Re: PATCH: completion for perldoc

[Adam Spiers <adam@thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk>]

Sven Wischnowsky (wischnow@informatik.hu-berlin.de) wrote:
> Adam Spiers wrote:
> > - Why can't you have multiple MESSAGE:ACTION pairs with the
> >   *:MESSAGE:ACTION form?  I'm having to resort to using an auxiliary
> >   function, e.g.:
> 
> There three forms that allow you to specify completion for
> (non-option-) arguments:

[snip]

Sorry, badly phrased question.  I understood the three forms;
my question was, why can't the third form:

>    `*:mesg:action'
>      specify completion for `all other' arguments

look like this:

     `*:mesg1:action1:mesg2:action2:...'

?

So that instead of this (which now works!) ...

    _perldoc () {
        _arguments -s \
            '-h:help:' \
            '(-q)-f:Perl built-in function:_perl_builtin_funcs' \
            '(-f)-q:Perl FAQ keyword:' \
            '*:Perl pod pages:_perl_pods'
    }

    _perl_pods () {
        local nm="$compstate[nmatches]"

       _perl_modules
       _perl_basepods
       _path_files -J 'Perl modules and .pods' -/ -g '*.(pod|pm)'

        [[ nm -ne "$compstate[nmatches]" ]]
    }

I could do something like:

    _perldoc () {
        _arguments -s \
            '-h:help:' \
            '(-q)-f:Perl built-in function:_perl_builtin_funcs' \
            '(-f)-q:Perl FAQ keyword:' \
            '*:Perl modules:_perl_modules:Perl base pods:_perl_basepods:Perl modules and .pods:_path_files -/ -g \*.\(pod\|pm\)'
    }

> > - Is it possible to do something like (-foo)*:MESSAGE:ACTION, i.e.
> >   specifying completion for normal args only if -foo hasn't been
> >   specified?
> 
> There is no direct support for this. I'm not sure what you really want 
> to have, but I think (or: hope) you can do it with:
> 
>   `-foo:*:mesg1:action1' '*:mesg2:action2'
> 
>     which makes *all* arguments after the option `-foo' be completed
>     with `action1' (if that is empty, nothing will be completed, of
>     course), and if `-foo' is not given, the second specification will 
>     be used
> 
> This can then be used together with some trickery for `action1' to
> achieve almost everything. If that is not enough or too clumsy to use, 
> I'd like to see the real world example that made you wish for this.
> And then I'll think about ways to make this easier.

The example I'm thinking of is (surprise, surprise) perldoc.  The word
after -f is now correctly completed to Perl's built-in functions.
However, I want to prevent further completions if `-f print ' (say)
has been typed in, since `perldoc -f print Perl::Module' is
nonsensical to perldoc.

    `(-q)-f:built-in function:_perl_builtin_func:*:'

works, but

    `(-f)-q:FAQ keyword::*:'

gets confused by the empty ACTION.  I tried

    `(-f)-q:FAQ keyword:():*:'

but then it doesn't print `FAQ keyword'.