zsh: permission denied: help

[DanKaplanSES]

Version

Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19044.2364]

WSL Version

• WSL 2
• WSL 1

Kernel Version

5.4.72

Distro Version

Ubuntu 20.04

Other Software

zsh shell

Repro Steps

For me, help trap outputs zsh: permission denied: help. None of these commands print anything:

➜  ~ trap --help
➜  ~ trap --help
➜  ~ trap --h
➜  ~ trap -h
➜  ~

Simply typing help gives the same error.

I don't have an ubuntu host OS to test on, so this error may occur universally. If so, please ignore.

NOTE: This is a duplicate of #3833, but I am creating this duplicate because the author closed theirs when they were given a workaround. I'm looking for a fix to the zsh: permission denied: help error.

Expected Behavior

help in zsh prints the same output that a host Ubuntu OS would.

Actual Behavior

This permission denied error is printed: zsh: permission denied: help

Diagnostic Logs

No response

[elsaco]

help is not defined inside a zsh session unless explicitly done. run-help is a zsh function that provides the kind of help you tried above. It is part of zsh-common package that's picked up automatically when installing zsh.

elsaco@RIPPER ~ % type help
help not found
elsaco@RIPPER ~ % type run-help
run-help is a shell function from /usr/share/zsh/functions/Misc/run-help

You could add an alias help if so desired, i.e. alias help=run-help. Or just use run-help

[DanKaplanSES]

@elsaco Thanks for taking the time to help me. I should've clarified: I am aware of run-help and that help is for bash, not zsh. My concern is that help in zsh prints "permission denied." This doesn't occur for other nonexistent commands:

➜  ~ type asdf
asdf not found
➜  ~ asdf
zsh: command not found: asdf

Why doesn't help say zsh: command not found: help? Does the answer have anything to do with WSL? If no, then I will close this issue and maybe open a new one in the zsh repo. But--as I have no host machine with Ubuntu installed--I am unable to answer my own question*. When I google this error message, WSL is mentioned in most of the results, which could indicate this is WSL specific and doesn't occur on host Ubuntu.

* Maybe I could use an Ubuntu docker container to test this and it would be the same as trying on an Ubuntu host machine? I guess hindsight is 20/20.

[elsaco]

IMO, it's not a WSL bug. What zsh version are you using? On Ubuntu 22.0.4.1 and zsh 5.8.1 it shows command not found:

dragon% zsh --version
zsh 5.8.1 (aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu)
dragon% type help
help not found
dragon% help
zsh: command not found: help
dragon% uname -r
5.15.79.1-microsoft-standard-WSL2

WSL used for testing:

PS C:\Users\elsaco> wsl --version
WSL version: 1.0.3.0
Kernel version: 5.15.79.1
WSLg version: 1.0.47
MSRDC version: 1.2.3575
Direct3D version: 1.606.4
DXCore version: 10.0.25131.1002-220531-1700.rs-onecore-base2-hyp
Windows version: 10.0.22621.963

Update: after installing Ubuntu 18.04.5 the permission denied error showed up:

dragon% zsh --version
zsh 5.4.2 (aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu)
dragon% type help
help not found
dragon% help
zsh: permission denied: help