How to create Home directory in Z Shell

BillyBoyS41 wrote:

Being an absolute newbie to zsh, I have not been able to a create a Home directory .

You don't need to create a home directory. You already have one.

When I look at my Home folder in Finder, it appears as just another folder.

And so it is. However, zsh is a shell environment. If you are a newbie, then you'll just get confused trying to go back and forth between the graphical and the command line environment. It is better to stick to the command line and learn that environment. Use "ls" to list files. use "ls -al" to see all files, including the hidden ones.

When I look at zhs tutorials, the Home folder appears as a graphic Home symbol.

Any zsh tutorial that has any graphics information should be avoided.

In man zshroadmap, I see the following command to use if no personal initialization files exist.

`autoload -Uz zsh-newuser-install; zsh-newuser-install -f'

Don't do that.

Never having done this before, I'm a little hesitant to just go ahead and try the command without some confirmation that it is the right thing to do.

Good call.

When you do "ls -al", you should see your dot files like ".zshrc". You can edit that with "vi". Don't use other tools like "nano", "emacs", or anything like that. Learn and use vi.

Later on, you can use BBEdit and start using both graphical and command-line tools at the same time.

I am asking the moderators to move your question to the Developers' forum. The "Using Apple Support Communities" section is supposed to be for reporting issues with using the forum software and gets few views.

Finder will show the home folder as a home symbol in some contexts (left nav bar, particularly), but it is an ordinary folder on macOS. And Finder is not particularly integrated with zsh or any other shell. Not past double-clicking on certain-named shell scripts to execute them, or dragging files or folder icons into Terminal.app to transfer the path, that is. Some zsh doc will show Linux or other systems’ icons, as well.

I’ve never bothered to specifically run any initialization scripts for zsh (and my home folder is, well, ancient), only adding the zsh “dot” (“hidden”) scripts (.zshrc, .zprofile, etc) and zsh settings as needed. In macOS Finder, use the Command-Shift-Period toggle to show or hide these and other hidden files.

If you want to see what that script does, here it is:

https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh/blob/master/Functions/Newuser/zsh-newuser-install

You can test that zsh install script with a newly-created macOS login. After creating the new login, login to it and open Terminal.app, and then invoke the script there.then have a look at the generated .zshrc script. I would not expect that to then alter what Finder shows, either.

Given it only claims to modify .zshrc, after testing in a throw-away login, you can move your .zshrc and related files aside, run it, and merge the results as needed.

Some related reading: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/361957