Re: Compctl completion tweaking

[Sven Wischnowsky <wischnow@informatik.hu-berlin.de>]

Bart Schaefer wrote:

> 
> On Jul 1,  8:13am, Sven Wischnowsky wrote:
> > Subject: Re: Compctl completion tweaking
> > 
> > First, I would try to change the behaviour of -P (and -S) so that they 
> > are not inserted straight away, but instead [...], the prefixes
> > are walked through, too [....]
> 
> This sounds to me rather like the behavior of compctl -U.  Perhaps the
> use of inclusive-or should simply imply, or require pairing with, -U ?
> 

No, with -U the stuff on the command line is simply ignored. What I
described is a bahaviour that treats -P/-S sruff a bit more like the
matches. In fact, they are already treated a bit like them: if you
have a compctl with `-P foo' and type `fd<TAB>', the `f' is expanded
to `foo' and the `d' is taken as the prefix for the matches.
The importent difference is, that currently there can be only one such 
-P/-S and we can insert it immediatly. But with inclusively-ored
compctls, we have to make sure, that the right prefix/suffix is
inserted along the matches.
I would certainly not implement some connection/requirement with -U,
since that would mean that we couldn't give a prefix/suffix for the
matches we want to see (-U is the user's way to say to the completion
code: "You don't have a clue what kind of words I want to complete
here, anyway, so simply throw away the current word, and do no
matching at all, I'll give you the whole matching words.").

> > More problematic is the case where
> > we have prefixes like, say `barrr' and `bazzz'. The completion code
> > would insert the `ba' [...]
> > but without completeinword (and without automenu), the user
> > would have to type `rrr' or `zzz' which is a bit ugly.
> 
> That's no worse than what happens without a prefix when completing in
> the middle of a word that happens to match more than one result, is it?

It is very similar, but with a little difference: currently, this can
only happen with matches, but with inclusive-ors, it can also happen
with prefixes/suffixes (it simply might surprise the unaware a bit,
but if you are using all this, you are probably so deep into
compctl-hacking that you know, what you are doing anyway).

> 
> > So, does this seem to make sense?
> 
> Mostly, but as with most completion stuff it's probably necessary to see
> it in action.

Yep. I hope I find some time soon. If I don't find some time soon,
you might have to wait surprisingly long, since the semester is coming 
to its end, we have to hold some examinations, and, most importantly,
our whole institute will move to a new building starting on July, 21th 
and of course we can't be sure, when we will be able to work again
after that.

Bye
 Sven


--
Sven Wischnowsky                         wischnow@informatik.hu-berlin.de