COMMANDLINE(1)

💅 commandline(1) — the fish-shell girlie's guide ✨

ok so bestie, this is commandline from fish-shell, and it's genuinely one of the most iconic builtins in the whole shell. it's your direct hotline to the command line buffer — the thing you're literally typing into right now. let's get into it 🫶

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🎀 NAME 🎀

commandline — set or get the current command line buffer

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

commandline [OPTIONS] [CMD]

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

commandline can be used to set or get the current contents of the command line buffer. that's it. that's the vibe.

With no parameters, commandline returns the current value of the command line. no cap, it just hands you back whatever's sitting in the buffer.

With CMD specified, the command line buffer is erased and replaced with the contents of CMD. bye old text, hello new text 💅

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👑 The following options are available:

• -C, --cursor — Set or get the current cursor position, not the contents of the buffer. If no argument is given, the current cursor position is printed, otherwise the argument is interpreted as the new cursor position. And if one of the options -j, -p or -t is given, the position is relative to the respective substring instead of the entire command line buffer. so it's cursor math, but make it cute ✨
• -B, --selection-start — Get current position of the selection start in the buffer.
• -E, --selection-end — Get current position of the selection end in the buffer.
• -f, --function — Causes any additional arguments to be interpreted as input functions, and puts them into the queue, so that they will be read before any additional actual key presses are. This option cannot be combined with any other option (fr fr, it's exclusive). See bind for a list of input functions. this is giving "inject keystrokes" main character energy 🔥
• -h, --help — Displays help about using this command.

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🦋 The following options change the way commandline updates the command line buffer:

• -a, --append — Do not remove the current commandline, append the specified string at the end of it. yes queen, add more 💖
• -i, --insert, --insert-smart — Do not remove the current commandline, insert the specified string at the current cursor position. The --insert-smart option turns on a Do-What-I-Mean (DWIM) mode: it strips any $ prefix from the first command on each line. DWIM said "I gotchu" 😌
• -r, --replace — Remove the current commandline and replace it with the specified string (default). it's giving "out with the old" 💀

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🌈 The following options change what part of the commandline is printed or updated:

• -b, --current-buffer — Select the entire commandline, not including any displayed autosuggestion (default).
• -j, --current-job — Select the current job — a job here is one pipeline. Stops at logical operators or terminators (;, &, and newlines).
• -p, --current-process — Select the current process — a process here is one command. Stops at logical operators, terminators, and pipes.
• -s, --current-selection — Selects the current selection
• -t, --current-token — Selects the current token
• --search-field — Use the pager search field instead of the command line. Returns false if the search field is not shown.
• --input=INPUT — Operate on this string instead of the commandline. Useful for using options like --tokens-expanded. lowkey underrated ✨

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🍓 The following options change the way commandline prints the current commandline buffer:

• -c, --cut-at-cursor — Only print selection up until the current cursor position. If combined with --tokens-expanded, this will print up until the last completed token — excluding the token the cursor is in. This is typically what you would want for instance in completions. To get both, use both commandline --cut-at-cursor --tokens-expanded; commandline --cut-at-cursor --current-token, or commandline -cx; commandline -ct for short. yes there's a short short 😌
• -x, --tokens-expanded — Perform argument expansion on the selection and print one argument per line. Command substitutions are not expanded but forwarded as-is. important detail, don't forget it 🫶
• -o, tokenize, --tokens-raw — Deprecated; do not use. that's it, that's the whole description. it's giving "we don't talk about bruno" 🙈

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If commandline is called during a call to complete a given string using complete -C STRING, commandline will consider the specified string to be the current contents of the command line. ✨

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💜 The following options output metadata about the commandline state:

• -L, --line — If no argument is given, print the line that the cursor is on, with the topmost line starting at 1. Otherwise, set the cursor to the given line.
• --column — If no argument is given, print the 1-based offset from the start of the line to the cursor position in Unicode code points. Otherwise, set the cursor to the given code point offset. code points bestie, not bytes 💅
• -S, --search-mode — Evaluates to true if the commandline is performing a history search.
• -P, --paging-mode — Evaluates to true if the commandline is showing pager contents, such as tab completions.
• --paging-full-mode — Evaluates to true if the commandline is showing pager contents, such as tab completions and all lines are shown (no "<n> more rows" message).
• --is-valid — Returns true when the commandline is syntactically valid and complete. If it is, it would be executed when the execute bind function is called. If the commandline is incomplete, return 2, if erroneous, return 1. so like, three whole moods 😭
• --showing-suggestion — Evaluates to true (i.e. returns 0) when the shell is currently showing an automatic history completion/suggestion, available to be consumed via one of the forward- bindings. For example, can be used to determine if moving the cursor to the right when already at the end of the line would have no effect or if it would cause a completion to be accepted (note that forward-char-passive does this automatically). iykyk 🔥

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⭐ EXAMPLE ⭐

commandline -j $history[3] replaces the job under the cursor with the third item from the command line history.

If the commandline contains

>_ echo $flounder >&2 | less; and echo $catfish

(with the cursor on the "o" of "flounder")

The echo $flounder >& is the first process, less the second and and echo $catfish the third.

echo $flounder >&2 | less is the first job, and echo $catfish the second.

$flounder is the current token.

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The most common use for something like completions is

set -l tokens (commandline -xpc)

which gives the current process (what is being completed), tokenized into separate entries, up to but excluding the currently being completed token

If you are then also interested in the in-progress token, add

set -l current (commandline -ct)

Note that this makes it easy to render fish's infix matching moot — if possible it's best if the completions just print all possibilities and leave the matching to the current token up to fish's logic. 🧚

More examples:

>_ commandline -t
$flounder
>_ commandline -ct
$fl
>_ commandline -b # or just commandline
echo $flounder >&2 | less; and echo $catfish
>_ commandline -p
echo $flounder >&2
>_ commandline -j
echo $flounder >&2 | less

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🎀 Copyright 🎀

fish-shell developers

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ok bestie that's the whole page 💖 this manual is version 4.9, dated Sep 08, 2026, brought to you by the fish-shell developers — go forth and manipulate your command line buffer like the icon you are 👑✨🦋