You can also get the same functionality with ZSH using https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-history-substring-search

I tried oh-my-zsh for that, but it was very slow to start up. I went back to fish when I realized that I had basically set up zsh to act exactly like fish.

I tried fish and went back to zsh when I realized that I was basically setting it up to be exactly like zsh. :P

I've been using Fish on my Mac for a while as well as some VPS' I have. At work I just installed it on our dev server.

It has a build in git status script you can include in your prompt that's awesome. Here's my fish prompt (note __fish_git_prompt):

    function fish_prompt
      set last_status $status

      set_color $fish_color_cwd
      printf '%s' (prompt_pwd)
      set_color normal

      printf '%s ' (__fish_git_prompt)

      set_color normal
    end

Sample:

   ~/G/Calendar (branch_name * ↩ =)

For bash/zsh users: https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/contrib/completion/gi...

I am really amazed more people on HN aren't using fish. Everyone should check it out: http://ridiculousfish.com/shell/

It's unfortunately on the one hand too beholden to POSIX shell behavior, while still being too different from mainline Bourne derivatives. I've tried it a few times, and the cognitive load is too extreme for my 20+ yrs of POSIX brain-damage to work around.

I don't use fish for shell scripting, but I'm enjoying it as my primary environment after making these adjustments..

Status codes and argument lists:

    $status  # replaces $?
    $argv    # replaces $@

Aliases are just functions (configure your startup in ~/.config/fish/config.fish):

    # alias ls="ls -lrth"
    function lr; ls -lrth $argv; end

For-loops are familiar:

    # for n in one two three; do echo $n; done
    for n in one two three; echo $n; end

The lack of '!$' confounded my hard-wired fingers until I settled on Alt-u to avoid up-arrows (see /usr/share/fish/functions/fish_default_key_bindings.fish):

    bind \eu history-token-search-backward  # replaces !$
    bind \ei history-token-search-forward   # bonus fun

The remaining price for fish's pseudo-telepathic assistance is the occasional frustration with applications that rely on the value of a user's default shell (/etc/passwd).

Does it run bash scripts or does it have its own scripting language?

Your script should have "#!/bin/bash" at the top, which tells the shell what interpreter you want it ran with. So, yes?

It is the kernel the one that interprets shebangs, not the shell:

http://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.g...

Thanks for the tip. I just installed it, and it seems really nice. The autocompletion of flags is pretty amazing.