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

[Oliver Kiddle <opk@u.genie.co.uk>]

Bart Schaefer wrote:
> 
> On Feb 15,  7:53pm, Oliver Kiddle wrote:
> } Subject: Re: help with _match, globcomplete etc. (with a PATCH)
> } echo $code[ai]/{a,<tab>
>
> All I get from that is a beep, before Sven's 9749, and
> 
> zagzig% echo foo/\{a,
>                       ^note trailing space added
> with 9749 applied.
> Of course that seems wrong, too.  I didn't want the brace to be quoted.
> What output do you see?

Firstly, I meant <Ctrl-X,*> not <tab> above, as I said in the original
post but I think you probably used that. I see:

risc8% echo foo\[/\{a, 
also with a trailing space added.

> Hmm.  This would almost have to be done in C code; if you have more
> than one of the three forms in the same "word", it'd get pretty messy
> to dismantle it to expand only the appropriate substring(s).

Thats roughly what I imagined was the case after messing with _expand
more. It would probably never work too well with the various things I
had in mind for the scripts anyway.

> } Also, I can't see a way of doing globbing, while preserving variable
> } references.
> 
> This strikes me as nigh impossible in the general case.  What would you
> expect to see if you invoked the "glob but preserve variables" expansion
> in a case like:
> 
>         zsh% arr=('[sS]' Src/M ../)
>         zsh% print -l ${~^arr}*
> 
> ??  Or do I completely misunderstand what you're asking?

You're probably right, I was thinking of simple cases where the
variables used were single values not arrays. What I meant was that the
variable reference would remain in place of its expansion in the full
glob expansion. Anyway I take your point about why it isn't all that
simple.

The reason I wanted this is basically that I use a number of associative
arrays to point to different areas of the system I work on. The path to
most of these areas are stupidly long so I don't generally want my
variable references expanded on the command-line because I end up with a
mess spanning several lines with the things I want to look back at
buried deep amoung the long path names.

Normally for referencing directories, I'd be able to use the named
directory hash table - expand-or-complete never expanded tildes. In fact
the general handling of ~something in completion is exactly what I
wanted for my assocaitive array variables. This leads me to make a
suggestion which may or may not be easy but would solve my problems: in
the same way as a variable whose value is a directory can be refered to
with ~, could the same be made to work for associative arrays (and
arrays in general I suppose), allowing me to use stuff like ~code[ai]
and ~test[$area]?

Oliver Kiddle