I am working on an idea with a completion function that generates file paths, absolute or relative. Below is a simplified version of what I am trying to do. I have replaced what I'm really using to generate the paths with a call to "find", just to make it simple to see what I am stumbling on. Here's how I've set up the function: _gen-result() { local -a hlist hlist=("${(@f)$(find /etc/ -type f)}") # This is just a stand-in for my real function compadd -- $hlist } zle -C gen-comp menu-complete _gen-result bindkey '\ee' gen-comp I works well. Typing "ls <\ee>" I get the files found below /etc. Here's what I don't know how to solve: I would like to type some string on the command line, and I want to have that string working as a filter for the suggestions, matching anywhere in the path. Say I have "/etc/foo", "/etc/bar" and /etc/baz/foo.txt", and I type "ls foo <\ee>", I only want "/etc/foo" and "/etc/baz/foo.txt" to be suggested. In other words, I want the completion to match against the string anywhere in the full path. In this particular example, I realize I could pass the filter string as a restriction to the find command, and I could also filter the array "hlist" after the paths are generated, but that is not so simple in my real command. Is there a way to specify in a more "zsh like" way that when using _gen-result, the whole path should be examined for a match?