completion differences between shells writeup

completion differences between shells writeup

[Felix Rosencrantz]

Has anyone written up something that compares the functionality of completion
between the various shells?  I was thinking of something along the lines of
Brian Blackmore's FAQ about "UNIX shell differences and how to change your
shell ".   It lists more than 40 features across 8 shells, though the FAQ is a
few years out of date.
Here's the url: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/unix-faq/shell/shell-differences/

Basically he lists programmable completion as one of the check off items.   And
overall there are about 5 completion related items in his list.  Considering
all the functionality that zsh has now, it might be useful to have a shell
completion comparison list.  It could easily cover a large number of features
(fakes, arguments, descriptions, debugging, customization, pre-written
functions, matching control, tags, ....)

I mention this since there is a "bash programmable completion"  project
(freshmeat url: http://freshmeat.net/projects/bashcompletion/ )  by Ian
Macdonald to build a library of bash completions.  Adam and Oliver have both
posted comments about ZSH completions on the project page.  Adam posted a link
to my XML site.  I've been getting a few hits from that, and would like to
point these bash folks to a page that explains the differences with some
detail. Something that would whet their interest in zsh, since they already
have an interest in better completion.

-FR.



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Re: completion differences between shells writeup

[John Beppu]

[  date  ] 2002/02/18 | Monday | 10:52 PM
[ author ] Felix Rosencrantz <f_rosencrantz@yahoo.com> 

> Considering
> all the functionality that zsh has now, it might be useful to have a shell
> completion comparison list.  It could easily cover a large number of features
> (fakes, arguments, descriptions, debugging, customization, pre-written
> functions, matching control, tags, ....)
 
<tangent>
    I wrote a piece titled "Making the Transition to    # scheduled for the
    Zsh" for my column in Linux Magazine, and it's a    # May 2002 issue
    real light introduction to zsh written w/ bash
    users in mind.  The first thing I tell them is to
    do is put:

        autoload -U compinit
        compinit

    in their .zshrc, and then I go on to give examples
    of some of the completions that come standard with
    zsh.  (That's usually enough make people really
    curious.)  Aside from completions, I also
    introduce setopt and some of the prepackaged
    prompts.  I figured that w/ a basic understanding
    of those 3 topics, people would be able to quickly
    get up to speed.

    After I wrote it, I sent it out to some of my friends,
    and I got most of them to switch, and those who
    didn't switch right away expressed strong interest
    in switching in the near future.   ...so zsh does
    a good job of standing on its own merits -- it's
    just a matter of educating people about what zsh
    is capable of AND (most importantly) that it's
    surprisingly easy to get a powerful configuration
    going.  If people knew this, there'd be a lot more
    zsh users out there.

    I think it's just a matter of writing a short
    guide to porting your bash configuration to zsh
    and then harnessing the Slashdot Effect.  ;-)
</tangent>


Would you believe I've been using zsh for less than a
month?  I love it, though, and I plan on writing a few
more pieces on zsh, too.  I'd really like to learn how
to create my own program-specific completions, but
before I do that, I think I'd probably have to provide
a short overview of some of zsh's scripting abilities
(that aren't found in /bin/sh).

Any references would be greatly appreciated.


PS: I'd like to try zftp out, but I have no idea how 
    enable it.  Yes, I've RTFM'd, and I've concluded
    that I didn't compile the zftp module when I built
    zsh, but when I run ./configure --help, there's no
    --enable-zftp option, so I'm kinda lost...  help.

-- 
package wuv'apqvjgt;($_=join('',(*PgtnHcemgt))) # print map "beppu\@$_\n", qw(
=~ s/([HaP])(?!e)/ \U>$1/g;s/^.|:| (?=A)|>//g;y # cpan.org  lbox.org  binq.org
/c-z/a-u/;print"J$_\n";#$^%$^X@.^ <!-- japh --> # oss.lineo.com codepoet.org);

Re: completion differences between shells writeup

[Bart Schaefer]

On Feb 20,  3:14pm, John Beppu wrote:
} Subject: Re: completion differences between shells writeup
}
} [...]  I'd really like to learn how
} to create my own program-specific completions, but
} before I do that, I think I'd probably have to provide
} a short overview of some of zsh's scripting abilities
} (that aren't found in /bin/sh).
} 
} Any references would be greatly appreciated.

Check out PWS's user guide:

http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk/computing/zshguide.html

} PS: I'd like to try zftp out, but I have no idea how 
}     enable it.  Yes, I've RTFM'd, and I've concluded
}     that I didn't compile the zftp module when I built
}     zsh, but when I run ./configure --help, there's no
}     --enable-zftp option, so I'm kinda lost...  help.

So what you're saying is that "zmodload zsh/zftp" fails?

And/or that you've tried

	autoload -U zfinit
	zfinit

without success?

The zftp module should be built whenever you chose to have a dynamically
linked zsh ("configure --enable-dynamic", which should be the default).
If you configured with --disable-dynamic, the zftp module (and several
others) will not be compiled or linked unless you make some edits to the
config.modules file.  Instructions are in the "INSTALL" file under the
heading "Adding and removing modules".  I'm not aware of any other
conditional compilation of zftp.

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

Zsh: http://www.zsh.org | PHPerl Project: http://phperl.sourceforge.net   

Re: completion differences between shells writeup

[John Beppu]

[  date  ] 2002/02/21 | Thursday | 04:19 AM
[ author ] Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> 

> Check out PWS's user guide:
> http://www.pwstephenson.fsnet.co.uk/computing/zshguide.html

I found this really useful.  It was easier for me to read than
the manual, but it's still huge.  My brain is going to explode.
 
> So what you're saying is that "zmodload zsh/zftp" fails?
> 
> And/or that you've tried
> 
> 	autoload -U zfinit
> 	zfinit
> 
> without success?

You know what?...  It was failing under Mac OS X for some
reason, but when I tried on Linux, it worked fine.  Hrm..

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Re: completion differences between shells writeup

[Oliver Kiddle]

 --- John Beppu <beppu@ax9.org> wrote: > 

> > So what you're saying is that "zmodload zsh/zftp" fails?
> 
> You know what?...  It was failing under Mac OS X for some
> reason, but when I tried on Linux, it worked fine.  Hrm..

How did you build zsh on Mac OS X? As mentioned in Etc/MACHINES, the
dlcompat library is needed for dynamic loading to work on MacOS X and
without dynamic loading, you won't have the extra modules like zftp.

Or if you used the zsh that comes with MacOS X, it is an old version
that pre-dates zftp.

Oliver

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Re: completion differences between shells writeup

[John Beppu]

[  date  ] 2002/02/22 | Friday | 09:31 AM
[ author ] Oliver Kiddle <okiddle@yahoo.co.uk> 

> How did you build zsh on Mac OS X? As mentioned in Etc/MACHINES, the
> dlcompat library is needed for dynamic loading to work on MacOS X and
> without dynamic loading, you won't have the extra modules like zftp.

doh!  It didn't occur to me to look in Etc/MACHINES.
Being in a directory named Etc/ makes me think that
it was configuration-related.

Thanks for the clue.

-- 
package wuv'apqvjgt;($_=join('',(*PgtnHcemgt))) # print map "beppu\@$_\n", qw(
=~ s/([HaP])(?!e)/ \U>$1/g;s/^.|:| (?=A)|>//g;y # cpan.org  lbox.org  binq.org
/c-z/a-u/;print"J$_\n";#$^%$^X@.^ <!-- japh --> # oss.lineo.com codepoet.org);

Re: completion differences between shells writeup

[Peter Stephenson]

John Beppu wrote:
> PS: I'd like to try zftp out, but I have no idea how 
>     enable it.  Yes, I've RTFM'd, and I've concluded
>     that I didn't compile the zftp module when I built
>     zsh, but when I run ./configure --help, there's no
>     --enable-zftp option, so I'm kinda lost...  help.

Check config.modules in the directory where you ran configure to see if
zftp is being linked in.

By the way, the manual page to read is probably zshzftpsys, which
describes the user friendly function system which runs on top of the
builtin.

I still think zftp handles keyboard interrupts badly.  I still haven't
been able to generate enough interest in doing anything myself.  A prod
would help.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com>                  Software Engineer
CSR Ltd., Science Park, Milton Road,
Cambridge, CB4 0WH, UK                          Tel: +44 (0)1223 392070


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