Re: compinit in emulation

[Oliver Kiddle <opk@zsh.org>]

Bart Schaefer wrote:
> The documentation says:
>   If the parameter _compdir is set, compinit uses it as a directory where
>   completion functions can be found; this is only necessary if they are
>   not already in the function search path.

I'm not entirely clear what that feature is trying to achieve. So you
can wipe out $fpath but set _compdir to the location of the completon
functions and compinit will kindly fill out $fpath with all the
completion directories again. Assuming zsh can still find compinit in
$fpath in order to run it that is. This may relate to compaudit and
compinstall so Peter may have more idea.

> However, this depends on the fpath/FPATH tied variable linkage, which
> is disabled when not in native zsh mode.  I wrongly expected 'emulate
> -R zsh' to fix this, and spent quite a while down a rabbit hole trying
> to figure out what was wrong.

I get "compinit:141: parse error: condition expected: $1" when trying to
use the feature from sh emulation - is that what you're referring to?

When cutting it down to the absolute minimum, I can reproduce that odd
error by creating a file that contains just:
  [[ $1 = (*) ]]
Then (assuming it is named compinit):
  zsh -f
  fpath=( $PWD )
  autoload -UTz compinit
  compinit
  compinit:1: parse error: condition expected: $1

That line won't parse in other shells. The lexer gives different
results – compare with and without sh emulation:

  print -lr -- "${(z):-[[ \$1 = (#b)(*)=(*) ]]}"

So despite the use of emulate -L zsh in top of a function, emulate sh
causes sh lexer rules to be applied to the autoloaded function. Perhaps
the -z option to autoload could be overloaded and made to correct for that.

The original lines in compinit are as follows. There may be ways such as
wrapping in eval or emulate or rearranging to workaround the real
problem. (Assuming your issue wasn't something else entirely)

391       pattern)
392 	    if [[ $1 = (#b)(*)=(*) ]]; then
393 	      _patcomps[$match[1]]="=$match[2]=$func"

Oliver