Peter Slížik wrote:
>
> I have a few applications installed on my system, with their names sharing a
> common prefix.
> Now as the apps are company-specific, let me invent some contrived names:
>
> messageedit, messageview, messageformat, messagesend, you've got the idea.
>
> Now, in may daily work, I'm using only one of them: messageedit. The other are
> used... well, almost never.
>
> Now, if I type mess<Tab>, the name gets completed to message and the completion
> engine waits for further input.
>
> I would like to tweak the completion in such a way the typing mess<Tab>
> completes the input to messageedit and ignores the other possible apps.
>
> Can this be done in a positive way (by naming the preferred application) or in
> a negative fashion (by prohibiting all unwanted completions)?

You can do this with the ignored-patterns style. On the surface, this
works in the negative sense, e.g.:

  zstyle ':completion:*:commands' ignored-patterns messageview messageformat messagesend

But you can use a pattern to turn this around into a positive form, e.g:

  zstyle ':completion:*:-command-:*:commands' ignored-patterns 'mess(^ageedit)'

If you still occasionally want to complete the others, you may want to
look into the _ignored completer to complete them as a fallback if you
have entered a longer prefix.

In the second example, I used a more specific context which will only
apply in command position. You can vary that depending on the contexts
in which you want it to apply.

Oliver