Re: help with _match, globcomplete etc. (with PATCH)

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

Oliver Kiddle wrote:

> Sven Wischnowsky wrote:
> 
> > (there is almost no real reason to use
> > GLOB_COMPLETE nowadays, the _match completer should be better -- and
> > configurable).
> 
> I've just been trying to fathom out what is going on with respect to
> when zsh expands, menu completes expansions and doesn't expand. It all
> is a little bit complicated, especially as the behaviour is controlled
> by a mix of options, styles and the choice of widget that tab is bound
> to.
> 
> Part of the trouble is the way zsh's shell expansion works. If you use
> expand-or-complete, I can't see any way of customising what is and isn't
> expanded - variables, globs and history are, tildes are not. The
> behaviour which I would like is that variables are not expanded unless I
> specifically use a widget bound to '^X$' - like tcsh's expand-variables
> widget.

You can bind expand-word to ^X$. Expansion of parameter substitutions
is a problem, because the completion (shell) code doesn't get the
whole string. We only get the stuff after the $, so we can't really
change such things.

> Would it be possible for the shell expansion used in completion
> to be controlled by a style?

Have you had a look at the _expand completer? And the _expand_word
bindable command? (The latter had a bug -- result of copying the
context stuff -- that's what the first hunk is for).

> The reason I still use glob_complete is that it allows some action when
> completing glob patterns (menu completion though I'd prefer expansion in
> the case of files) while not expanding variables.
> 
> I can however see that the _match completer is better, mainly in that I
> can choose menu completion where only one argument is required and
> expansion where many are required.
> 
> Another thing which I would like to configure with expansion is when
> there is only one match, I'd prefer if the space suffix was not added -
> this is one of the things that makes the variable expansion annoying.
> Ideally, the suffix would be as if normal completion was used so
> directories would get a '/'.

When speaking about variables: see above. When speaking about other
expansions: _match does that and _expand could be made to do it
(adding a loop that appends slashes to directory names).


There were some problems with $compstate[last_prompt] and with
complist not giving up when we didn't go back to the previous prompt.

Bye
 Sven


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