Re: How to get compadd to not sort words?

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Dec 14,  8:35pm, Rocky Bernstein wrote:
}
} For example, if I enter
} 
}     compadd --  1 2 -1 -2  -3 0
} 
} The completions come out in the order:
} 
}            -3   -2  -1   0    1  2
} 
} But what I really want is the order I gave.

"compadd" is actually one of the better-documented bits of the completion
system.  Some of the "support builtins" aren't documented at all.

} How can I tell compadd not to sort the completions?

You need to put them in a named unsorted group.

	compadd -V numbers 1 2 -1 -2  -3 0

Group names end up being referenced via the "tag" slot in the six-part
completion context string, e.g., with the compadd above you might use

	zstyle ':completion:*:*:*:*:numbers' list-colors '=-*=7'

to show negative numbers in reverse video.  However, to make that work
you have to initialize the style mechanism by calling _description:

	local expl
	_description -V numbers expl 'Some Numbers'
	compadd "$expl[@]" - 1 2 -1 -2 -3 0

The _description function does all the style processing and fills in
the $expl variable with the corresponding compadd options.  The example
in the zsh manual isn't as clear as it could be because it uses

	_description files expl file
	compadd "$expl[@]" - "$files[@]"

and although expl in the _description call maps to $expl in the compadd
call, the two uses of "files" are unrelated.