Re: bash convert: new completion system skeleton?

[Oliver Kiddle <okiddle@yahoo.co.uk>]

On 17 Jan, you wrote:
> hi.
> 
> i have lots of bash completers for my daily needs that i can't live
> without.  but bash-style completers resemble zsh's old completion
> style, which is inferiour to zsh's new system.
> 
> my completers have the following properties:  the program which's
> arguments have to be completed have some help or list function which
> i can use to enumerate the possible completions, then i just grep(1)
> out the likely candidates.

> similiar code exists for gnu-make, autoconf's configure, openssl etc.

zsh has all of these (except openssl) and a lot more besides already
written. If you've done:
  autoload -U compinit; compinit
they should work automatically.

> could somebody please offer the skeleton of a completer for the new
> system, complete with which share/zsh/4.0.6/function/_<FUNC>s to
> call, how to name the zstyle and the contexts?

To convert your bash completion for zsh, at a simple level, all you
should need to do is change the $COMP_WORDS variable to $words,
$COMP_CWORD to $CURRENT and perhaps a few others. Bash returns the
matches in the $COMPREPLY array whilst zsh uses a builtin - compadd. So
putting:
  compadd - "${COMPREPLY[@]}"
at the end of your bash function will handle that.

> i'm simply lost in all the files of the distribution, especially
> those _<helper> functions.  any pointers appreciated.  is there

The helpers are just a better way of doing what bash does with the
compgen builtin. You just call _users to complete usernames or _files
to complete files. Much more readable than `compgen -f' and much more
powerful when you look in more detail.

I could easily write a function to allow zsh to use completions written
for bash:

local COMP_REPLY
local COMP_CWORD=$CURRENT
local -a COMP_WORDS
COMP_WORDS=( $words )
setopt localoptions
emulate sh
"$@"
compadd - "${COMPREPLY[@]}"

Would be enough for _qconfirm (I think). Would that be useful? Or do we
have a perl guru who can write a program to convert the function? Of
course it is better to rewrite the functions properly to make full use
of zsh's greater power.

Oliver

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