Re: Tests of interrupting completion, and completion_nostat_dirs

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com>]

On Jan 30,  9:30am, Peter Stephenson wrote:
} Subject: Re: Tests of interrupting completion, and completion_nostat_dirs
}
} On Wed, 29 Jan 2014 18:12:06 -0800
} Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> wrote:
} > Hmm, to include this I'd probably want completion_nostat_dirs to be an
} > autoloaded parameter in the zsh/complete module or something like that.
} > It doesn't have any of those right now (the magic parameters that are
} > only valid inside completion widgets are a somewhat different beast) but
} > there's no reason it couldn't.
} 
} This has traditionally been done using something that's only seen by
} completion that gets passed in from above.

Yes, but in this case there's a corresponding C code change to recognize
the setting.

} It could, for example, be something in compstate set at the top level
} of _main_complete, but there are other mechanisms: the menu completion
} library uses its own parameters that are set by styles, and sometimes
} the effect of styles get passed into builtins which probably doesn't
} fit here.

I suppose the parameter *could* in fact be valid only when inside a
completion widget, and it would then be up to _main_complete to copy
from a zstyle into the parameter so that ztat() could see it.  That
would be roughly the same as the treatment of region_highlight by zle;
it doesn't exist except while doing its job.

Of course that would mean that compctl and/or widgets entered directly
without going through _main_complete would need to do their own zstyle
lookup.  This is the reason that e.g. MENUSCROLL is a global parameter
as well as being copied from a zstyle.

} This is different from ZLE which doesn't use styles so gets configured
} by straight parameters --- that's not ideal; it would be better to use
} some form of namespace if we could.

Right, but the completion-only scoping could stand in for that in the
case of completion.  The "problem" for zle is that, unless we actually
make the internals aware of zstyle values at the C level, there's no
guaranteed entry point where a zstyle can be referenced by shell code.
(zle-line-init could serve that role now, I suppose, but then everyone
needs a default zle-line-init [compare MENUSCROLL above].)