Notable improvements and fixes¶

• fish’s command substitution syntax has been extended: $(cmd) now has the same meaning as (cmd) but it can be used inside double quotes, to prevent line splitting of the results (#159):

  foo (bar | string collect)
  # can now be written as
  foo "$(bar)"
  
  # and
  
  foo (bar)
  # can now be written as
  foo $(bar)
  # this will still split on newlines only.
  

• Complementing the prompt command in 3.3.0, fish_config gained a theme subcommand to show and pick from the sample themes (meaning color schemes) directly in the terminal, instead of having to open a Web browser. For example fish_config theme choose Nord loads the Nord theme in the current session (#8132). The current theme can be saved with fish_config theme dump, and custom themes can be added by saving them in ~/.config/fish/themes/.

• set and read learned a new option, --function, to set a variable in the function’s top scope. This should be a more familiar way of scoping variables and avoids issues with --local, which is actually block-scoped (#565, #8145):

  function demonstration
      if true
          set --function foo bar
          set --local baz banana
      end
      echo $foo # prints "bar" because $foo is still valid
      echo $baz # prints nothing because $baz went out of scope
  end
  

• string pad now excludes escape sequences like colors that fish knows about, and a new --visible flag to string length makes it use that kind of visible width. This is useful to get the number of terminal cells an already colored string would occupy, like in a prompt. (#8182, #7784, #4012):

  > string length --visible (set_color red)foo
  3
  

• Performance improvements to globbing, especially on systems using glibc. In some cases (large directories with files with many numbers in the names) this almost halves the time taken to expand the glob.

• Autosuggestions can now be turned off by setting $fish_autosuggestion_enabled to 0, and (almost) all highlighting can be turned off by choosing the new “None” theme. The exception is necessary colors, like those which distinguish autosuggestions from the actual command line. (#8376)

• The fish_git_prompt function, which is included in the default prompts, now overrides git to avoid running commands set by per-repository configuration. This avoids a potential security issue in some circumstances, and has been assigned CVE-2022-20001 (#8589).

Deprecations and removed features¶

• A new feature flag, ampersand-nobg-in-token makes & only act as background operator if followed by a separator. In combination with qmark-noglob, this allows entering most URLs at the command line without quoting or escaping (#7991). For example:

  > echo foo&bar # will print "foo&bar", instead of running "echo foo" in the background and executing "bar"
  > echo foo & bar # will still run "echo foo" in the background and then run "bar"
  # with both ampersand-nobg-in-token and qmark-noglob, this argument has no special characters anymore
  > open https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&feature=youtu.be
  

  As a reminder, feature flags can be set on startup with fish --features ampersand-nobg-in-token,qmark-noglob or with a universal variable called fish_features:

  > set -Ua fish_features ampersand-nobg-in-token
  

• $status is now forbidden as a command, to prevent a surprisingly common error among new users: Running if $status (#8171). This applies only to $status, other variables are still allowed.

• set --query now returns an exit status of 255 if given no variable names. This means if set -q $foo will not enter the if-block if $foo is empty or unset. To restore the previous behavior, use if not set -q foo; or set -q $foo – but this is unlikely to be desireable (#8214).

• _ is now a reserved keyword (#8342).

• The special input functions delete-or-exit, nextd-or-forward-word and prevd-or-backward-word replace fish functions of the same names (#8538).

• Mac OS X 10.9 is no longer supported. The minimum Mac version is now 10.10 “Yosemite.”

Scripting improvements¶

• string collect supports a new --allow-empty option, which will output one empty argument in a command substitution that has no output (#8054). This allows commands like test -n (echo -n | string collect --allow-empty) to work more reliably. Note this can also be written as test -n "$(echo -n)" (see above).

• string match gained a --groups-only option, which makes it only output capturing groups, excluding the full match. This allows string match to do simple transformations (#6056):

  > string match -r --groups-only '(.*)fish' 'catfish' 'twofish' 'blue fish' | string escape
  cat
  two
  'blue '
  

• $fish_user_paths is now automatically deduplicated to fix a common user error of appending to it in config.fish when it is universal (#8117). fish_add_path remains the recommended way to add to $PATH.

• return can now be used outside functions. In scripts, it does the same thing as exit. In interactive mode,it sets $status without exiting (#8148).

• An oversight prevented all syntax checks from running on commands given to fish -c (#8171). This includes checks such as exec not being allowed in a pipeline, and $$ not being a valid variable. Generally, another error was generated anyway.

• fish_indent now correctly reformats tokens that end with a backslash followed by a newline (#8197).

• commandline gained an --is-valid option to check if the command line is syntactically valid and complete. This allows basic implementation of transient prompts (#8142).

• commandline gained a --paging-full-mode option to check if the pager is showing all the possible lines (no “7 more rows” message) (#8485).

• List expansion correctly reports an error when used with all zero indexes (#8213).

• Running fish with a directory instead of a script as argument (eg fish .) no longer leads to an infinite loop. Instead it errors out immediately (#8258)

• Some error messages occuring after fork, like “text file busy” have been replaced by bespoke error messages for fish (like “File is currently open for writing”). This also restores error messages with current glibc versions that removed sys_errlist (#8234, #4183).

• The realpath builtin now also squashes leading slashes with the --no-symlinks option (#8281).

• When trying to cd to a dangling (broken) symbolic link, fish will print an error noting that the target is a broken link (#8264).

• On MacOS terminals that are not granted permissions to access a folder, cd would print a spurious “rotten symlink” error, which has been corrected to “permission denied” (#8264).

• Since fish 3.0, for loops would trigger a variable handler function before the loop was entered. As the variable had not actually changed or been set, this was a spurious event and has been removed (#8384).

• math now correctly prints negative values and values larger than 2**31 when in hex or octal bases (#8417).

• dirs always produces an exit status of 0, instead of sometimes returning 1 (#8211).

• cd "" no longer crashes fish (#8147).

• set --query can now query whether a variable is a path variable via --path or --unpath (#8494).

• Tilde characters (~) produced by custom completions are no longer escaped when applied to the command line, making it easier to use the output of a recursive complete -C in completion scripts (#4570).

• set --show reports when a variable is read-only (#8179).

• Erasing $fish_emoji_width will reset fish to the default guessed emoji width (#8274).

• The la function no longer lists entries for “.” and “..”, matching other systems defaults (#8519).

• abbr -q returns the correct exit status when given multiple abbreviation names as arguments (#8431).

• command -v returns an exit status of 127 instead of 1 if no command was found (#8547).

• argparse with --ignore-unknown no longer breaks with multiple unknown options in a short option group (#8637).

• Comments inside command substitutions or brackets now correctly ignore parentheses, quotes, and brackets (#7866, #8022, #8695).

• complete -C supports a new --escape option, which turns on escaping in returned completion strings (#3469).

• Invalid byte or unicode escapes like Utest or xNotHex are now a tokenizer error instead of causing the token to be truncated (#8545).

Interactive improvements¶

• Vi mode cursors are now set properly after Control–C (#8125).

• funced will try to edit the whole file containing a function definition, if there is one (#391).

• Running a command line consisting of just spaces now deletes an ephemeral (starting with space) history item again (#8232).

• Command substitutions no longer respect job control, instead running inside fish’s own process group (#8172). This more closely matches other shells, and improves Control–C reliability inside a command substitution.

• history and __fish_print_help now properly support less before version 530, including the version that ships with macOS. (#8157).

• help now knows which section is in which document again (#8245).

• fish’s highlighter will now color options (starting with - or --) with the color given in the new $fish_color_option, up to the first --. It falls back on $fish_color_param, so nothing changes for existing setups (#8292).

• When executing a command, abbreviations are no longer expanded when the cursor is separated from the command by spaces, making it easier to suppress abbreviation expansion of commands without arguments. (#8423).

• fish_key_reader’s output was simplified. By default, it now only prints a bind statement. The previous per-character timing information can be seen with a new --verbose switch (#8467).

• Custom completions are now also loaded for commands that contain tildes or variables like ~/bin/fish or $PWD/fish (#8442).

• Command lines spanning multiple lines will not be overwritten by the completion pager when it fills the entire terminal (#8509, #8405).

• When redrawing a multiline prompt, the old prompt is now properly cleared (#8163).

• Interactive completion would occasionally ignore the last word on the command line due to a race condition. This has been fixed (#8175).

• Propagation of universal variables from a fish process that is closing is faster (#8209).

• The command line is drawn in the correct place if the prompt ends with a newline (#8298).

• history learned a new subcommand clear-session to erase all history from the current session (#5791).

• Pressing Control–C in fish_key_reader will no longer print the incorrect “Press [ctrl-C] again to exit” message (#8510).

• The default command-not-found handler for Fedora/PackageKit now passes the whole command line, allowing for functionality such as running the suggested command directly (#8579).

• When looking for locale information, the Debian configuration is now used when available (#8557).

• Pasting text containing quotes from the clipboard trims spaces more appropriately (#8550).

• The clipboard bindings ignore X-based clipboard programs if the DISPLAY environment variable is not set, which helps prefer the Windows clipboard when it is available (such as on WSL).

• funcsave will remove a saved copy of a function that has been erased with functions --erase.

• The Web-based configuration tool gained a number of improvements, including the ability to set pager colors.

• The default fish_title prints a shorter title with shortened $PWD and no more redundant “fish” (#8641).

• Holding down an arrow key won’t freeze the terminal with long periods of flashing (#8610).

• Multi-char bindings are no longer interrupted if a signal handler enqueues an event. (#8628).

Other improvements¶

• Fish’s test suite now uses ctest, and has become much faster to run. It is now also possible to run only specific tests with targets named test_$filename – make test_set.fish only runs the set.fish test. (#7851)

• The HTML version of the documentation now includes copy buttons for code examples (#8218).

• The HTML version of the documentation and the web-based configuration tool now pick more modern system fonts instead of falling back to Arial and something like Courier New most of the time (#8632).

• The Debian & Ubuntu package linked from fishshell.com is now a single package, rather than split into fish and fish-common (#7845).

• The macOS installer does not assert that Rosetta is required to install fish on machines with Apple Silicon (#8566).

• The macOS installer now cleans up previous .pkg installations when upgrading. (#2963).

For distributors¶

• The minimum version of CMake required to build fish is now 3.5.0.

• The CMake installation supports absolute paths for CMAKE_INSTALL_DATADIR (#8150).

• Building using NetBSD curses works on any platform (#8087).

• The build system now uses the default linker instead of forcing use of the gold or lld linker (#8152).

Notable improvements and fixes¶

• fish_config gained a prompt subcommand to show and pick from the sample prompts directly in the terminal, instead of having to open a webbrowser. For example fish_config prompt choose default loads the default prompt in the current session (#7958).

• The documentation has been reorganized to be easier to understand (#7773).

Deprecations and removed features¶

• The $fish_history value “default” is no longer special. It used to be treated the same as “fish” (#7650).

• Redirection to standard error with the ^ character has been disabled by default. It can be turned back on using the stderr-nocaret feature flag, but will eventually be disabled completely (#7105).

• Specifying an initial tab to fish_config now only works with fish_config browse (eg fish_config browse variables), otherwise it would interfere with the new prompt subcommand (see below) (#7958).

Scripting improvements¶

• math gained new functions log2 (like the documentation claimed), max and min (#7856). math functions can be used without the parentheses (eg math sin 2 + 6), and functions have the lowest precedence in the order of operations (#7877).

• Shebang (#!) lines are no longer required within shell scripts, improving support for scripts with concatenated binary contents. If a file fails to execute and passes a (rudimentary) binary safety check, fish will re-invoke it using /bin/sh (#7802).

• Exit codes are better aligned with bash. A failed execution now reports $status of 127 if the file is not found, and 126 if it is not executable.

• echo no longer writes its output one byte at a time, improving performance and allowing use with Linux’s special API files (/proc, /sys and such) (#7836).

• fish should now better handle cd on filesystems with broken stat(3) responses (#7577).

• Builtins now properly report a $status of 1 upon unsuccessful writes (#7857).

• string match with unmatched capture groups and without the --all flag now sets an empty variable instead of a variable containing the empty string. It also correctly imports the first match if multiple arguments are provided, matching the documentation. (#7938).

• fish produces more specific errors when a command in a command substitution wasn’t found or is not allowed. This now prints something like “Unknown command” instead of “Unknown error while evaluating command substitution”.

• fish_indent allows inline variable assignments (FOO=BAR command) to use line continuation, instead of joining them into one line (#7955).

• fish gained a --no-config option to disable configuration files. This applies to user-specific and the systemwide config.fish (typically in /etc/fish/config.fish), and configuration snippets (typically in conf.d directories). It also disables universal variables, history, and loading of functions from system or user configuration directories (#7921, #1256).

• When universal variables are unavailable for some reason, setting a universal variable now sets a global variable instead (#7921).

• $last_pid now contains the process ID of the last process in the pipeline, allowing it to be used in scripts (#5036, #5832, #7721). Previously, this value contained the process group ID, but in scripts this was the same as the running fish’s process ID.

• process-exit event handlers now receive the same value as $status in all cases, instead of receiving -1 when the exit was due to a signal.

• process-exit event handlers for PID 0 also received JOB_EXIT events; this has been fixed.

• job-exit event handlers may now be created with any of the PIDs from the job. The handler is passed the last PID in the job as its second argument, instead of the process group.

• Trying to set an empty variable name with set no longer works (these variables could not be used in expansions anyway).

• fish_add_path handles an undefined PATH environment variable correctly (#8082).

Interactive improvements¶

• Commands entered before the previous command finishes will now be properly syntax highlighted.

• fish now automatically creates config.fish and the configuration directories in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fish (by default ~/.config/fish) if they do not already exist (#7402).

• $SHLVL is no longer incremented in non-interactive shells. This means it won’t be set to values larger than 1 just because your environment happens to run some scripts in $SHELL in its startup path (#7864).

• fish no longer rings the bell when flashing the command line. The flashing should already be enough notification and the bell can be annoying (#7875).

• fish --help is more helpful if the documentation isn’t installed (#7824).

• funced won’t include an entry on where a function is defined, thanks to the new functions --no-details option (#7879).

• A new variable, fish_killring, containing entries from the killring, is now available (#7445).

• fish --private prints a note on private mode on startup even if $fish_greeting is an empty list (#7974).

• fish no longer attempts to lock history or universal variable files on remote filesystems, including NFS and Samba mounts. In rare cases, updates to these files may be dropped if separate fish instances modify them simultaneously. (#7968).

• wait and on-process-exit work correctly with jobs that have already exited (#7210).

• __fish_print_help (used for --help output for fish’s builtins) now respects the LESS environment variable, and if not set, uses better default pager settings (#7997).

• Errors from alias are now printed to standard error, matching other builtins and functions (#7925).

• ls output is colorized on OpenBSD if colorls utility is installed (#8035)

• The default pager color looks better in terminals with light backgrounds (#3412).

• Further robustness improvements to the bash history import (#7874).

• fish now tries to find a Unicode-aware locale for encoding (LC_CTYPE) if started without any locale information, improving the display of emoji and other non-ASCII text on misconfigured systems (#8031). To allow a C locale, set the variable fish_allow_singlebyte_locale to 1.

• The Web-based configuration and documentation now feature a dark mode if the browser requests it (#8043).

• Color variables can now also be given like --background red and -b red, not just --background=red (#8053).

• exit run within fish_prompt now exits properly (#8033).

• When attempting to execute the unsupported POSIX-style brace command group ({ ... }) fish will suggest its equivalent begin; ...; end commands (#6415).

For distributors¶

• fish runs correctly on platforms without the O_CLOEXEC flag for open(2) (#8023).

Notable improvements and fixes¶

• Undo and redo support for the command-line editor and pager search (#1367). By default, undo is bound to Control+Z, and redo to Alt+/.

• Builtins can now output before all data is read. For example, string replace no longer has to read all of stdin before it can begin to output.
  This makes it usable also for pipes where the previous command hasn’t finished yet, like:

  # Show all dmesg lines related to "usb"
  dmesg -w | string match '*usb*'
  

• Prompts will now be truncated instead of replaced with "> " if they are wider than the terminal (#904).
  For example:

  ~/dev/build/fish-shell-git/src/fish-shell/build (makepkg)>
  

  will turn into:

  …h-shell/build (makepkg)>
  

  It is still possible to react to the COLUMNS variable inside the prompt to implement smarter behavior.

• fish completes ambiguous completions after pressing Tab even when they
  have a common prefix, without the user having to press Tab again
  (#6924).

• fish is less aggressive about resetting terminal modes, such as flow control, after every command.
  Although flow control remains off by default, enterprising users can now enable it with
  stty (#2315, #7704).

• A new “fish_add_path” helper function to add paths to $PATH without producing duplicates,
  to be used interactively or in config.fish (#6960, #7028).
  For example:

  fish_add_path /opt/mycoolthing/bin
  

  will add /opt/mycoolthing/bin to the beginning of $fish_user_path without creating duplicates,
  so it can be called safely from config.fish or interactively, and the path will just be there, once.

• Better errors with “test” (#6030):

  > test 1 = 2 and echo true or false
  test: Expected a combining operator like '-a' at index 4
  1 = 2 and echo true or echo false
        ^
  

  This includes numbering the index from 1 instead of 0, like fish lists.

• A new theme for the documentation and Web-based configuration (#6500, #7371, #7523), matching the design on fishshell.com.

• fish --no-execute will no longer complain about unknown commands
  or non-matching wildcards, as these could be defined differently at
  runtime (especially for functions). This makes it usable as a static syntax checker (#977).

• string match --regex now integrates named PCRE2 capture groups as fish variables, allowing variables to be set directly from string match (#7459). To support this functionality, string is now a reserved word and can no longer be wrapped in a function.

• Globs and other expansions are limited to 512,288 results (#7226). Because operating systems limit the number of arguments to commands, larger values are unlikely to work anyway, and this helps to avoid hangs.

• A new “fish for bash users” documentation page gives a quick overview of the scripting differences between bash and fish (#2382), and the completion tutorial has also been moved out into its own document (#6709).

Syntax changes and new commands¶

• Range limits in index range expansions like $x[$start..$end] may be omitted: $start and $end default to 1 and -1 (the last item) respectively (#6574):

  echo $var[1..]
  echo $var[..-1]
  echo $var[..]
  

  All print the full list $var.

• When globbing, a segment which is exactly ** may now match zero directories. For example **/foo may match foo in the current directory (#7222).

Scripting improvements¶

• The type, _ (gettext), . (source) and : (no-op) functions
  are now implemented builtins for performance purposes (#7342, #7036, #6854).

• set and backgrounded jobs no longer overwrite $pipestatus (#6820), improving its use in command substitutions (#6998).

• Computed (“electric”) variables such as status are now only global in scope, so set -Uq status returns false (#7032).

• The output for set --show has been shortened, only mentioning the scopes in which a variable exists (#6944).
  In addition, it now shows if a variable is a path variable.

• A new variable, fish_kill_signal, is set to the signal that terminated the last foreground job, or 0 if the job exited normally (#6824, #6822).

• A new subcommand, string pad, allows extending strings to a given width (#7340, #7102).

• string sub has a new --end option to specify the end index of
  a substring (#6765, #5974).

• string split has a new --fields option to specify fields to
  output, similar to cut -f (#6770).

• string trim now also trims vertical tabs by default (#6795).

• string replace no longer prints an error if a capturing group wasn’t matched, instead treating it as empty (#7343).

• string subcommands now quit early when used with --quiet (#7495).

• string repeat now handles multiple arguments, repeating each one (#5988).

• printf no longer prints an error if not given an argument (not
  even a format string).

• The true and false builtins ignore any arguments, like other shells (#7030).

• fish_indent now removes unnecessary quotes in simple cases (#6722)
  and gained a --check option to just check if a file is indented correctly (#7251).

• fish_indent indents continuation lines that follow a line ending in a backslash, |, && or ||.

• pushd only adds a directory to the stack if changing to it was successful (#6947).

• A new fish_job_summary function is called whenever a
  background job stops or ends, or any job terminates from a signal (#6959, #2727, #4319).
  The default behaviour can now be customized by redefining it.

• status gained new dirname and basename convenience subcommands
  to get just the directory to the running script or the name of it,
  to simplify common tasks such as running (dirname (status filename)) (#7076, #1818).

• Broken pipelines are now handled more smoothly; in particular, bad redirection mid-pipeline
  results in the job continuing to run but with the broken file descriptor replaced with a closed
  file descriptor. This allows better error recovery and is more in line with other shells’
  behaviour (#7038).

• jobs --quiet PID no longer prints “no suitable job” if the job for PID does not exist (eg because it has finished) (#6809, #6812).

• jobs now shows continued child processes correctly (#6818)

• disown should no longer create zombie processes when job control is off, such as in config.fish (#7183).

• command, jobs and type builtins support --query as the long form of -q, matching other builtins.
  The long form --quiet is deprecated (#7276).

• argparse no longer requires a short flag letter for long-only options (#7585)
  and only prints a backtrace with invalid options to argparse itself (#6703).

• argparse now passes the validation variables (e.g. $_flag_value) as local-exported variables,
  avoiding the need for --no-scope-shadowing in validation functions.

• complete takes the first argument as the name of the command if the --command/-c option is not used,
  so complete git is treated like complete --command git,
  and it can show the loaded completions for specific commands with complete COMMANDNAME (#7321).

• set_color -b (without an argument) no longer prints an error message, matching other invalid invocations of this command (#7154).

• exec no longer produces a syntax error when the command cannot be found (#6098).

• set --erase and abbr --erase can now erase multiple things in one go, matching functions --erase (#7377).

• abbr --erase no longer prints errors when used with no arguments or on an unset abbreviation (#7376, #7732).

• test -t, for testing whether file descriptors are connected to a terminal, works for file descriptors 0, 1, and 2 (#4766).
  It can still return incorrect results in other cases (#1228).

• Trying to execute scripts with Windows line endings (CRLF) produces a sensible error (#2783).

• Trying to execute commands with arguments that exceed the operating system limit now produces a specific error (#6800).

• An alias that delegates to a command with the same name no longer triggers an error about recursive completion (#7389).

• math now has a --base option to output the result in hexadecimal or octal (#7496) and produces more specific error messages (#7508).

• math learned bitwise functions bitand, bitor and bitxor, used like math "bitand(0xFE, 5)" (#7281).

• math learned tau for those who don’t like typing “2 * pi”.

• Failed redirections will now set $status (#7540).

• fish sets exit status in a more consistent manner after errors, including invalid expansions like $foo[.

• Using read --silent while fish is in private mode was adding these potentially-sensitive entries to the history; this has been fixed (#7230).

• read can now read interactively from other files, and can be used to read from the terminal via read (if the operating system provides /dev/tty) (#7358).

• A new fish_status_to_signal function for transforming exit statuses to signal names has been added (#7597, #7595).

• The fallback realpath builtin supports the -s/--no-symlinks option, like GNU realpath (#7574).

• functions and type now explain when a function was defined via source instead of just saying Defined in -.

• Significant performance improvements when globbing, appending to variables or in math.

• echo no longer interprets options at the beginning of an argument (eg echo "-n foo") (#7614).

• fish now finds user configuration even if the HOME environment variable is not set (#7620).

• fish no longer crashes when started from a Windows-style working directory (eg F:path) (#7636).

• fish -c now reads the remaining arguments into $argv (#2314).

• The pwd command supports the long options --logical and --physical, matching other implementations (#6787).

• fish --profile now only starts profiling after fish is ready to execute commands (all configuration is completed). There is a new --profile-startup option that only profiles the startup and configuration process (#7648).

• Builtins return a maximum exit status of 255, rather than potentially overflowing. In particular, this affects exit, return, functions --query, and set --query (#7698, #7702).

• It is no longer an error to run builtin with closed stdin. For example count <&- now prints 0, instead of failing.

• Blocks, functions, and builtins no longer permit redirecting to file descriptors other than 0 (standard input), 1 (standard output) and 2 (standard error). For example, echo hello >&5 is now an error. This prevents corruption of internal state (#3303).

Interactive improvements¶

• fish will now always attempt to become process group leader in interactive mode (#7060). This helps avoid hangs in certain circumstances, and allows tmux’s current directory introspection to work (#5699).

• The interactive reader now allows ending a line in a logical operators (&& and ||) instead of complaining about a missing command. (This was already syntactically valid, but interactive sessions didn’t know about it yet).

• The prompt is reprinted after a background job exits (#1018).

• fish no longer inserts a space after a completion ending in ., , or - is accepted, improving completions for tools that provide dynamic completions (#6928).

• If a filename is invalid when first pressing Tab, but becomes valid, it will be completed properly on the next attempt (#6863).

• help string match/replace/ will show the help for string subcommands (#6786).

• fish_key_reader sets the exit status to 0 when used with --help or --version (#6964).

• fish_key_reader and fish_indent send output from --version to standard output, matching other fish binaries (#6964).

• A new variable $status_generation is incremented only when the previous command produces an exit status (#6815). This can be used, for example, to check whether a failure status is a holdover due to a background job, or actually produced by the last run command.

• fish_greeting is now a function that reads a variable of the same name, and defaults to setting it globally.
  This removes a universal variable by default and helps with updating the greeting.
  However, to disable the greeting it is now necessary to explicitly specify universal scope (set -U fish_greeting) or to disable it in config.fish (#7265).

• Events are properly emitted after a job is cancelled (#2356).

• fish_preexec and fish_postexec events are no longer triggered for empty commands (#4829, #7085).

• Functions triggered by the fish_exit event are correctly run when the terminal is closed or the shell receives SIGHUP (#7014).

• The fish_prompt event no longer fires when read is used. If
  you need a function to run any time read is invoked by a script,
  use the new fish_read event instead (#7039).

• A new fish_posterror event is emitted when attempting to execute a command with syntax errors (#6880, #6816).

• The debugging system has now fully switched from the old numbered level to the new named category system introduced in 3.1. A number of new debugging categories have been added, including config, path, reader and screen (#6511). See the output of fish --print-debug-categories for the full list.

• The warning about read-only filesystems has been moved to a new “warning-path” debug category
  and can be disabled by setting a debug category of -warning-path (#6630):

  fish --debug=-warning-path
  

• The enabled debug categories are now printed on shell startup (#7007).

• The -o short option to fish, for --debug-output, works correctly instead of producing an
  invalid option error (#7254).

• fish’s debugging can now also be enabled via FISH_DEBUG and FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT environment variables.
  This helps with debugging when no commandline options can be passed, like when fish is called in a shebang (#7359).

• Abbreviations are now expanded after all command terminators (eg ; or |), not just space,
  as in fish 2.7.1 and before (#6970), and after closing a command substitution (#6658).

• The history file is now created with user-private permissions,
  matching other shells (#6926). The directory containing the history
  file was already private, so there should not have been any private data
  revealed.

• The output of time is now properly aligned in all cases (#6726, #6714) and no longer depends on locale (#6757).

• The command-not-found handling has been simplified.
  When it can’t find a command, fish now just executes a function called fish_command_not_found
  instead of firing an event, making it easier to replace and reason about.
  Previously-defined __fish_command_not_found_handler functions with an appropriate event listener will still work (#7293).

• Control–C handling has been reimplemented in C++ and is therefore quicker (#5259), no longer occasionally prints an “unknown command” error (#7145) or overwrites multiline prompts (#3537).

• Control–C no longer kills background jobs for which job control is
  disabled, matching POSIX semantics (#6828, #6861).

• Autosuggestions work properly after Control–C cancels the current commmand line (#6937).

• History search is now case-insensitive unless the search string contains an uppercase character (#7273).

• fish_update_completions gained a new --keep option, which improves speed by skipping completions that already exist (#6775, #6796).

• Aliases containing an embedded backslash appear properly in the output of alias (#6910).

• open no longer hangs indefinitely on certain systems, as a bug in xdg-open has been worked around (#7215).

• Long command lines no longer add a blank line after execution (#6826) and behave better with Backspace (#6951).

• functions -t works like the long option --handlers-type, as documented, instead of producing an error (#6985).

• History search now flashes when it found no more results (#7362)

• fish now creates the path in the environment variable XDG_RUNTIME_DIR if it does not exist, before using it for runtime data storage (#7335).

• set_color --print-colors now also respects the bold, dim, underline, reverse, italic and background modifiers, to better show their effect (#7314).

• The fish Web configuration tool (fish_config) shows prompts correctly on Termux for Android (#7298) and detects Windows Services for Linux 2 properly (#7027). It no longer shows the history variable as it may be too large (one can use the History tab instead). It also starts the browser in another thread, avoiding hangs in some circumstances, especially with Firefox’s Developer Edition (#7158). Finally, a bug in the Source Code Pro font may cause browsers to hang, so this font is no longer chosen by default (#7714).

• funcsave gained a new --directory option to specify the location of the saved function (#7041).

• help works properly on MSYS2 (#7113) and only uses cmd.exe if running on WSL (#6797).

• Resuming a piped job by its number, like fg %1, works correctly (#7406). Resumed jobs show the correct title in the terminal emulator (#7444).

• Commands run from key bindings now use the same TTY modes as normal commands (#7483).

• Autosuggestions from history are now case-sensitive (#3978).

• $status from completion scripts is no longer passed outside the completion, which keeps the status display in the prompt as the last command’s status (#7555).

• Updated localisations for pt_BR (#7480).

• fish_trace output now starts with -> (like fish --profile), making the depth more visible (#7538).

• Resizing the terminal window no longer produces a corrupted prompt (#6532, #7404).

• functions produces an error rather than crashing on certain invalid arguments (#7515).

• A crash in completions with inline variable assignment (eg A= b) has been fixed (#7344).

• fish_private_mode may now be changed dynamically using set (#7589), and history is kept in memory in private mode (but not stored permanently) (#7590).

• Commands with leading spaces may be retrieved from history with up-arrow until a new command is run, matching zsh’s HIST_IGNORE_SPACE (#1383).

• Importing bash history or reporting errors with recursive globs (**) no longer hangs (#7407, #7497).

• bind now shows x7f for the del key instead of a literal DEL character (#7631)

• Paths containing variables or tilde expansion are only suggested when they are still valid (#7582).

• Syntax highlighting can now color a command as invalid even if executed quickly (#5912).

• Redirection targets are no longer highlighted as error if they contain variables which will likely be defined by the current commandline (#6654).

• fish is now more resilient against broken terminal modes (#7133, #4873).

• fish handles being in control of the TTY without owning its own process group better, avoiding some hangs in special configurations (#7388).

• Keywords can now be colored differently by setting the fish_color_keyword variable (fish_color_command is used as a fallback) (#7678).

• Just like fish_indent, the interactive reader will indent continuation lines that follow a line ending in a backslash, |, && or || (#7694).

• Commands with a trailing escaped space are saved in history correctly (#7661).

• fish_prompt no longer mangles Unicode characters in the private-use range U+F600-U+F700. (#7723).

• The universal variable file, fish_variables, can be made a symbolic link without it being overwritten (#7466).

• fish is now more resilient against mktemp failing (#7482).

For distributors¶

• fish has a new interactive test driver based on pexpect, removing the optional dependency on expect (and adding an optional dependency on pexpect) (#5451, #6825).

• The CHANGELOG was moved to restructured text, allowing it to be included in the documentation (#7057).

• fish handles ncurses installed in a non-standard prefix better (#6600, #7219), and uses variadic tparm on NetBSD curses (#6626).

• The Web-based configuration tool no longer uses an obsolete Angular version (#7147).

• The fish project has adopted the Contributor Covenant code of conduct (#7151).

Deprecations and removed features¶

• The fish_color_match variable is no longer used. (Previously this controlled the color of matching quotes and parens when using read).

• fish 3.2.0 will be the last release in which the redirection to standard error with the ^ character is enabled.
  The stderr-nocaret feature flag will be changed to “on” in future releases.

• string is now a reserved word and cannot be used for function names (see above).

• fish_vi_cursor’s option --force-iterm has been deprecated (see above).

• command, jobs and type long-form option --quiet is deprecated in favor of --query (see above).

• The fish_command_not_found event is no longer emitted, instead there is a function of that name.
  By default it will call a previously-defined __fish_command_not_found_handler. To emit the event manually use emit fish_command_not_found.

• The fish_prompt event no longer fires when read is used. If
  you need a function to run any time read is invoked by a script,
  use the new fish_read event instead (#7039).

• To disable the greeting message permanently it is no longer enough to just run set fish_greeting interactively as it is
  no longer implicitly a universal variable. Use set -U fish_greeting or disable it in config.fish with set -g fish_greeting.

• The long-deprecated and non-functional -m/--read-mode options to read were removed in 3.1b1. Using the short form, or a never-implemented -B option, no longer crashes fish (#7659).

• With the addition of new categories for debug options, the old numbered debugging levels have been removed.

For distributors and developers¶

• fish source tarballs are now distributed using the XZ compression
  method (#5460).

• The fish source tarball contains an example FreeDesktop entry and icon.

• The CMake variable MAC_CODESIGN_ID can now be set to “off” to disable code-signing (#6952, #6792).

• Building on on macOS earlier than 10.13.6 succeeds, instead of failing on code-signing (#6791).

• The pkg-config file now uses variables to ensure paths used are portable across prefixes.

• The default values for the extra_completionsdir, extra_functionsdir
  and extra_confdir options now use the installation prefix rather than /usr/local (#6778).

• A new CMake variable FISH_USE_SYSTEM_PCRE2 controls whether fish
  builds with the system-installed PCRE2, or the version it bundles. By
  default it prefers the system library if available, unless Mac
  codesigning is enabled (#6952).

• Running the full interactive test suite now requires Python 3.5+ and the pexpect package (#6825); the expect package is no longer required.

• Support for Python 2 in fish’s tools (fish_config and the manual page completion generator) is no longer guaranteed. Please use Python 3.5 or later (#6537).

• The Web-based configuration tool is compatible with Python 3.10 (#7600) and no longer requires Python’s distutils package (#7514).

• fish 3.2 is the last release to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux & CentOS version 6.

Errata for fish 3.1¶

A new builtin, time, was introduced in the fish 3.1 releases. This
builtin is a reserved word (like test, function, and others)
because of the way it is implemented, and functions can no longer be
named time. This was not clear in the fish 3.1b1 changelog.

Notable improvements and fixes¶

• A new $pipestatus variable contains a list of exit statuses of
  the previous job, for each of the separate commands in a pipeline
  (#5632).

• fish no longer buffers pipes to the last function in a pipeline,
  improving many cases where pipes appeared to block or hang (#1396).

• An overhaul of error messages for builtin commands, including a
  removal of the overwhelming usage summary, more readable stack traces
  (#3404, #5434), and stack traces for test (aka [) (#5771).

• fish’s debugging arguments have been significantly improved. The
  --debug-level option has been removed, and a new --debug
  option replaces it. This option accepts various categories, which may
  be listed via fish --print-debug-categories (#5879). A new
  --debug-output option allows for redirection of debug output.

• string has a new collect subcommand for use in command
  substitutions, producing a single output instead of splitting on new
  lines (similar to "$(cmd)" in other shells) (#159).

• The fish manual, tutorial and FAQ are now available in man format
  as fish-doc, fish-tutorial and fish-faq respectively
  (#5521).

• Like other shells, cd now always looks for its argument in the
  current directory as a last resort, even if the CDPATH variable
  does not include it or “.” (#4484).

• fish now correctly handles CDPATH entries that start with ..
  (#6220) or contain ./ (#5887).

• The fish_trace variable may be set to trace execution (#3427).
  This performs a similar role as set -x in other shells.

• fish uses the temporary directory determined by the system, rather
  than relying on /tmp (#3845).

• The fish Web configuration tool (fish_config) prints a list of
  commands it is executing, to help understanding and debugging
  (#5584).

• Major performance improvements when pasting (#5866), executing lots
  of commands (#5905), importing history from bash (#6295), and when
  completing variables that might match $history (#6288).

Syntax changes and new commands¶

• A new builtin command, time, which allows timing of fish
  functions and builtins as well as external commands (#117).

• Brace expansion now only takes place if the braces include a “,” or a
  variable expansion, meaning common commands such as
  git reset HEAD@{0} do not require escaping (#5869).

• New redirections &> and &| may be used to redirect or pipe
  stdout, and also redirect stderr to stdout (#6192).

• switch now allows arguments that expand to nothing, like empty
  variables (#5677).

• The VAR=val cmd syntax can now be used to run a command in a
  modified environment (#6287).

• and is no longer recognised as a command, so that nonsensical
  constructs like and and and produce a syntax error (#6089).

• math‘s exponent operator,’^‘, was previously
  left-associative, but now uses the more commonly-used
  right-associative behaviour (#6280). This means that
  math '3^0.5^2' was previously calculated as’(3^0.5)2’,
  but is now calculated as ‘3^(0.52)’.

• In fish 3.0, the variable used with for loops inside command
  substitutions could leak into enclosing scopes; this was an
  inadvertent behaviour change and has been reverted (#6480).

Scripting improvements¶

• string split0 now returns 0 if it split something (#5701).

• In the interest of consistency, builtin -q and command -q can
  now be used to query if a builtin or command exists (#5631).

• math now accepts --scale=max for the maximum scale (#5579).

• builtin $var now works correctly, allowing a variable as the
  builtin name (#5639).

• cd understands the -- argument to make it possible to change
  to directories starting with a hyphen (#6071).

• complete --do-complete now also does fuzzy matches (#5467).

• complete --do-complete can be used inside completions, allowing
  limited recursion (#3474).

• count now also counts lines fed on standard input (#5744).

• eval produces an exit status of 0 when given no arguments, like
  other shells (#5692).

• printf prints what it can when input hasn’t been fully converted
  to a number, but still prints an error (#5532).

• complete -C foo now works as expected, rather than requiring
  complete -Cfoo.

• complete has a new --force-files option, to re-enable file
  completions. This allows sudo -E and pacman -Qo to complete
  correctly (#5646).

• argparse now defaults to showing the current function name
  (instead of argparse) in its errors, making --name often
  superfluous (#5835).

• argparse has a new --ignore-unknown option to keep
  unrecognized options, allowing multiple argparse passes to parse
  options (#5367).

• argparse correctly handles flag value validation of options that
  only have short names (#5864).

• read -S (short option of --shell) is recognised correctly
  (#5660).

• read understands --list, which acts like --array in
  reading all arguments into a list inside a single variable, but is
  better named (#5846).

• read has a new option, --tokenize, which splits a string into
  variables according to the shell’s tokenization rules, considering
  quoting, escaping, and so on (#3823).

• read interacts more correctly with the deprecated $IFS
  variable, in particular removing multiple separators when splitting a
  variable into a list (#6406), matching other shells.

• fish_indent now handles semicolons better, including leaving them
  in place for ; and and ; or instead of breaking the line
  (#5859).

• fish_indent --write now supports multiple file arguments,
  indenting them in turn.

• The default read limit has been increased to 100MiB (#5267).

• math now also understands x for multiplication, provided it
  is followed by whitespace (#5906).

• math reports the right error when incorrect syntax is used inside
  parentheses (#6063), and warns when unsupported logical operations
  are used (#6096).

• functions --erase now also prevents fish from autoloading a
  function for the first time (#5951).

• jobs --last returns 0 to indicate success when a job is found
  (#6104).

• commandline -p and commandline -j now split on && and
  || in addition to ; and & (#6214).

• A bug where string split would drop empty strings if the output
  was only empty strings has been fixed (#5987).

• eval no long creates a new local variable scope, but affects
  variables in the scope it is called from (#4443). source still
  creates a new local scope.

• abbr has a new --query option to check for the existence of
  an abbreviation.

• Local values for fish_complete_path and fish_function_path
  are now ignored; only their global values are respected.

• Syntax error reports now display a marker in the correct position
  (#5812).

• Empty universal variables may now be exported (#5992).

• Exported universal variables are no longer imported into the global
  scope, preventing shadowing. This makes it easier to change such
  variables for all fish sessions and avoids breakage when the value is
  a list of multiple elements (#5258).

• A bug where for could use invalid variable names has been fixed
  (#5800).

• A bug where local variables would not be exported to functions has
  been fixed (#6153).

• The null command (:) now always exits successfully, rather than
  passing through the previous exit status (#6022).

• The output of functions FUNCTION matches the declaration of the
  function, correctly including comments or blank lines (#5285), and
  correctly includes any --wraps flags (#1625).

• type supports a new option, --short, which suppress function
  expansion (#6403).

• type --path with a function argument will now output the path to
  the file containing the definition of that function, if it exists.

• type --force-path with an argument that cannot be found now
  correctly outputs nothing, as documented (#6411).

• The $hostname variable is no longer truncated to 32 characters
  (#5758).

• Line numbers in function backtraces are calculated correctly (#6350).

• A new fish_cancel event is emitted when the command line is
  cancelled, which is useful for terminal integration (#5973).

Interactive improvements¶

• New Base16 color options are available through the Web-based
  configuration (#6504).

• fish only parses /etc/paths on macOS in login shells, matching
  the bash implementation (#5637) and avoiding changes to path ordering
  in child shells (#5456). It now ignores blank lines like the bash
  implementation (#5809).

• The locale is now reloaded when the LOCPATH variable is changed
  (#5815).

• read no longer keeps a history, making it suitable for operations
  that shouldn’t end up there, like password entry (#5904).

• dirh outputs its stack in the correct order (#5477), and behaves
  as documented when universal variables are used for its stack
  (#5797).

• funced and the edit-commandline-in-buffer bindings did not work
  in fish 3.0 when the $EDITOR variable contained spaces; this has
  been corrected (#5625).

• Builtins now pipe their help output to a pager automatically (#6227).

• set_color now colors the --print-colors output in the
  matching colors if it is going to a terminal.

• fish now underlines every valid entered path instead of just the last
  one (#5872).

• When syntax highlighting a string with an unclosed quote, only the
  quote itself will be shown as an error, instead of the whole
  argument.

• Syntax highlighting works correctly with variables as commands
  (#5658) and redirections to close file descriptors (#6092).

• help works properly on Windows Subsytem for Linux (#5759, #6338).

• A bug where disown could crash the shell has been fixed (#5720).

• fish will not autosuggest files ending with ~ unless there are no
  other candidates, as these are generally backup files (#985).

• Escape in the pager works correctly (#5818).

• Key bindings that call fg no longer leave the terminal in a
  broken state (#2114).

• Brackets (#5831) and filenames containing $ (#6060) are completed
  with appropriate escaping.

• The output of complete and functions is now colorized in
  interactive terminals.

• The Web-based configuration handles aliases that include single
  quotes correctly (#6120), and launches correctly under Termux (#6248)
  and OpenBSD (#6522).

• function now correctly validates parameters for
  --argument-names as valid variable names (#6147) and correctly
  parses options following --argument-names, as in
  “--argument-names foo --description bar” (#6186).

• History newly imported from bash includes command lines using &&
  or ||.

• The automatic generation of completions from manual pages is better
  described in job and process listings, and no longer produces a
  warning when exiting fish (#6269).

• In private mode, setting $fish_greeting to an empty string before
  starting the private session will prevent the warning about history
  not being saved from being printed (#6299).

• In the interactive editor, a line break (Enter) inside unclosed
  brackets will insert a new line, rather than executing the command
  and producing an error (#6316).

• Ctrl-C always repaints the prompt (#6394).

• When run interactively from another program (such as Python), fish
  will correctly start a new process group, like other shells (#5909).

• Job identifiers (for example, for background jobs) are assigned more
  logically (#6053).

• A bug where history would appear truncated if an empty command was
  executed was fixed (#6032).

Deprecations and removed features¶

• The vcs-prompt functions have been promoted to names without
  double-underscore, so __fish_git_prompt is now fish_git_prompt,
  __fish_vcs_prompt is now fish_vcs_prompt, __fish_hg_prompt is now
  fish_hg_prompt and __fish_svn_prompt is now fish_svn_prompt. Shims
  at the old names have been added, and the variables have kept their
  old names (#5586).

• string replace has an additional round of escaping in the
  replacement expression, so escaping backslashes requires many escapes
  (eg string replace -ra '([ab])' '\\\$1' a). The new feature
  flag regex-easyesc can be used to disable this, so that the same
  effect can be achieved with
  string replace -ra '([ab])' '\\$1' a (#5556). As a reminder,
  the intention behind feature flags is that this will eventually
  become the default and then only option, so scripts should be
  updated.

• The fish_vi_mode function, deprecated in fish 2.3, has been
  removed. Use fish_vi_key_bindings instead (#6372).

For distributors and developers¶

• fish 3.0 introduced a CMake-based build system. In fish 3.1, both the
  Autotools-based build and legacy Xcode build system have been
  removed, leaving only the CMake build system. All distributors and
  developers must install CMake.

• fish now depends on the common tee external command, for the
  psub process substitution function.

• The documentation is now built with Sphinx. The old Doxygen-based
  documentation system has been removed. Developers, and distributors
  who wish to rebuild the documentation, must install Sphinx.

• The INTERNAL_WCWIDTH build option has been removed, as fish now
  always uses an internal wcwidth function. It has a number of
  configuration options that make it more suitable for general use
  (#5777).

• mandoc can now be used to format the output from --help if
  nroff is not installed, reducing the number of external
  dependencies on systems with mandoc installed (#5489).

• Some bugs preventing building on Solaris-derived systems such as
  Illumos were fixed (#5458, #5461, #5611).

• Completions for npm, bower and yarn no longer require the
  jq utility for full functionali