tab completion sort by modification time

tab completion sort by modification time

[kamaraju kusumanchi]

Hi all,

Long time bash user here. Looking to see if zsh can solve my
particular problem. If it does, I'd like to switch to it.

Say  a directory contains a lot of files and say I am only interested
in the files that were recently edited/created. When doing a tab
completion inside this directory, I would like the files to be listed
in the order of modification time (similar to ls -rt). This way the
latest files show up at the end and I can easily copy/paste their
names using mouse onto the command line.

Is zsh tab completion system comprehensive enough to do something like this?

FWIW, this feature is not present in bash at the moment -
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2014-12/msg00161.html . So
I am looking for alternatives.

thanks
raju
-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/

Re: tab completion sort by modification time

[Eric Cook]

On 01/10/2015 02:33 PM, kamaraju kusumanchi wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Long time bash user here. Looking to see if zsh can solve my
> particular problem. If it does, I'd like to switch to it.
>
> Say  a directory contains a lot of files and say I am only interested
> in the files that were recently edited/created. When doing a tab
> completion inside this directory, I would like the files to be listed
> in the order of modification time (similar to ls -rt). This way the
> latest files show up at the end and I can easily copy/paste their
> names using mouse onto the command line.
>
> Is zsh tab completion system comprehensive enough to do something like this?
>
> FWIW, this feature is not present in bash at the moment -
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2014-12/msg00161.html . So
> I am looking for alternatives.
>
> thanks
> raju
zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort modification
Will accomplish that for any completer that uses the normal means of
completing filenames.

You can be more specific with the context if you don't want to affect
everything.
zstyle ":completion:*:${EDITOR}:*" file-sort modification

You can also reverse the order:
zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort 'reverse modification'

Re: tab completion sort by modification time

[Peter Stephenson]

On Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:33:49 -0500
kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
> Long time bash user here. Looking to see if zsh can solve my
> particular problem. If it does, I'd like to switch to it.
> 
> Say  a directory contains a lot of files and say I am only interested
> in the files that were recently edited/created. When doing a tab
> completion inside this directory, I would like the files to be listed
> in the order of modification time (similar to ls -rt). This way the
> latest files show up at the end and I can easily copy/paste their
> names using mouse onto the command line.
>
> Is zsh tab completion system comprehensive enough to do something like this?

I'm assuming as a bash user you're not subscribed to zsh-users...

If you want this behaviour globally, I think it's as simple as the
following piece of configuration:

zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort modification

If you want more control, reading the zshcompsys manual page should give
you ideas of how to modify that first argument --- which is a pattern
matching the context in which a completion occurs --- should give you
some ideas how to do so.

It's also relatively straightforward (i.e someone here can work out
how to do it in a few minutes after you've scratched your head for
half an hour:-)) to add a new key binding that has this file completion
behaviour.

pws

Re: tab completion sort by modification time

[Mikael Magnusson]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 9:11 PM, Peter Stephenson
<p.w.stephenson@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 10 Jan 2015 14:33:49 -0500
> kamaraju kusumanchi <raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Long time bash user here. Looking to see if zsh can solve my
>> particular problem. If it does, I'd like to switch to it.
>>
>> Say  a directory contains a lot of files and say I am only interested
>> in the files that were recently edited/created. When doing a tab
>> completion inside this directory, I would like the files to be listed
>> in the order of modification time (similar to ls -rt). This way the
>> latest files show up at the end and I can easily copy/paste their
>> names using mouse onto the command line.
>>
>> Is zsh tab completion system comprehensive enough to do something like this?
>
> I'm assuming as a bash user you're not subscribed to zsh-users...
>
> If you want this behaviour globally, I think it's as simple as the
> following piece of configuration:
>
> zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort modification
>
> If you want more control, reading the zshcompsys manual page should give
> you ideas of how to modify that first argument --- which is a pattern
> matching the context in which a completion occurs --- should give you
> some ideas how to do so.
>
> It's also relatively straightforward (i.e someone here can work out
> how to do it in a few minutes after you've scratched your head for
> half an hour:-)) to add a new key binding that has this file completion
> behaviour.

As it happens, I have one of these lying around already (I'm 83% sure
you wrote this for me too),
zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' match-original both
zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' file-sort modification
zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' file-patterns '*:all\ files'
zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' hidden all
zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' completer _files
zle -C most-recent-file menu-complete _generic
bindkey "^N"      most-recent-file

-- 
Mikael Magnusson

Re: tab completion sort by modification time

[kamaraju kusumanchi]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 3:30 PM, Mikael Magnusson <mikachu@gmail.com> wrote:
> As it happens, I have one of these lying around already (I'm 83% sure
> you wrote this for me too),
> zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' match-original both
> zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' file-sort modification
> zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' file-patterns '*:all\ files'
> zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' hidden all
> zstyle ':completion:most-recent-file:*' completer _files
> zle -C most-recent-file menu-complete _generic
> bindkey "^N"      most-recent-file
>
> --
> Mikael Magnusson

Thanks for all the replies guys. I will give this a try.

raju

Re: tab completion sort by modification time

[kamaraju kusumanchi]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 2:52 PM, Eric Cook <llua@gmx.com> wrote:
> You can also reverse the order:
> zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort 'reverse modification'

I confirm that this line is all I needed to get what I am after. But
thanks to all other tidbits. They will all be useful as I get more
experience with Z shell.

raju
-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/

Re: tab completion sort by modification time

[kamaraju kusumanchi]

On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 11:40 PM, kamaraju kusumanchi
<raju.mailinglists@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 2:52 PM, Eric Cook <llua@gmx.com> wrote:
>> You can also reverse the order:
>> zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort 'reverse modification'
>
> I confirm that this line is all I needed to get what I am after. But
> thanks to all other tidbits. They will all be useful as I get more
> experience with Z shell.
>
> raju

So I have been experimenting with zsh and I found one feature that I
really like. The shell cleans up the tab completions once it is
completed.

For example, say I have

rajulocal@hogwarts ~/x % ls file*
file10.txt  file11.txt  file12.txt  file13.txt  file1.txt  file2.txt
file3.csv  file4.csv  file5.tsv  file6.tsv  file7.txt  file9.txt

Now, I can bring up a list of possible completions by <tab>

rajulocal@hogwarts ~/x % ls file<tab>
Completing files
file2.txt    file4.csv    file6.tsv    file7.txt    file10.txt
file12.txt
file3.csv    file5.tsv    file1.txt    file9.txt    file11.txt
file13.txt*

and when I enter 12.txt, the list completely disappears.

rajulocal@hogwarts ~/x % ls file12.txt
file12.txt

That is pretty impressive and something I always wanted to do in bash.

raju
-- 
Kamaraju S Kusumanchi
http://malayamaarutham.blogspot.com/