit -m * globs and | pipes and > redirects and # comments oh my

There is one exception:

Double escaping

zsh-autoquoter won't add quotes if there already are quotes, so you can still type:

$ git commit -m 'i forgot that i installed zaq'

And it will not double-escape anything.

When doing this check, zsh-autoquoter will look for a fully quoted argument string. So you can still write:

$ git commit -m 'twas the night before christmas
$ git commit -m "fix" the latest bug

And it will be autoquoted correctly.

I recommend enabling syntax highlighting (see below) to make it obvious when zsh-autoquoter is going to fire and when it is not.

History

Commands will be rewritten before they're added to history, so your ~/.zsh_history will reflect an accurate list of commands you ran, not commands you typed. But because zsh-autoquoter ignores already-quoted entries, you can always up-enter and re-run the same command.

Installation

Manually

Download zsh-autoquoter.zsh and source it from your ~/.zshrc file. Then make sure that you add some prefixes:

source ~/src/zsh-autoquoter/zsh-autoquoter.zsh
ZAQ_PREFIXES=('git commit -m' 'git commit -am')

Antigen:

$ antigen bundle ianthehenry/zsh-autoquoter

oh-my-zsh:

Clone this repo into your custom plugins directory:

$ git clone https://github.com/ianthehenry/zsh-autoquoter.git ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autoquoter

And then add it to the plugins list in your ~/.zshrc before you source oh-my-zsh:

plugins+=(zsh-autoquoter)
source "$ZSH/oh-my-zsh.sh"

Syntax highlighting

If you use the excellent zsh-syntax-highlighting package, you can enable the zaq highlighter by adding the following line to your ~/.zshrc:

ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_HIGHLIGHTERS+=(zaq)

You can customize how it looks by setting the zaq:string key:

ZSH_HIGHLIGHT_STYLES[zaq:string]="fg=green,underline"

If you don't use zsh-syntax-highlighting, you should check it out. It's great. You'll never typo a command again.

hey why don't you just write better commit messages

Okay yeah look I'm using git commit -m as an example a lot, but zsh-autoquoter was originally written so I could add notes and todo list items from the command line more easily. Not to say that git commit -m is bad -- it's great if you're using a patch queue workflow. But zsh-autoquoter does not condone vague one-line commit messages.