Re: _files vs _path_files discussion (old thread)

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@candle.brasslantern.com>]

On Mar 12, 12:51am, Adam Spiers wrote:
} Subject: Re: _files vs _path_files discussion (old thread)
}
} Bart Schaefer (schaefer@candle.brasslantern.com) wrote:
} > zstyle ':completion::complete:tar::' \
} > 	tag-order 'globbed-files directories' all-files
} 
} That's exactly what I'd tried, with once difference; as I mentioned, I
} want this behaviour everywhere, not just for tar, so I'd tried:
} 
} zstyle ':completion::complete:*' \
}   tag-order 'globbed-files directories' all-files
} 
} However, neither your version nor mine seem to work.  Maybe I'm just
} missing a bugfix because I'm behind on patches.

No; Sven explained this back in 9858, and asked whether it should be
changed [*].  It's not sufficient to give the tag-order style, you
also have to specify the file-patterns for each of the tags that you
actually want to generate completions.  So you also need e.g.:

zstyle ':completion::complete:tar::directories' file-patterns '*(-/)'

You can of course replace :tar:: there with :*:*: to make all commands
that use _files complete directories; but as Sven mentions in 9864,
you may not want that, which is why the file-patterns are required to
be given in the first place.

_tar already supplies a file pattern for globbed-files by passing a -g
option to _files, so (unlike many other commands) you _don't_ need to
specify the file-patterns for *:tar::globbed-files.  You _do_ need to
specify file-patterns for all-files if you want those included.

[*] Sven's suggested change was:
} ... should we make the directories tag with its usual pattern be
} tried automatically if the user explicitly sets the file-patterns tag
} for globbed-files? Or should we do that only if the directories tag,
} file-patterns style is given, but allow an empty value to stand for
} `the normal pattern'?

I meant to reply to that and hadn't got around to it yet.

My short answer is that I don't think there's any good solution.  The
tag-order style is going to be confusing no matter what we do; people
are always going to wonder why, when they can see "directories" in the
tag-order style, they still don't get any directories completed.  It's
a case of intuition being at odds with logical semantics, and I can't
think of any way to make the intuition work without ruining the logic.

Automatically adding directories when globbed-files is given only makes
things cloudier; allowing an empty pattern to stand for '*(-/)' doesn't
alleviate the need to provide the directories style, which is the real
basis of the confusion.  So I think I'd leave the code as is, and put
some kind of blaring all-caps text in the tag-order documentation:

NAMING A TAG IN TAG-ORDER DOES NOT CAUSE COMPLETIONS FOR THAT TAG TO BE
GENERATED; RATHER, IT SORTS THE COMPLETIONS AFTER THEY ARE GENERATED.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                                 Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts              http://www.brasslantern.com