Re: _files vs _path_files discussion (old thread)

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

On Mar 12,  1:02pm, Adam Spiers wrote:
} Subject: Re: _files vs _path_files discussion (old thread)
}
}    # Include non-hidden directories in globbed file completions
}    compstyle '::complete:*' \
}      tag-order 'globbed-files directories' all-files 
}    compstyle '::complete:*:*:directories' file-patterns '*~.*(-/)'
} 
} It's almost perfect ...

Have you tried that with, say, `ls' ?  I'll bet it ends up completing
_only_ directories, because there's no -g option passed to _files for
`ls' like there is for `tar'.

If you have global directories file-patterns you're going to need them
for globbed-files, too ... which then messes up things like `tar' that
pass patterns with -g.  The globbed-files style replaces the -g option
of _files.

} The only problem left is in the handling of
} hidden directories; ideally, I would want hidden directories only to
} appear when the leading `.' is specified manually

Hrm, the behavior you want is the behavior I get (for tar), by using:

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

Do you have the GLOB_DOTS option set, by chance?

}    zstyle ':completion::complete:*:*:directories' \
}      file-patterns '*(-/)'
}    zstyle ':completion::complete:*:*:unhidden-directories' \
}      file-patterns '*~.*(-/)'
}    zstyle ':completion::complete:*' tag-order \
}      'globbed-files unhidden-directories' \
}      'globbed-files directories' \
}      all-files
} 
} except that that doesn't work, presumably because you can't just dream
} up new tags like that

You can dream up new tags, but they'll only be used by functions that
know about them -- so you'd have to e.g. modify _files as well.

} and maybe you can't even mention tags twice in tag-order.

It doesn't make sense to mention tags twice in tag-order, because (in
your example) 'globbed-files directories' will only be used when there
are no completions for 'globbed-files unhidden-directories', which 
can't happen if there are any completions for globbed-files alone.

Effectively, what you want is to subdivide the 'directories' tag and
have it treated like it has it's own internal tag-order.  There isn't
any way I can think of to express that at the moment.

One possibility would be to make file-patterns itself into a hierarchy;
that is

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

would mean to use '.*(-/)' only if '*(-/)' returned nothing.  The current
meaning of the above is also expressible by

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

(that is, file-patterns is presently a string, not an array) so we would
not be losing any functionality.

Then all we need is a magic token in file-patterns to mean "use anything
passed to _files with the -g option here" and global file-patterns would
become really useful.

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