3.7 KiB
Elvish: Friendly and Expressive Shell
Elvish is a friendly and expressive shell for Linux, BSDs, macOS and Windows. Despite being pre-1.0 software, it is already suitable for most daily interactive use.
Here are some simple steps of becoming a master Elf (all links go to the official website):
-
Download a binary for your platform.
-
Get started with examples from the cookbook.
-
Read the reference section to understand Elvish as a programming language; in particular, read the language reference and the builtin module reference.
-
Get familiar with how to write Effective Elvish. This is a living document that evolves with the Elvish language itself.
If you would like to contribute, just read CONTRIBUTING.md!
Name
In roguelikes, items made by the elves have a reputation of high quality. These are usually called elven items, but I chose "elvish" because it ends with "sh", a long tradition of Unix shells. It also rhymes with fish, one of the shells that influenced the philosophy of Elvish.
The word "Elvish" should be capitalized like a proper noun. However, when referring to the elvish command, use it in lower case with fixed-width font.
Whoever practices the Elvish way by either contributing to it or simply using it is called an Elf. (You might have guessed this from the name of the GitHub organization.) The official adjective for Elvish (as in "Pythonic" for Python, "Rubyesque" for Ruby) is Elven.