users@hosts completion

users@hosts completion

[Chris Johnson]

  I'm able to get the users-hosts completion for ssh, scp, and so on,
but how can I extend this functionality to my own programs?  I've been
through the manual and Google, but no zstyle line has worked for me.
How can I setup users-hosts completion for my specified commands?

  Thanks for any help!

-- 
Chris Johnson
cjohnson AT cs DOT utk DOT edu
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~cjohnson

Re: users@hosts completion

[Bart Schaefer]

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Chris Johnson wrote:

> How can I setup users-hosts completion for my specified commands?

Unfortunately you can't set this up with zstyles only, because it relies 
on a special utility function called _combination which has to be called 
in the correct way from the function that generates potential matches for 
the command in question.

There's a generic function called _user_at_host that does this for the
special case of "user@hostname" arguments, but you still need another
function (which calls e.g. _arguments) to interpret the command line and
call _user_at_host when the cursor is in the correct argument position.

If it happens that your command has argument syntax very similar to one of 
the commands that already uses users-hosts completion, then you can tell
the completion system to treat completion for your command exactly the 
same as completion for that other command.  You do that with a "compdef"
command like so:

 compdef mynewcommand=telnet

Otherwise you'll have to delve into the writing of a new completion.

Re: users@hosts completion

[Chris Johnson]

Bart Schaefer wrote:

> On Sun, 27 Jun 2004, Chris Johnson wrote:
> 
> > How can I setup users-hosts completion for my specified commands?
> 
> Unfortunately you can't set this up with zstyles only, because it relies 
> on a special utility function called _combination which has to be called 
> in the correct way from the function that generates potential matches for 
> the command in question.

[...]

> If it happens that your command has argument syntax very similar to one of 
> the commands that already uses users-hosts completion, then you can tell
> the completion system to treat completion for your command exactly the 
> same as completion for that other command.  You do that with a "compdef"
> command like so:
> 
>  compdef mynewcommand=telnet

   This works beautifully.  My command is just a wrapper to scp, written
to help prevent overwriting of files.  Too many times I've omitted the
remote destination argument--i.e., scp source1 source2--and overwritten
source2 with source1.  (I'm not aware of any interactive option for scp like there is for cp.)

   So, this command lends itself perfectly to compdef.  I am in your
debt.  Thank you!

-- 
Chris Johnson
cjohnson@cs.utk.edu
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~cjohnson