How do I show the definition of a function in zsh? type foo
doesn't give the definition.
In bash:
bash$ function foo() { echo hello; }
bash$ foo
hello
bash$ type foo
foo is a function
foo ()
{
echo hello
}
In zsh:
zsh$ function foo() { echo hello; }
zsh$ foo
hello
zsh$ type foo
foo is a shell function
The zsh idiom is whence
, the -f
flag prints function definitions:
zsh$ whence -f foo
foo () {
echo hello
}
zsh$
In zsh, type
is defined as equivalent to whence -v
, so you can continue to use type
, but you'll need to use the -f
argument:
zsh$ type -f foo
foo () {
echo hello
}
zsh$
And, finally, in zsh which
is defined as equivalent to whence -c
- print results in csh-like format, so which foo
will yield the same results.
man zshbuiltins
for all of this.
I've always just used which
for this.
tl;dr
declare -f foo # works in zsh and bash
typeset -f foo # works in zsh, bash, and ksh
If you don't mind or prefer including all command forms that exist for a given name in the output:Thanks, Raine Revere.
type -af # zsh only (works differently in bash and ksh)
type -f
/ whence -f
/ which
are suboptimal in this case, because their purpose is to report the command form with the highest precedence that happens to be defined by that name - as opposed to specifically reporting on the operand as a function.
That said, in practice this means that only an alias of the same name takes precedence (and technically also a shell keyword, though naming functions for shell keywords is probably a bad idea anyway).
Note that zsh
does expand aliases in scripts by default (as does ksh
, but not bash
), and even if you turn alias expansion off first, type -f
/ whence -f
/ which
still report aliases first.
In zsh
, the -f
option only includes shell functions in the lookup in zsh
, so - unless -a
is also used to list all command forms - an alias by the given name would print as the only output.
In bash
and ksh
, type -f
actually excludes functions from the lookup; whence
doesn't exist in bash
, and in ksh
it doesn't print the function definition; which
is not a builtin in ksh
and bash
, and the external utility by definition cannot print shell functions.
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