Site configuration files for TCSH

This collection of configuration files can be used to improve the interactive experience of TCSH users under FreeBSD, Max OS X or Linux. Its most important features are:

• Useful key bindings, including a call to man(1) upon F1.
• Customised clean and lean prompt.
• Completion patterns for some FreeBSD commands.
• Support for development with git.
• Support for several terminal types.

Installation

The installation procedures uses BSD Owl. It will overwrite the system scripts csh.login, csh.logout and csh.cshrc.

To install these scripts, download the latest tarball, explode it and issue a make install in the toplevel directory.

Supported terminal types We support the terminal types xterm, cons25, and linux. Under X11 or Quartz, graphical terminal advertises themselves as xterm. The types cons25 and xterm are made for virtual consoles under FreeBSD and Linux-based operating systems.

Key bindings

Please note that graphical environments can intercept some of these keystrokes and interpret them differently.

These key bindings are borrowed from the tcshrc project.

• INSERT: toggles overwrite or insert mode
• DELETE: delete char at cursor position
• HOME: go to the beginning of the line
• END: go to the end of the line
• PAGE UP: search in history backwards for line beginning as current
• PAGE DOWN: search in history forwards for line beginning as current
• ESC-left-arrow: go to beginning of left word
• ESC-right-arrow: go to beginning of right word
• F1: help on command currently typed
• F2: set the mark command to cursor position
• F3: move cursor to the marked position
• F4: unbound
• F5: check line for spelling and make changes
• F6: check current word for spelling and make changes
• F7: do a ala-csh completion
• F8: insert last item of previous command
• F9: unbound
• F10: do an 'ls -l'
• F11: display load average and current process status
• F12: clear-screen
• Ctrl-X p: Edit path (thanks to Carlos Duarte <cgd@teleweb.pt>)
• Ctrl-X *: Expand glob
• Ctrl-X $: Expand variables

Command-line completion

Command-line completion patterns are provided to support the use of the following commands:

• Shell internals cd, alias, set
• rm, which ignores usual precious files
• man
• make, which understands typical words such as install or distclean
• dd which understands the -if= and -of= syntax
• growisofs which understands the -M= and -Z= syntax
• tex, latex, mf and mpost understand their most common options such as -output-directory or -jobname
• xdvi, evince, gv, xpdf and acroread select files they can render
• svn is aware of its subcommands
• git is aware of its subcommands and branch names
• FreeBSD commands mount, atacontrol and cdcontrol are handled

Prompt

We use a simple prompt displaying the command line number, the hostname and the last part of the current working directory, as in:

[123] (pointyhat) ports >

Within a git repository, the current branch is displayed, as in

[123] (pointyhat) ports/master >

Note that the branch name is rendered with a lighter color.

Expanding

Files under /etc/csh/login.d, /etc/csh/rc.d and /etc/csh/logout.d are sourced by the shell at the corresponding occasions. This provides system administrators with an easy way to add additional features during login, initialisation and logout phases.

Michael Grünewald in Bonn, on April 25, 2014