FISH(1)                           fish-shell                           FISH(1)

NAME
       fish - the friendly interactive shell

SYNOPSIS
       fish [OPTIONS] [FILE [ARG ...]]
       fish [OPTIONS] [-c COMMAND [ARG ...]]


DESCRIPTION
       fish is a command-line shell written mainly with interactive use in
       mind.  This page briefly describes the options for invoking fish.  The
       full manual <#intro> is available in HTML by using the help command
       from inside fish, and in the fish-doc(1) man page.  The tutorial <> is
       available as HTML via help tutorial or in man fish-tutorial.

       The following options are available:

       -c or --command=COMMAND
              Evaluate the specified commands instead of reading from the
              commandline.  Any additional positional arguments are used as
              $argv.

       -C or --init-command=COMMANDS
              Evaluate specified commands after reading the configuration but
              before executing command specified by -c or reading interactive
              input.

       -d or --debug=DEBUG_CATEGORIES
              Enables debug output and specify a pattern for matching debug
              categories.  See Debugging below for details.

       -o or --debug-output=DEBUG_FILE
              Specifies a file path to receive the debug output, including
              categories and fish_trace <#envvar-fish_trace>.  The default is
              standard error.

       -i or --interactive
              The shell is interactive.

       -l or --login
              Act as if invoked as a login shell.

       -N or --no-config
              Do not read configuration files.

       -n or --no-execute
              Do not execute any commands, only perform syntax checking.

       -p or --profile=PROFILE_FILE
              when fish exits, output timing information on all executed
              commands to the specified file.  This excludes time spent
              starting up and reading the configuration.

       --profile-startup=PROFILE_FILE
              Will write timing for fish startup to specified file.

       -P or --private
              Enables private mode <#private-mode>: fish will not access old
              or store new history.

       --print-rusage-self
              When fish exits, output stats from getrusage.

       --print-debug-categories
              Print all debug categories, and then exit.

       -v or --version
              Print version and exit.

       -f or --features=FEATURES
              Enables one or more comma-separated feature flags <#
              featureflags>.

       The fish exit status is generally the exit status of the last
       foreground command <#variables-status>.

DEBUGGING
       While fish provides extensive support for debugging fish scripts <#
       debugging>, it is also possible to debug and instrument its internals.
       Debugging can be enabled by passing the --debug option.  For example,
       the following command turns on debugging for background IO thread
       events, in addition to the default categories, i.e. debug, error,
       warning, and warning-path:

          > fish --debug=iothread

       Available categories are listed by fish --print-debug-categories. The
       --debug option accepts a comma-separated list of categories, and
       supports glob syntax.  The following command turns on debugging for
       complete, history, history-file, and profile-history, as well as the
       default categories:

          > fish --debug='complete,*history*'

       Debug messages output to stderr by default. Note that if fish_trace <#
       envvar-fish_trace> is set, execution tracing also outputs to stderr by
       default. You can output to a file using the --debug-output option:

          > fish --debug='complete,*history*' --debug-output=/tmp/fish.log --init-command='set fish_trace on'

       These options can also be changed via the FISH_DEBUG <#envvar-
       FISH_DEBUG> and FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT <#envvar-FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT>
       variables.  The categories enabled via --debug are added to the ones
       enabled by $FISH_DEBUG, so they can be disabled by prefixing them with
       - (reader-*,-ast* enables reader debugging and disables ast debugging).

       The file given in --debug-output takes precedence over the file in
       FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT <#envvar-FISH_DEBUG_OUTPUT>.

EXAMPLES
       To just start fish:

          fish

       To run a file with fish:

          fish /path/to/script.fish

       To run some commands with fish:

          fish -c 'echo Hi there!'

       You can also pass arguments to those commands:

          > fish -c 'printf %s\n $argv' "first line" "second line"
          first line
          second line

       To run a script, except read this other file first:

          fish --init-cmd "source otherfile" script.fish

       To profile <#profiling> fish's startup and find what takes the most
       time in your configuration:

          fish --profile-startup /tmp/start.prof -ic exit
          sort -nk2 /tmp/start.prof

Copyright
       fish-shell developers

4.2                            November 14, 2025                       FISH(1)