abbr - manage fish abbreviations

Synopsis

abbr --add [SCOPE] WORD EXPANSION abbr --erase WORD abbr --rename [SCOPE] OLD_WORD NEW_WORD abbr --show abbr --list abbr --query WORD

Description

abbr manages abbreviations - user-defined words that are replaced with longer phrases after they are entered.

For example, a frequently-run command like git checkout can be abbreviated to gco. After entering gco and pressing Space or Enter, the full text git checkout will appear in the command line.

Options

The following options are available:

-a WORD EXPANSION or --add WORD EXPANSION
Adds a new abbreviation, causing WORD to be expanded to EXPANSION
-r OLD_WORD NEW_WORD or --rename OLD_WORD NEW_WORD
Renames an abbreviation, from OLD_WORD to NEW_WORD
-s or --show
Show all abbreviations in a manner suitable for import and export
-l or --list
Lists all abbreviated words
-e WORD or --erase WORD
Erase the given abbreviations
-q or --query
Return 0 (true) if one of the WORD is an abbreviation.
-h or --help
Displays help about using this command.

In addition, when adding or renaming abbreviations, one of the following SCOPE options can be used:

-g or --global
Use a global variable
-U or --universal
Use a universal variable (default)

See the “Internals” section for more on them.

Examples

abbr -a -g gco git checkout

Add a new abbreviation where gco will be replaced with git checkout global to the current shell. This abbreviation will not be automatically visible to other shells unless the same command is run in those shells (such as when executing the commands in config.fish).

abbr -a -U l less

Add a new abbreviation where l will be replaced with less universal to all shells. Note that you omit the -U since it is the default.

abbr -r gco gch

Renames an existing abbreviation from gco to gch.

abbr -e gco

Erase the gco abbreviation.

ssh another_host abbr -s | source

Import the abbreviations defined on another_host over SSH.

Internals

Each abbreviation is stored in its own global or universal variable. The name consists of the prefix _fish_abbr_ followed by the WORD after being transformed by string escape style=var. The WORD cannot contain a space but all other characters are legal.

Abbreviations created with the --universal flag will be visible to other fish sessions, whilst --global will be limited to the current session.