Category: Command Line

Book Update for Big Sur – Moving to zsh v5

I have pushed an update for the “Moving to zsh” book.

Since I have also published a new book “macOS Terminal and Shell” last month, you might be wondering whether you need both books, or just one.

“Moving to zsh” is the book where I documented my journey from using bash in Terminal on macOS to using zsh. Before Apple announced that they would switch from bash to zsh as the default shell with macOS Catalina, I used bash “because it was the deafult.” In this book, I describe how to move from bash to zsh. Because of this, “Moving to zsh” is aimed at a user who is already conformtable using Terminal with bash and is wondering what the change means and how to get some extra features and productivity out of zsh.

“macOS Terminal and Shell” is the book for those that have no or little experience with using Terminal and probably don’t even know why bash or zsh matters. Or maybe you have a bit experience, but just don’t feel comfortable because you have the feeling you are not quite understanding what is going on. This book will teach you to use Terminal and the shell with confidence, and it will show how you can configure it to be more productive. Since zsh is the current default shell on macOS Catalina and Big Sur, we will focus on zsh, but explain differences to bash where necessary.

As usual, the update to “Moving to zsh” is free if you have already purchased the book. You should get a notification from the Books application to update. (On macOS, I have seen that it can help to delete the local download of the book to force the update.)

If you are enjoying the book, please rate it on the Books store, or even leave a review. These really help, thank you!

The changes are listed here. This list is also in the ‘Version History’ section in the book. There, you will get links to the relevant section of the book, so you can find the changes quickly.

  • Updated list of other books with ‘macOS Terminal and Shell’
  • Added the vared command (variable editor) as an alternative to read
  • Many typos and other minor corrections and clarifications

Update: desktoppr v0.4

I have posted an update for desktoppr. You can download it from the repository’s releases page.

This update adds no features. It does provide support for the Apple silicon Macs with a Univeral binary and installer pkg.

In my initial testing desktoppr v0.3 worked fine on Apple Silicon Macs even without re-compiling, so I didn’t feel pressure to build and provide a universal binary.

However, since then I have learned that the package installation might trigger Rosetta installation and fail if there is no UI at that point. Also, managing the Desktop picture might happen very early in your deployment workflow, so Rosetta might not be available at that time yet.

Either way, having a universal binary and a properly configured installer pkg will be helpful in either case. If you have to support Apple silicon Macs, be sure to use desktoppr v0.4.

Deploying the Big Sur Installer Application

When you want to provide automated workflows to upgrade to or erase-install macOS Big Sur, you can use the startosinstall tool. You can find this tool inside the “Install macOS Big Sur” application at:

/Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/Contents/Resources/startosinstall

Note: Apple calls the “Install macOS *” application “InstallAssistant.” I find this a useful shorthand and will use it.

Before you can use startosinstall, you need to somehow deploy the InstallAssitant on the client system. And since the “Install macOS Big Sur” application is huge (>12GB) it poses its own set of challenges.

Different management systems have different means of deploying software. If you are using Munki (or one of the management systems that has integrated Munki, like SimpleMDM or Workspace One) you can wrap the application in a dmg. Unfortunately, even though “app in a dmg” has been a means of distributing software on macOS for nearly 20 years, most management systems cannot deal with this and expect an installer package (pkg).

You can use pkgbuild to build an installer package from an application, like this:

pkgbuild --component "/Applications/Install macOS Catalina.app" InstallCatalina-10.15.7.pkg

This works for all InstallAssistants up to and including Catalina. With a Big Sur installer application this command will start working, but then fail:

% pkgbuild --component "/Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/" InstallBigSur20B29.pkg
pkgbuild: Adding component at /Applications/Install macOS Big Sur.app/
pkgbuild: Inferred install-location of /Applications
pkgbuild: error: Cannot write package to "InstallBigSur20B29.pkg". (The operation couldn’t be completed. File too large)

The reason for this failure is that the Big Sur installer application contains a single file Contents/SharedSupport/SharedSupport.dmg which is larger than 8GB. While a pkg file can be larger than 8GB, there are limitations in the installer package format which preclude individual files in the pkg payload to be larger than that.

When you want to distribute the “Install macOS Big Sur” application to the clients in your fleet, either to upgrade or for an erase-and-install workflow, this limitation introduces some challenges.

You can use Composer with Jamf to create a Jamf dmg style deployment, but that will only work with Jamf Pro. You could further wrap and split the application in different containers, but that will increase the creation and deployment time.

There are a number of solutions. Each with their own advantages and downsides, some supported and recommended by Apple and some… less so. Different management and deployment styles will require different solutions and approaches.

App Deployment with MDM/VPP

When you have your MDM hooked up to Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager, you can push applications “purchased” in the “Apps and Books” area with MDM commands. This was formerly known as “VPP” (Volume Purchase Program and I will continue to use that name, because “deploy with Apps and Books from Apple Business Manager or Apple School Manager” is just unwieldly and I don’t care what Apple Marketing wants us to call it.

Since the “Install macOS Big Sur” application is available for free on the Mac App Store, you can use VPP to push it to a client from your MDM/management system.

When you do this, the client will not get the full InstallAssistant application, but a ‘stub’ InstallAssistant. This stub is small in size (20-40MB).

The additional resouces required for the actual system upgrade or installation which are GigaBytes worth of data will be loaded when they are needed. It doesn’t matter whether the process is triggered by the user after opeing the application or by using the startosinstall or createinstallmedia tool. Either workflow will trigger the download of the additional resources.

This has the advantage of being a fast initial installation of the InstallAssistant, but then the actual upgrade or re-installation process will take so much longer, because of the large extra download before the actual installation can even begin. For certain deployment workflows, this is an acceptable or maybe even desireable trade-off.

The extra download will use a Caching Server. This approach is recommended and supported by Apple.

Mac App Store and/or System Preferences

For some user-driven deployment styles, having the user download the InstallAssistant themselves can be part of the workflow. This way, the user can control the timing of the large download and make sure they are on a “good” network and the download will not interfere with video conferences or other work.

You can direct then to the Big Sur entry in the Mac App Store with a link. You cannot search for older versions of macOS Installers in the Mac App Store, but Apple has a kbase article with direct links.

You can also use a link that leads a user directly to the Software Update pane in System Preferences and prompts the user to start the download:

# Big Sur
x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate?client=bau&installMajorOSBundle=com.apple.InstallAssistant.macOSBigSur

# Catalina
x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate?client=bau&installMajorOSBundle=com.apple.InstallAssistant.Catalina

When the InstallAssistant is already installed, this link will open the application. When the Mac is already running a newer version of macOS or doesn’t support the version given, it will display an error.

You can use these links from a script with the open command:

open 'x-apple.systempreferences:com.apple.preferences.softwareupdate?client=bau&installMajorOSBundle=com.apple.InstallAssistant.macOSBigSur'

The downloads initiated this way will use a Caching Server. Linking to the Mac App Store is supported and recommended by Apple. The x-apple.systempreferences links are undocumented.

softwareupdate command

Catalina introduced the --fetch-full-installer option for the softwareupdate command. You can add the --full-installer-version option to get a specific version of the installer, for example 10.15.7.

You can run this command from a managed script on the clients to install the application. The download will use a Caching Server.

This would be a really useful method to automate deployment the InstallAssistant on a client, if it were reliable. However, in my experience and that of many MacAdmins, this command is very fragile and will fail in many circumstances. As of this writing, I have not been able to reliably download a Big Sur InstallAssistant with this command. Most of the time I get

Install failed with error: Update not found

This approach is often recommended by Apple employees, however it will have to be much more reliable before I will join their recommendation.

Please, use Feedback Assistant, preferably with an AppleSeed for IT account, to communicate your experience with this tool with Apple. If this command were reliable, then it would be my recommended solution for nearly all kinds of deployments.

InstallAssistant pkg

With these solutions so far, we have actually avoided creating an installer package, because we moved the download of the InstallAssistant to the client. A caching server can help with the network load. Nevertheless for some styles of deployments, like schools and universities, using the local management infrastucture (like repositories or distribution points) has great advantages. For this, we need a package installer for the InstallAssistant.

A “magic” download link has been shared frequently in the MacAdmins Slack that downloads an installation package from an Apple URL which installs the Big Sur InstallAssistant.

This pkg from Apple avoids the file size limit for the package payload by not having the big file in the payload and then moving it in the postinstall script. Smart hack.. er… solution!

The URL is a download link from a software update catalog. You can easily find the link for the current version with the SUS Inspector tool.

But it would be really tedious to do this on every update. You, the regular reader, know the “tedious” is a trigger word for me to write a script. In this case it was less writing a script than looting one. Greg Neagle’s installinstallmacos.py had most of the pieces needed to find the InstallAssistant.pkg in the software update catalog and download it. I merely had to put the pieces together somewhat differently.

Nevertheless, I “made” a script that downloads the latest InstallAssistant.pkg for macOS Big Sur. You can then upload this pkg to your management system and distribute it like any other installation package.

It works very much like installinstallmacos.py.

./fetch-installer-pkg.py

When you start the script it will download a lot of data into a content folder in the current working directory, parse through it and determine the Big Sur Installers in the catalog. When it finds more than one installers, it will list them and you can choose one. When it finds only one Installer, it will start downloading that immediately.

You can add the --help option for some extra options (all inherited from installinstallmacos.py.

We will have to wait for the 11.1 release to be sure this actually works as expected, but I am confident we can make it work.

This approach is very likely not supported by Apple. But neither was re-packaging the InstallAssitant from disk in Catalina. This deployment method is likely closer to the supported deployment workflows than some common existing methods.

The download does not use a Caching Server, but since the goal is to obtain a pkg that you can upload to your management server, this is not a big downside.

Big Sur signature verification check

You may have noticed that when you launch the Big Sur InstallAssistant on Big Sur for the first time, it will take a long time to “think” before it actually launches. This is due to a new security feature in Big Sur that verifies the application signature and integrity on first launch. Since this is a “big” application this check takes a while. Unfortunately Big Sur shows no progress bar or other indication. This check occurs when the user double-clicks the app to open it and when you start an upgrade or installation with the startosinstall command.

There does not seem to be a way to skip or bypass this check. You can run startosinstall --usage from a script right after installing the InstallAssistant. This will do nothing really, but force the check to happen. Subsequent launches, either from Finder or with startosinstall will be immediate.

Installomator Updated: v0.3

It’s been more than a month since the last update, and while there has been work on the dev branch, I was quite distracted with other things (like this). The good news is, that there have been quite a few contributions from others! A huge thanks to all who helped make this a better script.

All it took was for me to find some time to put all the contributions together, which I finally found some time for.

What’s new in v0.3:

  • added several new labels for total of 98
  • removed the powershell labels, since the installer is not notarized
  • when run without any arguments, the script now lists all labels
  • changed how zips are expanded because this was broken on Mojave
  • improved logging in some statements
  • several more minor improvements

Get the script and find the instructions on the GitHub repo.

Some of the contributions and requests have not yet been addressed. I believe they will require some more thinking and planning. I would like to approach those in the next version.

If you have any feedback or questions, please join us in the #installomator channel on MacAdmins Slack.

Thanks again to all those who contributed!

Use scout to read Property Lists

I have written a few posts in the past about parsing data from property list files in scripts and Terminal. My usual tool for this is PlistBuddy. However, PlistBuddy’s syntax is… well… eccentric.

Recently, Alexis Bridoux, who is also the main developer on Octory, introduced a command line tool called scout which solves many of the issues I have with PlistBuddy.

For example, you can pipe the output of another command into scout, something you can only convince PlistBuddy to do with some major shell syntax hackery.

So instead of this:

> /usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "print :dsAttrTypeStandard\:RealName:0" /dev/stdin <<< $(dscl -plist . read /Users/armin RealName)


With scout I can use this much clearer syntax:

> dscl -plist . read /Users/armin RealName | scout "dsAttrTypeStandard:RealName[0]"


The tool can also modify existing files, by changing, adding or deleting keys.

scout can also parse JSON and (non plist) XML files, so it can also stand in as a replacement for jq and xpath. It will also color-code output for property list, XML and JSON files.

I have been using scout interactively in the Terminal for a while now. So far, I have been refraining from using scout in scripts I use for deployment. To use a non-system tool in deployment scripts, you need to ensure the tool is deployed early in the setup process. Then you also have to write your scripts in a way that they will gracefully fail or fallback to PlistBuddy in the edge case where scout is not installed:

scout="/usr/local/bin/scout"
if [ ! -x "$scout"]; then
    echo "could not find scout, exiting..."
    exit 1
fi

realName=$( dscl -plist . read /Users/armin RealName | scout "dsAttrTypeStandard:RealName[0]" )


All of this overhead, adds extra burden to using a tool. The good news is that scout comes as a signed and notarized package installer, which minimizes deployment effort.

I wills be considering scout for future projects. If anyone at Apple is reading this: please hire Alexis and integrate scout or something like it in macOS.

About bash, zsh, sh, and dash in macOS Catalina and beyond

This is an excerpt from my book: “Moving to zsh.” At the MacAdmins Conference Campfire session I received quite a few questions regarding this, so I thought it would be helpful information. You can get a lot more detailed information on “Moving to zsh” in the book!

Calls to the POSIX sh /bin/sh in macOS are handled by /bin/bash in sh compatibility mode. You can verify this by asking sh for its version:

% sh --version
GNU bash, version 3.2.57(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin19)
Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

If Apple plans to eventually remove the bash binary, they need to have a replacement which handles sh.

Enter dash

Probably not coincidentally, Apple added the dash shell in Catalina. The Debian Almquist Shell (dash) is a minimal implementation of the Posix sh standard and commonly used on other UNIX and Unix-like systems as a stand-in for sh.

Apple also added dash (but not zsh) to the Recovery system in macOS Catalina. While sh is still interpreted by bash in both the Recovery system and the regular system, this is a strong indicator that Apple eventually wants to use dash as the interpreter for sh scripts.

When your scripts which use the #!/bin/sh shebang strictly follow the POSIX sh standard, you should experience no problems when Apple switches to ‘dash-as-sh.’

Tripping over bashisms

However, there are some quirks of the current ‘bash-as-sh’ implementation in macOS that you need to be aware of. When bash stands in as sh, it will nevertheless continue to interpret ’bashisms’—language features available in bash but not sh—without errors.

For example, consider the following script shtest.sh:

#!/bin/sh

if [[ $(true) == $(true) ]]; then
  echo "still good"
else
  echo "nothing is true"
fi

This script declares the #!/bin/sh shebang and it will work fine on macOS with bash-as-sh.

% shtest.sh
still good

However, when you try to run it with zsh-as-sh or dash-as-sh, it will fail.

You can make dash interpret the script instead of bash by switching the shebang to #!/bin/dash. But macOS Catalina has another, new mechanism available. In Catalina, the symbolic link at /var/select/sh determines which shell stands in as sh. By default the link points to /bin/bash:

% readlink /var/select/sh
/bin/bash

When you change this link to either /bin/zsh or /bin/dash, the respective other shell binary will stand in as sh.

Switch the sh stand-in to dash with:

% sudo ln -sf /bin/dash /var/select/sh

And then run the script again:

% ./shtest.sh
./shtest.sh: 3 ./shtest.sh: [[: not found
nothing is true

When interpreted with dash instead of bash, the same script will fail. This is because dash is much stricter than bash in following the sh standard. Since dash is designed as a minimal implementation of the sh standard, it has to be stricter. The double brackets [[ … ]] are a ‘bashism,’ or a feature only available in bash and other, later shells such as ksh and zsh.

Even though zsh also interprets most of these bashisms, zsh in sh compatibility mode is also stricter than bash and will error.

You can switch back to the default bash-as-sh with:

% sudo ln -sf /bin/bash /var/select/sh

Since macOS has been using bash-as-sh for a long time, there may be many such bashisms lurking in your sh scripts. You can change the above symbolic link to test your scripts with dash-as-sh.

Some common ‘bashisms’ are:

  • double square brackets [[ ... ]]
  • here documents and strings (<<< and << operators)
  • double equals operator == for tests

Shellcheck to the rescue

You can also use the shellcheck tool to detect bashisms in your sh scripts:

% shellcheck shtest.sh                                          

In shtest.sh line 3:
if [[ $(true) == $(true) ]]; then
   ^----------------------^ SC2039: In POSIX sh, [[ ]] is undefined.

For more information:
  https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2039 -- In POSIX sh, [[ ]] is undefined.

When you change the double square brackets for single square brackets, then you get this:

% shellcheck shtest.sh

In shtest.sh line 3:
if [ "$(true)" == "$(true)" ]; then
               ^-- SC2039: In POSIX sh, == in place of = is undefined.

For more information:
  https://www.shellcheck.net/wiki/SC2039 -- In POSIX sh, == in place of = is undefined.

Conclusion

In Catalina Apple started warning us about the eventual demise of bash from macOS. Converting your existing bash scripts and workflows to zsh, sh, or bash v5 is an important first step. But you also need to consider that the behavior of sh scripts will change when Apple replaces the sh interpreter.

Random Desktop Background Color with desktoppr

File this one under: probably useless, but fun.

I recently updated desktoppr with the feature to control the scaling of a custom desktop picture. Because a scaled desktop picture might not cover the entire screen, macOS also allows you to choose a custom color to fill the remaining area. desktoppr v0.3 can be used to control both of these settings.

So, I thought I could use this to just set a random single color as the desktop background, similar to how I did it for Terminal windows.

macOS does not allow you to set no desktop picture. So I created a PNG file that is only a transparent background. This image is basically an invisible desktop picture and all you see on screen is the fill color. Then, you can set any fill color with desktoppr color.

I have added a randombackgroundcolor script to the examples in the desktoppr repository on GitHub.

It’s a bit silly, but also kind of fun. Enjoy!

Advanced Quoting in Shell Scripts

Quoting strings and variable substitutions is a bit of a dark art in shell scripts. It looks simple and straightforward enough, but there are lots of small devils in the details, that can come out and haunt you.

Basics: why we quote strings

In shell scripts (sh, bash, and zsh) you use the equals character = to assign a string value to a variable:

> name=John
> dirpath=/Library

As long as there are no special characters in the literal string, there is no need to quote the string.

When you use the variable, you prefix a $ symbol:

> echo $name
John
> cd $dirpath
> pwd
/Library

When the literal string contains special characters, you need to either escape the special characters with the backslash \ or quote the entire string with either single quotes ' or double quotes ". Space is proverbial ‘killer character’, especially for file paths. (More details in this post.)

name='John Doe'
dirpath="/Library/Application Support"

The difference between single quotes and double quotes is important. Single quotes escape every special character except the single quote itself. A single quoted string of '#$"\!' will represent exactly those characters.

Double quotes escape most characters, except the double quote " the backtick `, the dollar sign $, the backslash \, and the exclamation mark !. (There are slight differences between the shells on this.)

This allows us to use old-style command substitution with backticks and variable substitution (dollar sign) within double quoted strings:

> echo "Hello, $name"
Hello, John Doe
> echo "The Computer Name is `scutil --get ComputerName`"

Though you should be using the $(…) syntax for command substitution instead of backticks `. The parenthesis syntax is more readable and can be nested.

In general, it is a good rule to always quote literal strings. Whether you should use double quotes or single quotes depends on the use case.

Combining literal strings with special characters

Things can start getting complicated when you want special characters with their special functionality. For example, when you want to refer to the path ~/Library/Application Support, you should put it in quotes, because of the space. But when you put the ~ in the quotes, it will not be substituted to the user’s home directory path.

There are a few ways to solve this problem. You could escape the space with a backslash. You could use the $HOME variable instead (but be sure you are in a context where this is set). But the easiest is to move the special character out of the quotes:

dirpath=~"/Library/Application Support"

Quotes in quotes

Sometimes it is necessary to have a set of quotes within quotes. A common situation for MacAdmins is the following osascript:

osascript -e 'display dialog "Hello, World"'

The osascript command can be used to run Apple commands or scripts. Since AppleScript uses double quotes for literal strings, the entire AppleScript command is passed in single quotes. This keep the command string together and the double quotes in single quotes don’t confuse the shell.

This works fine, until you want to do something like this:

computerName=$(scutil --get ComputerName)
newName=$(osascript -e 'text returned of (display dialog "Enter Computer Name" default answer "$computerName")')

Again, we put the AppleScript command in single quotes, so we can use double quotes inside. But now, the single quotes are also blocking the variable substitution and we get the literal $computerName in the dialog.

There are a few solutions out of this, I will demonstrate three:

First, you could close the single quotes before the variable substitution and re-open them after:

osascript -e 'text returned of (display dialog "Enter Computer Name" default answer "'$computerName'")'

This will in this form as long as $computerName contains no spaces. This is unlikely as the default computer name is something like Armin's MacBook Pro. The shell will consider that space a separator before a new argument, breaking the AppleScript command into meaningless pieces and failing the osascript command. We can avoid that by putting the substitution itself in double quotes:

osascript -e 'text returned of (display dialog "Enter Computer Name" default answer "'"$computerName"'")'

This works and is entirely legal syntax, but not very legible.

Escaping the escape characters

Another solution is to use double quotes for the entire AppleScript command, we can use variable substitution inside. But then we have to deal with the double quotes required for the AppleScript string literal. The good news here is that we can escape those with the backslash:

osascript -e "text returned of (display dialog \"Enter Computer Name\" default answer \"$computerName\")"

This doesn’t win prizes for legibility either, but I consider it an improvement over the previous approach.

Here Docs

The above approaches with work in sh, bash, and zsh. But bash and zsh have another tool available that can work here. The ‘here doc’ syntax can be used to include an entire block of AppleScript code in a bash or zsh script:

#!/bin/bash

computerName=$(scutil --get ComputerName)

newName=$(osascript <<EndOfScript
    text returned of (display dialog "Enter Computer Name" default answer "$computerName")
EndOfScript
)

echo "New name: $newName"

The syntax is a bit weird. The <<EndOfScript says: take all the text until the next appearance of EndOfScript and pipe it into the preceding command, in this case osascript.

The ‘marker’ EndOfScript is entirely arbitrary. Many people choose EOF but I prefer something a little more descriptive. Whatever label you choose the ending marker has to stand alone in its line. This is why the parenthesis ) which closes the command substition $( has to stand alone in the next line.

You can still use variable substitution in a here doc, so the variable $computerName will be substituted before the here doc is piped into osascript.

macOS shell command to create a new Terminal Window

Of course, you can easily create a new Terminal window from the ‘Shell’ menu or by using the ⌘N (or ⌘T) keyboard shortcut. But in some cases, it can be more useful to use a shell command.

New windows created with the keyboard shortcut or from the menu will always have the home directory ~ as the current working directory. What I want, is a new window that defaults to current working directory or a custom directory that I can provide with an argument:

> new           # opens a new terminal window at the current working directory
> new ~/Desktop # opens a new terminal window at ~/Desktop

No luck with AppleScript

After my last success using AppleScript, I thought this would be the best solution again. Unfortunately, this particular piece of the AppleScript dictionary is broken. The make new window or make new tab commands fail with errors and I have tried several combinations.

After some web searching, it looks like this has been broken for a long time. I filed an issue in Feedback Assistant.

You can create a new Terminal window with AppleScript using the do script command in the Terminal dictionary. (Not to be confused with do shell script.) So this AppleScript, sort of does what I want, but seems cumbersome.

tell application "Terminal"
    do script "cd ~/Desktop"
end tell

If you know of a better way to create a new Terminal window or, even better, a Terminal tab with AppleScript, then please let me know. (No UI Scripting solutions – those have their own issues.) I have a few other ideas where this might come in useful.

Enter the open command

During those web searches, I also found suggestions to use the open command, instead:

> open -a Terminal ~/Documents

Will open a new Terminal window with ~/Documents as the working directory. This is already really close to what I wanted.

I created this function in my shell configuration file (bash, zsh):

# creates a new terminal window
function new() {
    if [[ $# -eq 0 ]]; then
        open -a "Terminal" "$PWD"
    else
        open -a "Terminal" "$@"
    fi
}

With this, I can now type

> new Projects/desktoppr

and get a new Terminal window there. This is very useful when combined with the history substitution variable !$ (last argument of previous command):

> mkdir Projects/great_new_tool
> new !$

And an unexpected, but useful side effect is that the new function can also open an ssh session in a new window:

> new ssh://username@computer.example.com

Hope you find this useful, too!

Book Update – Moving to zsh v3

I have pushed an update for the “Moving to zsh” book.

Just a few changes and fixes that have accumulated over the past two weeks. Much of this has been from feedback of readers. Thanks to everyone who sent in their notes.

The update is free if you have already purchased the book. You should get a notification from the Books application to update. (On macOS, I have seen that it can help to delete the local download of the book to force the update.)

If you are enjoying the book, please rate it on the Books store, or (even better) leave a review. These really help, thank you!

Also, please recommend the book to friends, co-workers, and anyone else (not just MacAdmins) who might be facing the zsh transition as they upgrade to Catalina.

The changes in v3 are listed here. This list is also in the ‘Version History’ section in the book. There, you will get links to the relevant section of the book, so you can find the changes quickly.

  • Added a section explaining how to work with upper- or lower-case strings in zsh scripts
  • Added a section explaining the differences in the read built-in command
  • Clarified the section on Connected Variables
  • Fixed file names in the table for Configuration Files and added a note for how to use configuration files with python environments
  • As usual, several typos and clarifications (Thanks to many readers)