Re: history menu completion?

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Aug 16,  6:51pm, <vts@veritas.uchicago.edu> wrote:
} 
} $ !somecom<TAB>
} 
} I'll get the following
} 
} $ somecommand -with -more -fancy /options/and/another/long/path
} 
} At this point, I would like to be able to hit <TAB> again to get:
} 
} $ somecommand -with -fancy /options/and/a/long/path

You're confusing expansion and completion.

When completion is invoked, zsh first attempts history expansion on the
command line.  Only if that fails to change anything is actual completion
attempted.  (If the keybinding is "expand-or-complete" then the other
expansions -- parameters, file globbing, etc. -- are also tried before
completion.)  So the effect you see on the first TAB is expansion, and
the fact that there was a history reference is long forgotten by the
time you hit the second TAB.

It's really not possible to do this any other way, because the number
of different ways to reference the history -- searches with !?pat?, the
word numbers with !:2, etc. -- plus the possibility of having several
different history references on the command line at the same time when
completion is started, make it potentially impossible to "find another
line matching the history references that expanded to give this one."

If what you want is to search the history, you should be using some of
ZLE's many history-search bindings.

You can write your own zle widget that invokes history search when you
press TAB; e.g.:

    function history-or-complete {
	setopt localoptions noksharrays
	typeset -gH __history_completing
	if [[ $LBUFFER[1] == '!' ]]
	then
	    LBUFFER[1]=''
	    local ret=0
	    if zle history-beginning-search-backward
	    then
		__history_completing=history-beginning-search-backward
	    else
	    	zle complete-word || ret=$?
		LBUFFER='!'"$LBUFFER"
	    fi
	    return ret
	elif [[ $LASTWIDGET == history-or-complete ]]
	then
	    zle $__history_completing
	else
	    __history_completing=complete-word
	    zle complete-word
	fi
    }
    zle -N history-or-complete
    bindkey '\t' history-or-complete

If this doesn't cut it, try replacing history-beginning-search-backward
with history-search-backward, or whatever other builtin widget does the
thing most like what you want

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net