completion with descriptions

completion with descriptions

[Andy Spiegl]

How can I provide a description for every offered completion
like e.g. "kill" does it nicely?

# kill t<TAB>
process ID
28745 ?        00:02:11 tudu
28760 ?        00:00:00 tail
28879 pts/7    00:02:08 topcpu
28881 pts/8    00:00:08 tmp-cron-script


In my completion function I tried like this:
   ':cmds: compadd ${${(f)"$(gigaset --commands)"}%%[[:space:]]##--*}' \
but it only gives me this:

# condor:~>gigaset d<TAB>
del       demux     details   dir       divx      divxfast  dump

although "gigaset --commands" outputs:
...
dir         -- Liste der Aufnahmen
dump        -- Details anzeigen
details     -- (s. dump)
divx        -- Aufnahme ins DivX-Format konvertieren
divxfast    -- Aufnahme (schneller) ins DivX-Format konvertieren
demux       -- Aufnahme mit projectX demultiplexen
del         -- (s. rm)
...

For the last hours I read the manual and examples (like _pids) but
eventually got lost before finding the solution  :-(

Thanks,
 Andy.

-- 
 Finagle's First Law:
   If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.

Re: completion with descriptions

[Peter Stephenson]

Andy Spiegl wrote:
> How can I provide a description for every offered completion
> like e.g. "kill" does it nicely?
> 
> In my completion function I tried like this:
>    ':cmds: compadd ${${(f)"$(gigaset --commands)"}%%[[:space:]]##--*}' \

You need to use the _describe function; see the zshcompsys manual.
There are examples of this buried in various places.  You probably won't
be able to do it inline; you need to create an array with elements
containing both completions and descriptions separated by a colon.

Here's a noddy example.

_foo() {
  local -a d
  d=(foo:"The word foo" bar:"A rod")
  _describe "noddy example" d
}
compdef _foo foo

-- 
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Re: completion with descriptions

[Andy Spiegl]

Thank you for the example, Peter!
I tried to dig in deeply into writing completion functions now. :-)

I took _aptitude as a template and came up with the following (see below)
which works as wanted except for the fact that zsh inserts the _whole_ line
(command + description) instead of just the command. *sigh*

Like so:
 condor:~>gigaset del\ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ \ --\ Aufnahme\ löschen
 gigaset commands
 del         -- Aufnahme löschen                                    
 demux       -- Aufnahme mit projectX demultiplexen                 
 details     -- Details anzeigen                                    
 dir         -- Liste der Aufnahmen                                 
 dump        -- Details anzeigen                                    
 mux         -- Video+Audio(s) wieder zu einer MPG-Datei multiplexen
 title       -- Kurzübersicht (Aufnahme-Titel in nur 1 Zeile)       

Can someone see where my error is, please?

Here are the relevant parts of the function:
 (the whole thing is also here: http://andy.spiegl.de/software/_gigaset)

[...]
_arguments -S \
[...]
   '--commands[Liste aller Kommandos]' \
   '1: :->cmds' \
   '*: :->args'

case $state in
  cmds)
    cmds=( ${${(M)${(f)"$(gigaset --commands 2>/dev/null)"}:#* -- *}/(#b) (*[^ ]) #-- (*)/$match[1]:$match[2]:l})
    _describe -t commands "gigaset commands" cmds && ret=0
  ;;
  args)
[...]
  ;;
esac

Thx,
 Andy.

-- 
 For every problem there is one solution which is simple, neat, and wrong. 
   -- Henry L. Mencken 

Re: completion with descriptions

[Andy Spiegl]

> I took _aptitude as a template and came up with the following (see below)
> which works as wanted except for the fact that zsh inserts the _whole_
> line (command + description) instead of just the command. *sigh*

I solved it!

For the records, the problem was an extra space:
> cmds=( ${${(M)${(f)"$(gigaset --commands 2>/dev/null)"}:#* -- *}/(#b) (*[^ ]) #-- (*)/$match[1]:$match[2]:l})
                                                           right here ^^^
because my program doesn't begin the lines (in the list of possible
commands) with a space.

After also deleting the ":l" at the end zsh stopped converting all my
German words to lowercase, oh what wonder. :-)

So this works now beautifully:
 cmds=( ${${(M)${(f)"$(gigaset --commands 2>/dev/null)"}:#* -- *}/(#b)(*[^ ]) #-- (*)/$match[1]:$match[2]})

Thanks for all the help,
 Andy.

-- 
 "security is an exercise in applied paranoia"       -- Unknown