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To: Zsh Users <zsh-users@zsh.org>
From: Paul Seyfert <pseyfert@mathphys.fsk.uni-heidelberg.de>
Subject: _gnu_generic for aliases
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Message-ID: <573D7E67.10600@mathphys.fsk.uni-heidelberg.de>
Date: Thu, 19 May 2016 10:50:47 +0200
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Hi,

my situation is the following, I have aliases which are defined
somewhere in /etc/zprofile (i.e. changing where and how the aliases are
defined is not directly accessible to me and can affect other users).

I already wrote my own completion function for them:

_arguments '-c:configuration:->listconfigs'
case $state in
  (listconfigs)
    local -a theconfigs
    # just hard coded strings I don't want to remember/type/mistype
    theconfigs=(x256_777_May x375_324_Jun x942_113_Feb)
    _describe 'config' theconfigs
    ;;
esac

such that I can call the completion with

        fancyalias -c <TAB>

This already covers most of my usages of the alias, but I'd like to improve it
a little more. One of the executables is actually in the PATH so I could test
that the following does what it should do for the executable in the PATH

_arguments '-c:configuration:->listconfigs' ':::->whatelse'
case $state in
  (listconfigs)
    local -a theconfigs
    # just hard coded strings I don't want to remember/type/mistype
    theconfigs=(x256_777_May x375_324_Jun x942_113_Feb)
    _describe 'config' theconfigs
    ;;
  (whatelse)
    _gnu_generic
    ;;
esac

i.e. not only expand -c and its arguments, but also suggests completions on --<TAB>

This however does not work for the fancyalias.

I crosschecked that also

       compdef _gnu_generic fancyalias

does not result in any suggestions. My understanding is that the
_gnu_generic function does not know about the fancyalias / I cannot use
the fancyalias inside the _gnu_generic function.

Is there a way to make _gnu_generic work for aliases?

Thanks,
Paul