zsh-fishy-deletions

A Zsh plugin that replicates Fish shell's word deletion, word movement, and directory navigation — matching Fish's per-operation boundary rules.

Note: The word deletion part of this plugin can be approximated by setting WORDCHARS globally in your .zshrc. However, Fish actually uses different word boundaries for different operations (path-component deletion vs. alphanumeric word movement), and this plugin replicates that distinction. It also bundles directory navigation and the dual-behavior Alt+Left/Alt+Right.

Features

Path Component Deletion (Ctrl+W / Alt+Backspace)

Matches Fish's backward-kill-path-component. Removes back to the previous path separator, treating filenames like foo-bar.txt as a single unit:

• Stops at path separators (/) and shell syntax characters (=, &, ;, {, }, <, >)
• Preserves dots (.), hyphens (-), and other filename characters

Word Deletion (Alt+D / Alt+Delete)

Matches Fish's kill-word. Uses strict alphanumeric word boundaries — stops at -, ., /, and all other non-alphanumeric characters.

Word Movement (Alt+F / Alt+B)

Matches Fish's forward-word / backward-word. Same alphanumeric boundaries as word deletion.

Directory Navigation / Word Movement (Alt+Left / Alt+Right)

Matches Fish's prevd-or-backward-word / nextd-or-forward-word — context-sensitive:

• Line has content: moves cursor by word (alphanumeric boundaries)
• Line is empty: navigates directory history

Command	Description
prevd	Go to the previous directory
nextd	Go to the next directory
dirh	Print directory history

Installation

Zinit

zinit load OneNoted/zsh-fishy-deletions

Manual

Source the plugin file in your .zshrc:

source /path/to/zsh-fishy-deletions.plugin.zsh

Configuration

Set these variables before loading the plugin.

Disable Default Keybindings

export ZSH_FISHY_NO_BINDINGS=1

Then bind the widgets yourself:

# Path-component deletion
bindkey '^W'       _fishy_backward_kill_path
bindkey '^[^?'     _fishy_backward_kill_path

# Word deletion
bindkey '^[d'      _fishy_kill_word
bindkey '^[[3;3~'  _fishy_kill_word

# Word movement
bindkey '^[f'      _fishy_forward_word
bindkey '^[b'      _fishy_backward_word

# Directory navigation / word movement
bindkey '^[[1;3D'  _fishy_prevd_or_backward_word
bindkey '^[[1;3C'  _fishy_nextd_or_forward_word

Custom Path Separators

Override which characters stop path-component deletion (default: \/=&;{}<>):

export ZSH_FISHY_PATH_CHARS_EXCLUDE="\/=&;"

Related Plugins

Other plugins that bring Fish-like behavior to Zsh:

• zsh-autosuggestions — ghost text suggestions
• zsh-syntax-highlighting — syntax coloring as you type
• zsh-abbr — Fish-style abbreviations
• zsh-history-substring-search / atuin — history substring search

License

MIT