Passing a parameter to a zsh keyboard-shortcut

Intro

This post follows up on my previous post Using keyboard-shortcuts with zsh. As promised I will show how we can pass an argument / string to a zsh keyboard-shortcut.

We could for example use this option to create git feature branches by doing:

[typing the name of the branch] --> [keyboard-shortcut] --> [done]

Show me the code!

# create a feature branch with <name> and then ctrl-g+f
function featbranch() {
    branch_name=$BUFFER
    zle backward-kill-line
    echo "git checkout -b feat/$branch_name"
    git checkout -b "feat/${branch_name}"
    zle reset-prompt
    zle redisplay
}
zle -N featbranch
bindkey '^gf' featbranch

A bit longer than our previous widget. Let's break it down line by line:

1. Another awesome comment
2. The function which will be executed by our keystroke:
3. Save the current terminal-line into a variable
4. Clear the current line
5. Display the full command we like to execute
6. Execute the command
7. Reset the prompt. (Useful if we display branch-information in our promt)
8. Redisplay our prompt.
9. Again we define a widget that points to the function
10. And bind our key-combination to the widget

So there we have it. Let me know if it works for you!

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I would love to grow my network with other tech enthusiasts. Let's connect here or over on twitter! 👋 @langhard

Resources

A User's Guide to the Z-Shell

Comments

[jesús gollonet]

Nice! I've been using and loving simple bindkey for a few shortcuts in my zsh/tmux/vim setup.

I didn't know about the $BUFFER variable! It will come in handy for a problem i didn't know how to solve: Often times halfway through typing a command I think "this would be better ran in its own tmux pane", but then I would have to go to the beginning of the command and add the tmux split-window etc. Too much to bother. Having a shortcut I can press after finishing typing the command is much more ergonomic. Thanks for sharing!

[riscie EcoLogic]

Thats a really nice usecase! Thank you too for sharing it.

[jesús gollonet]

btw, the code in your example doesn't display any output for me. The branch gets created but I can't see the output from echo or git checkout. After some googling I suspect it might have to do with using a multiline prompt.

for some reason that I don't fully understand, adding a newline after git checkout makes it display for me:

function featbranch() {
    branch_name=$BUFFER
    zle backward-kill-line
    echo "git checkout -b feat/$branch_name"
    git checkout -b "feat/${branch_name}"
    echo "\n" #¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    zle reset-prompt
    zle redisplay
}

[riscie EcoLogic]

Thanks for the follow up!

    echo "\n" #¯\_(ツ)_/¯

🤷‍♂️😂

[Jason]

You may need override KEYTIMEOUT to 20 or large number to use the multi-key keybinding. The default is 1.