Hi Brat Schaefer,

I can not express my gratitude with words. Thank you very much for showing
us how it is done.

I have modified the __git_extract_aliases in this case. solarizedalias came
up with this solution (
https://www.reddit.com/r/zsh/comments/jdlavm/show_completion_description_in_single_line/g9b1lrk?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3).


So, the resulting function is:

(( $+functions[__git_extract_aliases] )) ||
__git_extract_aliases () {
    local -a tmp match mbegin mend
    tmp=(${${(0)"$(_call_program aliases "git config -z --get-regexp
'^alias.'")"}#alias.})
    if (( ${#tmp} > 0 )); then
        aliases=(${^tmp/$'\n'/:alias for \'}\')
        aliases=( ${(@)aliases//(#b)alias for \'(*)\'/alias for
"'${match[1]//$'\n'/ }'"} )
    else
        aliases=()
    fi
}

*Best Regards,Ahmad Ismail*


On Mon, Oct 19, 2020 at 3:59 AM Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>
wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 18, 2020 at 11:28 AM Ahmad Ismail <ismail783@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> [...]  multiline descriptions are draining my cognitive resources. Is
>> there any way I can trim the description to single line.
>> __git_extract_aliases
>>
>> However, I am not sure how to do it actually. Being said that, a zstyle
>> solution will be much better for me.
>>
>
> In the interests of "teach a man to fish" ...
>
> If you look at the source of __git_extract_aliases you will see that it
> does this:
>
> tmp=(${${(0)"$(_call_program aliases "git config -z --get-regexp
> '^alias.'")"}#alias.})
>
> What you are seeing in the descriptions is thus the output from that "git
> config" command.  Your goal is to replace that with something that produces
> less verbose results.
>
> You've already figured out that _call_program looks up the "command"
> style, so you need to find the right context to pass.  This is where ^X?
> (the _complete_help binding) comes in handy.  If you type ^X? (ctrl-x
> questionmark) instead of tab, the completion system will dump a file in
> /tmp with the full set of instructions that were executed in order to
> generate the completion matches.  You can then look through that file for
> the _call_program run and find the context it used.
>
> (This is what I did to find "tree-files" in the other thread, except in
> that case the $(_call_program ...) had stderr directed to /dev/null, so I
> had to first remove that redirect.)
>
> As a shortcut ... you can see from the _call_program arguments that the
> tag is "aliases", so you can construct a wildcard match:
>
> zstyle ':completion::complete:git*:*:aliases' command '...'
>
> Replace "..." with whatever variation of "git config" you need to produce
> your desired abbreviated results.  If the wildcards unexpectedly match
> something you didn't intend, then you can dig deeper to find a more
> specific context.
>
> Note I didn't test the above in any way, so details may need adjustment.
>