Question

I have defined some variables, aliases and functions in my .zshrc file:

export MY_VAR="example"

alias my_alias="echo an example"

function say_hello
{
    echo "say hello"
}

I have verified that all three are defined and whatnot when called from the terminal. However, when I try to call the function say_hello from another script (which itself is called from the same terminal), the function does not appear to be defined. I see a ‘command not found’ error. The alias and variable MY_VAR appear to be defined just fine when referenced from this other script.

Any ideas on what might be going on? Thanks.

Answer 1

When zsh is called from a terminal it is invoked in interactive mode that causes zsh to source additional configuration files, including $ZDOTDIR/.zshrc ($HOME/.zshrc). By default (in non-interactive mode in non-login shell) it sources only /etc/zsh/zshenv* and $ZDOTDIR/.zshenv ($ZDOTDIR is most of time $HOME) files, see last but two section of man zsh named STARTUP/SHUTDOWN FILES. I have no idea why alias is defined (how exactly did you check?), but MY_VAR is defined in script because you exported it.

* /etc/zshenv according to doc, much likely they are Gentoo maintainers of zsh package who changed it to /etc/zsh/zshenv.

Note: it is bad idea to put such functions into .zshenv file as it creates implicit dependency. You should use script libraries instead: put it into

~/.zsh/say_hello.zsh

and do

source ${ZDOTDIR-$HOME}/.zsh/say_hello.zsh

in both your script and .zshrc.