Why does zsh print cmdand for every && at the beginning of the line?
For instance when I paste the following lines into a Z shell
echo "foo" && echo "bar" && \
echo "buz" && \
echo "jam"... zsh would display me the following
echo "foo" && echo "bar" && \
cmdand cmdand> echo "buz" && \
cmdand cmdand cmdand> echo "jam"So zsh prepends a cmdand for every && it encountered up to that line.
I just noticed that similar holds for || and cmdor.
Why would this be useful at all? Doesn't it just clutter the console? Can this behaviour be controlled?
I observed this behaviour on Mac OS and Ubuntu for zsh versions >5.x.
1 Answer
It is controlled by the value of the environment variable PS2, whose default value '%_> ' gives this behaviour. Its purpose is to show where you are in a multi-line command (and not just lines ending in back-slash), eg if you type a conditional command over several lines you will get:-
$ if [ "$var" ]
if> then
then> echo var: $var
then> else
else> echo var: not set
else> fi
var: not set
$ The shell does not distinguish between typed and pasted lines.
Set PS2='> ' for a simple > on each continuation line.
For more information, see the manual man zshall and search for PS2.
