1ZSHCOMPSYS(1) General Commands Manual ZSHCOMPSYS(1)
2
6 zshcompsys - zsh completion system
7
9 This describes the shell code for the `new' completion system, referred
10 to as compsys. It is written in shell functions based on the features
11 described in zshcompwid(1).
12 The features are contextual, sensitive to the point at which completion
14 is started. Many completions are already provided. For this reason, a
15 user can perform a great many tasks without knowing any details beyond
16 how to initialize the system, which is described below in INITIALIZA‐
17 TION.
18 The context that decides what completion is to be performed may be
20 · an argument or option position: these describe the position on
21 the command line at which completion is requested. For example
22 `first argument to rmdir, the word being completed names a
23 directory';
24 · a special context, denoting an element in the shell's syntax.
27 For example `a word in command position' or `an array sub‐
28 script'.
29 A full context specification contains other elements, as we shall
32 describe.
33 Besides commands names and contexts, the system employs two more con‐
35 cepts, styles and tags. These provide ways for the user to configure
36 the system's behaviour.
37 Tags play a dual role. They serve as a classification system for the
39 matches, typically indicating a class of object that the user may need
40 to distinguish. For example, when completing arguments of the ls com‐
41 mand the user may prefer to try files before directories, so both of
42 these are tags. They also appear as the rightmost element in a context
43 specification.
44 Styles modify various operations of the completion system, such as out‐
46 put formatting, but also what kinds of completers are used (and in what
47 order), or which tags are examined. Styles may accept arguments and
48 are manipulated using the zstyle command described in see zshmod‐
49 ules(1).
50 In summary, tags describe what the completion objects are, and style
52 how they are to be completed. At various points of execution, the com‐
53 pletion system checks what styles and/or tags are defined for the cur‐
54 rent context, and uses that to modify its behavior. The full descrip‐
55 tion of context handling, which determines how tags and other elements
56 of the context influence the behaviour of styles, is described below in
57 COMPLETION SYSTEM CONFIGURATION.
58 When a completion is requested, a dispatcher function is called; see
60 the description of _main_complete in the list of control functions
61 below. This dispatcher decides which function should be called to pro‐
62 duce the completions, and calls it. The result is passed to one or more
63 completers, functions that implement individual completion strategies:
64 simple completion, error correction, completion with error correction,
65 menu selection, etc.
66 More generally, the shell functions contained in the completion system
68 are of two types:
69 · those beginning `comp' are to be called directly; there are only
70 a few of these;
71 · those beginning `_' are called by the completion code. The
74 shell functions of this set, which implement completion behav‐
75 iour and may be bound to keystrokes, are referred to as `wid‐
76 gets'. These proliferate as new completions are required.
77
80 If the system was installed completely, it should be enough to call the
81 shell function compinit from your initialization file; see the next
82 section. However, the function compinstall can be run by a user to
83 configure various aspects of the completion system.
84 Usually, compinstall will insert code into .zshrc, although if that is
86 not writable it will save it in another file and tell you that file's
87 location. Note that it is up to you to make sure that the lines added
88 to .zshrc are actually run; you may, for example, need to move them to
89 an earlier place in the file if .zshrc usually returns early. So long
90 as you keep them all together (including the comment lines at the start
91 and finish), you can rerun compinstall and it will correctly locate and
92 modify these lines. Note, however, that any code you add to this sec‐
93 tion by hand is likely to be lost if you rerun compinstall, although
94 lines using the command `zstyle' should be gracefully handled.
95 The new code will take effect next time you start the shell, or run
97 .zshrc by hand; there is also an option to make them take effect imme‐
98 diately. However, if compinstall has removed definitions, you will
99 need to restart the shell to see the changes.
100 To run compinstall you will need to make sure it is in a directory men‐
102 tioned in your fpath parameter, which should already be the case if zsh
103 was properly configured as long as your startup files do not remove the
104 appropriate directories from fpath. Then it must be autoloaded
105 (`autoload -U compinstall' is recommended). You can abort the instal‐
106 lation any time you are being prompted for information, and your .zshrc
107 will not be altered at all; changes only take place right at the end,
108 where you are specifically asked for confirmation.
109 Use of compinit
111 This section describes the use of compinit to initialize completion for
112 the current session when called directly; if you have run compinstall
113 it will be called automatically from your .zshrc.
114 To initialize the system, the function compinit should be in a direc‐
116 tory mentioned in the fpath parameter, and should be autoloaded
117 (`autoload -U compinit' is recommended), and then run simply as
118 `compinit'. This will define a few utility functions, arrange for all
119 the necessary shell functions to be autoloaded, and will then re-define
120 all widgets that do completion to use the new system. If you use the
121 menu-select widget, which is part of the zsh/complist module, you
122 should make sure that that module is loaded before the call to compinit
123 so that that widget is also re-defined. If completion styles (see
124 below) are set up to perform expansion as well as completion by
125 default, and the TAB key is bound to expand-or-complete, compinit will
126 rebind it to complete-word; this is necessary to use the correct form
127 of expansion.
128 Should you need to use the original completion commands, you can still
130 bind keys to the old widgets by putting a `.' in front of the widget
131 name, e.g. `.expand-or-complete'.
132 To speed up the running of compinit, it can be made to produce a dumped
134 configuration that will be read in on future invocations; this is the
135 default, but can be turned off by calling compinit with the option -D.
136 The dumped file is .zcompdump in the same directory as the startup
137 files (i.e. $ZDOTDIR or $HOME); alternatively, an explicit file name
138 can be given by `compinit -d dumpfile'. The next invocation of
139 compinit will read the dumped file instead of performing a full ini‐
140 tialization.
141 If the number of completion files changes, compinit will recognise this
143 and produce a new dump file. However, if the name of a function or the
144 arguments in the first line of a #compdef function (as described below)
145 change, it is easiest to delete the dump file by hand so that compinit
146 will re-create it the next time it is run. The check performed to see
147 if there are new functions can be omitted by giving the option -C. In
148 this case the dump file will only be created if there isn't one
149 already.
150 The dumping is actually done by another function, compdump, but you
152 will only need to run this yourself if you change the configuration
153 (e.g. using compdef) and then want to dump the new one. The name of
154 the old dumped file will be remembered for this purpose.
155 If the parameter _compdir is set, compinit uses it as a directory where
157 completion functions can be found; this is only necessary if they are
158 not already in the function search path.
159 For security reasons compinit also checks if the completion system
161 would use files not owned by root or by the current user, or files in
162 directories that are world- or group-writable or that are not owned by
163 root or by the current user. If such files or directories are found,
164 compinit will ask if the completion system should really be used. To
165 avoid these tests and make all files found be used without asking, use
166 the option -u, and to make compinit silently ignore all insecure files
167 and directories use the option -i. This security check is skipped
168 entirely when the -C option is given.
169 The security check can be retried at any time by running the function
171 compaudit. This is the same check used by compinit, but when it is
172 executed directly any changes to fpath are made local to the function
173 so they do not persist. The directories to be checked may be passed as
174 arguments; if none are given, compaudit uses fpath and _compdir to find
175 completion system directories, adding missing ones to fpath as neces‐
176 sary. To force a check of exactly the directories currently named in
177 fpath, set _compdir to an empty string before calling compaudit or
178 compinit.
179 The function bashcompinit provides compatibility with bash's program‐
181 mable completion system. When run it will define the functions, comp‐
182 gen and complete which correspond to the bash builtins with the same
183 names. It will then be possible to use completion specifications and
184 functions written for bash.
185 Autoloaded files
187 The convention for autoloaded functions used in completion is that they
188 start with an underscore; as already mentioned, the fpath/FPATH parame‐
189 ter must contain the directory in which they are stored. If zsh was
190 properly installed on your system, then fpath/FPATH automatically con‐
191 tains the required directories for the standard functions.
192 For incomplete installations, if compinit does not find enough files
194 beginning with an underscore (fewer than twenty) in the search path, it
195 will try to find more by adding the directory _compdir to the search
196 path. If that directory has a subdirectory named Base, all subdirecto‐
197 ries will be added to the path. Furthermore, if the subdirectory Base
198 has a subdirectory named Core, compinit will add all subdirectories of
199 the subdirectories is to the path: this allows the functions to be in
200 the same format as in the zsh source distribution.
201 When compinit is run, it searches all such files accessible via
203 fpath/FPATH and reads the first line of each of them. This line should
204 contain one of the tags described below. Files whose first line does
205 not start with one of these tags are not considered to be part of the
206 completion system and will not be treated specially.
207 The tags are:
209 #compdef names... [ -[pP] patterns... [ -N names... ] ]
211 The file will be made autoloadable and the function defined in
212 it will be called when completing names, each of which is either
213 the name of a command whose arguments are to be completed or one
214 of a number of special contexts in the form -context- described
215 below.
216 Each name may also be of the form `cmd=service'. When complet‐
218 ing the command cmd, the function typically behaves as if the
219 command (or special context) service was being completed
220 instead. This provides a way of altering the behaviour of func‐
221 tions that can perform many different completions. It is imple‐
222 mented by setting the parameter $service when calling the func‐
223 tion; the function may choose to interpret this how it wishes,
224 and simpler functions will probably ignore it.
225 If the #compdef line contains one of the options -p or -P, the
227 words following are taken to be patterns. The function will be
228 called when completion is attempted for a command or context
229 that matches one of the patterns. The options -p and -P are
230 used to specify patterns to be tried before or after other com‐
231 pletions respectively. Hence -P may be used to specify default
232 actions.
233 The option -N is used after a list following -p or -P; it speci‐
235 fies that remaining words no longer define patterns. It is pos‐
236 sible to toggle between the three options as many times as nec‐
237 essary.
238 #compdef -k style key-sequences...
240 This option creates a widget behaving like the builtin widget
241 style and binds it to the given key-sequences, if any. The
242 style must be one of the builtin widgets that perform comple‐
243 tion, namely complete-word, delete-char-or-list, expand-or-com‐
244 plete, expand-or-complete-prefix, list-choices, menu-complete,
245 menu-expand-or-complete, or reverse-menu-complete. If the
246 zsh/complist module is loaded (see zshmodules(1)) the widget
247 menu-select is also available.
248 When one of the key-sequences is typed, the function in the file
250 will be invoked to generate the matches. Note that a key will
251 not be re-bound if it already was (that is, was bound to some‐
252 thing other than undefined-key). The widget created has the
253 same name as the file and can be bound to any other keys using
254 bindkey as usual.
255 #compdef -K widget-name style key-sequences ...
257 This is similar to -k except that only one key-sequences argu‐
258 ment may be given for each widget-name style pair. However, the
259 entire set of three arguments may be repeated with a different
260 set of arguments. Note in particular that the widget-name must
261 be distinct in each set. If it does not begin with `_' this
262 will be added. The widget-name should not clash with the name
263 of any existing widget: names based on the name of the function
264 are most useful. For example,
265 #compdef -K _foo_complete complete-word "^X^C" \
267 _foo_list list-choices "^X^D"
268 (all on one line) defines a widget _foo_complete for completion,
270 bound to `^X^C', and a widget _foo_list for listing, bound to
271 `^X^D'.
272 #autoload [ options ]
274 Functions with the #autoload tag are marked for autoloading but
275 are not otherwise treated specially. Typically they are to be
276 called from within one of the completion functions. Any options
277 supplied will be passed to the autoload builtin; a typical use
278 is +X to force the function to be loaded immediately. Note that
279 the -U and -z flags are always added implicitly.
280 The # is part of the tag name and no white space is allowed after it.
282 The #compdef tags use the compdef function described below; the main
283 difference is that the name of the function is supplied implicitly.
284 The special contexts for which completion functions can be defined are:
286 -array-value-
288 The right hand side of an array-assignment (`foo=(...)')
289 -brace-parameter-
291 The name of a parameter expansion within braces (`${...}')
292 -assign-parameter-
294 The name of a parameter in an assignment, i.e. on the left hand
295 side of an `='
296 -command-
298 A word in command position
299 -condition-
301 A word inside a condition (`[[...]]')
302 -default-
304 Any word for which no other completion is defined
305 -equal-
307 A word beginning with an equals sign
308 -first-
310 This is tried before any other completion function. The func‐
311 tion called may set the _compskip parameter to one of various
312 values: all: no further completion is attempted; a string con‐
313 taining the substring patterns: no pattern completion functions
314 will be called; a string containing default: the function for
315 the `-default-' context will not be called, but functions
316 defined for commands will
317 -math- Inside mathematical contexts, such as `((...))'
319 -parameter-
321 The name of a parameter expansion (`$...')
322 -redirect-
324 The word after a redirection operator.
325 -subscript-
327 The contents of a parameter subscript.
328 -tilde-
330 After an initial tilde (`~'), but before the first slash in the
331 word.
332 -value-
334 On the right hand side of an assignment.
335 Default implementations are supplied for each of these contexts. In
337 most cases the context -context- is implemented by a corresponding
338 function _context, for example the context `-tilde-' and the function
339 `_tilde').
340 The contexts -redirect- and -value- allow extra context-specific infor‐
342 mation. (Internally, this is handled by the functions for each context
343 calling the function _dispatch.) The extra information is added sepa‐
344 rated by commas.
345 For the -redirect- context, the extra information is in the form `-re‐
347 direct-,op,command', where op is the redirection operator and command
348 is the name of the command on the line. If there is no command on the
349 line yet, the command field will be empty.
350 For the -value- context, the form is `-value-,name,command', where name
352 is the name of the parameter. In the case of elements of an associa‐
353 tive array, for example `assoc=(key <TAB>', name is expanded to
354 `name-key'. In certain special contexts, such as completing after
355 `make CFLAGS=', the command part gives the name of the command, here
356 make; otherwise it is empty.
357 It is not necessary to define fully specific completions as the func‐
359 tions provided will try to generate completions by progressively
360 replacing the elements with `-default-'. For example, when completing
361 after `foo=<TAB>', _value will try the names `-value-,foo,' (note the
362 empty command part), `-value-,foo,-default-'
363 and`-value-,-default-,-default-', in that order, until it finds a func‐
364 tion to handle the context.
365 As an example:
367 compdef '_files -g "*.log"' '-redirect-,2>,-default-'
369 completes files matching `*.log' after `2> <TAB>' for any command with
371 no more specific handler defined.
372 Also:
374 compdef _foo -value-,-default-,-default-
376 specifies that _foo provides completions for the values of parameters
378 for which no special function has been defined. This is usually han‐
379 dled by the function _value itself.
380 The same lookup rules are used when looking up styles (as described
382 below); for example
383 zstyle ':completion:*:*:-redirect-,2>,*:*' file-patterns '*.log'
385 is another way to make completion after `2> <TAB>' complete files
387 matching `*.log'.
388 Functions
390 The following function is defined by compinit and may be called
391 directly.
392 compdef [ -ane ] function names... [ -[pP] patterns... [ -N names... ]
394 ]
395 compdef -d names...
396 compdef -k [ -an ] function style key-sequences...
397 compdef -K [ -an ] function name style key-sequences ...
398 The first form defines the function to call for completion in
399 the given contexts as described for the #compdef tag above.
400 Alternatively, all the arguments may have the form `cmd=ser‐
402 vice'. Here service should already have been defined by
403 `cmd1=service' lines in #compdef files, as described above. The
404 argument for cmd will be completed in the same way as service.
405 The function argument may alternatively be a string containing
407 almost any shell code. If the string contains an equal sign,
408 the above will take precedence. The option -e may be used to
409 specify the first argument is to be evaluated as shell code even
410 if it contains an equal sign. The string will be executed using
411 the eval builtin command to generate completions. This provides
412 a way of avoiding having to define a new completion function.
413 For example, to complete files ending in `.h' as arguments to
414 the command foo:
415 compdef '_files -g "*.h"' foo
417 The option -n prevents any completions already defined for the
419 command or context from being overwritten.
420 The option -d deletes any completion defined for the command or
422 contexts listed.
423 The names may also contain -p, -P and -N options as described
425 for the #compdef tag. The effect on the argument list is iden‐
426 tical, switching between definitions of patterns tried ini‐
427 tially, patterns tried finally, and normal commands and con‐
428 texts.
429 The parameter $_compskip may be set by any function defined for
431 a pattern context. If it is set to a value containing the sub‐
432 string `patterns' none of the pattern-functions will be called;
433 if it is set to a value containing the substring `all', no other
434 function will be called.
435 The form with -k defines a widget with the same name as the
437 function that will be called for each of the key-sequences; this
438 is like the #compdef -k tag. The function should generate the
439 completions needed and will otherwise behave like the builtin
440 widget whose name is given as the style argument. The widgets
441 usable for this are: complete-word, delete-char-or-list,
442 expand-or-complete, expand-or-complete-prefix, list-choices,
443 menu-complete, menu-expand-or-complete, and reverse-menu-com‐
444 plete, as well as menu-select if the zsh/complist module is
445 loaded. The option -n prevents the key being bound if it is
446 already to bound to something other than undefined-key.
447 The form with -K is similar and defines multiple widgets based
449 on the same function, each of which requires the set of three
450 arguments name, style and key-sequences, where the latter two
451 are as for -k and the first must be a unique widget name begin‐
452 ning with an underscore.
453 Wherever applicable, the -a option makes the function autoload‐
455 able, equivalent to autoload -U function.
456 The function compdef can be used to associate existing completion func‐
458 tions with new commands. For example,
459 compdef _pids foo
461 uses the function _pids to complete process IDs for the command foo.
463 Note also the _gnu_generic function described below, which can be used
465 to complete options for commands that understand the `--help' option.
466
468 This section gives a short overview of how the completion system works,
469 and then more detail on how users can configure how and when matches
470 are generated.
471 Overview
473 When completion is attempted somewhere on the command line the comple‐
474 tion system first works out the context. This takes account of a num‐
475 ber of things including the command word (such as `grep' or `zsh') and
476 options to which the current word may be an argument (such as the `-o'
477 option to zsh which takes a shell option as an argument).
478 This context information is condensed into a string consisting of mul‐
480 tiple fields separated by colons, referred to simply as `the context'
481 in the remainder of the documentation. This is used to look up styles,
482 context-sensitive options that can be used to configure the completion
483 system. The context used for lookup may vary during the same call to
484 the completion system.
485 The context string always consists of a fixed set of fields, separated
487 by colons and with a leading colon before the first, in the form :com‐
488 pletion:function:completer:command:argument:tag. These have the fol‐
489 lowing meaning:
490 · The literal string completion, saying that this style is used by
492 the completion system. This distinguishes the context from
493 those used by, for example, zle widgets and ZFTP functions.
494 · The function, if completion is called from a named widget rather
497 than through the normal completion system. Typically this is
498 blank, but it is set by special widgets such as predict-on and
499 the various functions in the Widget directory of the distribu‐
500 tion to the name of that function, often in an abbreviated form.
501 · The completer currently active, the name of the function without
504 the leading underscore and with other underscores converted to
505 hyphens. A `completer' is in overall control of how completion
506 is to be performed; `complete' is the simplest, but other com‐
507 pleters exist to perform related tasks such as correction, or to
508 modify the behaviour of a later completer. See the section
509 `Control Functions' below for more information.
510 · The command or a special -context-, just at it appears following
513 the #compdef tag or the compdef function. Completion functions
514 for commands that have sub-commands usually modify this field to
515 contain the name of the command followed by a minus sign and the
516 sub-command. For example, the completion function for the cvs
517 command sets this field to cvs-add when completing arguments to
518 the add subcommand.
519 · The argument; this indicates which command line or option argu‐
522 ment we are completing. For command arguments this generally
523 takes the form argument-n, where n is the number of the argu‐
524 ment, and for arguments to options the form option-opt-n where n
525 is the number of the argument to option opt. However, this is
526 only the case if the command line is parsed with standard
527 UNIX-style options and arguments, so many completions do not set
528 this.
529 · The tag. As described previously, tags are used to discriminate
532 between the types of matches a completion function can generate
533 in a certain context. Any completion function may use any tag
534 name it likes, but a list of the more common ones is given
535 below.
536 The context is gradually put together as the functions are executed,
539 starting with the main entry point, which adds :completion: and the
540 function element if necessary. The completer then adds the completer
541 element. The contextual completion adds the command and argument
542 options. Finally, the tag is added when the types of completion are
543 known. For example, the context name
544 :completion::complete:dvips:option-o-1:files
546 says that normal completion was attempted as the first argument to the
548 option -o of the command dvips:
549 dvips -o ...
551 and the completion function will generate filenames.
553 Usually completion will be tried for all possible tags in an order
555 given by the completion function. However, this can be altered by
556 using the tag-order style. Completion is then restricted to the list
557 of given tags in the given order.
558 The _complete_help bindable command shows all the contexts and tags
560 available for completion at a particular point. This provides an easy
561 way of finding information for tag-order and other styles. It is
562 described in the section `Bindable Commands' below.
563 Styles determine such things as how the matches are generated, simi‐
565 larly to shell options but with much more control. They can have any
566 number of strings as their value. They are defined with the zstyle
567 builtin command (see zshmodules(1)).
568 When looking up styles the completion system uses full context names,
570 including the tag. Looking up the value of a style therefore consists
571 of two things: the context, which may be matched as a pattern, and the
572 name of the style itself, which must be given exactly.
573 For example, many completion functions can generate matches in a simple
575 and a verbose form and use the verbose style to decide which form
576 should be used. To make all such functions use the verbose form, put
577 zstyle ':completion:*' verbose yes
579 in a startup file (probably .zshrc). This gives the verbose style the
581 value yes in every context inside the completion system, unless that
582 context has a more specific definition. It is best to avoid giving the
583 context as `*' in case the style has some meaning outside the comple‐
584 tion system.
585 Many such general purpose styles can be configured simply by using the
587 compinstall function.
588 A more specific example of the use of the verbose style is by the com‐
590 pletion for the kill builtin. If the style is set, the builtin lists
591 full job texts and process command lines; otherwise it shows the bare
592 job numbers and PIDs. To turn the style off for this use only:
593 zstyle ':completion:*:*:kill:*' verbose no
595 For even more control, the style can use one of the tags `jobs' or
597 `processes'. To turn off verbose display only for jobs:
598 zstyle ':completion:*:*:kill:*:jobs' verbose no
600 The -e option to zstyle even allows completion function code to appear
602 as the argument to a style; this requires some understanding of the
603 internals of completion functions (see see zshcompwid(1))). For exam‐
604 ple,
605 zstyle -e ':completion:*' hosts 'reply=($myhosts)'
607 This forces the value of the hosts style to be read from the variable
609 myhosts each time a host name is needed; this is useful if the value of
610 myhosts can change dynamically. For another useful example, see the
611 example in the description of the file-list style below. This form can
612 be slow and should be avoided for commonly examined styles such as menu
613 and list-rows-first.
614 Note that the order in which styles are defined does not matter; the
616 style mechanism uses the most specific possible match for a particular
617 style to determine the set of values. More precisely, strings are pre‐
618 ferred over patterns (for example, `:completion::complete:foo' is more
619 specific than `:completion::complete:*'), and longer patterns are pre‐
620 ferred over shorter patterns.
621 Style names like those of tags are arbitrary and depend on the comple‐
623 tion function. However, the following two sections list some of the
624 most common tags and styles.
625 Standard Tags
627 Some of the following are only used when looking up particular styles
628 and do not refer to a type of match.
629 accounts
631 used to look up the users-hosts style
632 all-expansions
634 used by the _expand completer when adding the single string con‐
635 taining all possible expansions
636 all-files
638 for the names of all files (as distinct from a particular sub‐
639 set, see the globbed-files tag).
640 arguments
642 for arguments to a command
643 arrays for names of array parameters
645 association-keys
647 for keys of associative arrays; used when completing inside a
648 subscript to a parameter of this type
649 bookmarks
651 when completing bookmarks (e.g. for URLs and the zftp function
652 suite)
653 builtins
655 for names of builtin commands
656 characters
658 for single characters in arguments of commands such as stty.
659 Also used when completing character classes after an opening
660 bracket
661 colormapids
663 for X colormap ids
664 colors for color names
666 commands
668 for names of external commands. Also used by complex commands
669 such as cvs when completing names subcommands.
670 contexts
672 for contexts in arguments to the zstyle builtin command
673 corrections
675 used by the _approximate and _correct completers for possible
676 corrections
677 cursors
679 for cursor names used by X programs
680 default
682 used in some contexts to provide a way of supplying a default
683 when more specific tags are also valid. Note that this tag is
684 used when only the function field of the context name is set
685 descriptions
687 used when looking up the value of the format style to generate
688 descriptions for types of matches
689 devices
691 for names of device special files
692 directories
694 for names of directories -- local-directories is used instead
695 when completing arguments of cd and related builtin commands
696 when the cdpath array is set
697 directory-stack
699 for entries in the directory stack
700 displays
702 for X display names
703 domains
705 for network domains
706 expansions
708 used by the _expand completer for individual words (as opposed
709 to the complete set of expansions) resulting from the expansion
710 of a word on the command line
711 extensions
713 for X server extensions
714 file-descriptors
716 for numbers of open file descriptors
717 files the generic file-matching tag used by functions completing file‐
719 names
720 fonts for X font names
722 fstypes
724 for file system types (e.g. for the mount command)
725 functions
727 names of functions -- normally shell functions, although certain
728 commands may understand other kinds of function
729 globbed-files
731 for filenames when the name has been generated by pattern match‐
732 ing
733 groups for names of user groups
735 history-words
737 for words from the history
738 hosts for hostnames
740 indexes
742 for array indexes
743 jobs for jobs (as listed by the `jobs' builtin)
745 interfaces
747 for network interfaces
748 keymaps
750 for names of zsh keymaps
751 keysyms
753 for names of X keysyms
754 libraries
756 for names of system libraries
757 limits for system limits
759 local-directories
761 for names of directories that are subdirectories of the current
762 working directory when completing arguments of cd and related
763 builtin commands (compare path-directories) -- when the cdpath
764 array is unset, directories is used instead
765 manuals
767 for names of manual pages
768 mailboxes
770 for e-mail folders
771 maps for map names (e.g. NIS maps)
773 messages
775 used to look up the format style for messages
776 modifiers
778 for names of X modifiers
779 modules
781 for modules (e.g. zsh modules)
782 my-accounts
784 used to look up the users-hosts style
785 named-directories
787 for named directories (you wouldn't have guessed that, would
788 you?)
789 names for all kinds of names
791 newsgroups
793 for USENET groups
794 nicknames
796 for nicknames of NIS maps
797 options
799 for command options
800 original
802 used by the _approximate, _correct and _expand completers when
803 offering the original string as a match
804 other-accounts
806 used to look up the users-hosts style
807 other-files
809 for the names of any non-directory files. This is used instead
810 of all-files when the list-dirs-first style is in effect.
811 packages
813 for packages (e.g. rpm or installed Debian packages)
814 parameters
816 for names of parameters
817 path-directories
819 for names of directories found by searching the cdpath array
820 when completing arguments of cd and related builtin commands
821 (compare local-directories)
822 paths used to look up the values of the expand, ambiguous and spe‐
824 cial-dirs styles
825 pods for perl pods (documentation files)
827 ports for communication ports
829 prefixes
831 for prefixes (like those of a URL)
832 printers
834 for print queue names
835 processes
837 for process identifiers
838 processes-names
840 used to look up the command style when generating the names of
841 processes for killall
842 sequences
844 for sequences (e.g. mh sequences)
845 sessions
847 for sessions in the zftp function suite
848 signals
850 for signal names
851 strings
853 for strings (e.g. the replacement strings for the cd builtin
854 command)
855 styles for styles used by the zstyle builtin command
857 suffixes
859 for filename extensions
860 tags for tags (e.g. rpm tags)
862 targets
864 for makefile targets
865 time-zones
867 for time zones (e.g. when setting the TZ parameter)
868 types for types of whatever (e.g. address types for the xhost command)
870 urls used to look up the urls and local styles when completing URLs
872 users for usernames
874 values for one of a set of values in certain lists
876 variant
878 used by _pick_variant to look up the command to run when deter‐
879 mining what program is installed for a particular command name.
880 visuals
882 for X visuals
883 warnings
885 used to look up the format style for warnings
886 widgets
888 for zsh widget names
889 windows
891 for IDs of X windows
892 zsh-options
894 for shell options
895 Standard Styles
897 Note that the values of several of these styles represent boolean val‐
898 ues. Any of the strings `true', `on', `yes', and `1' can be used for
899 the value `true' and any of the strings `false', `off', `no', and `0'
900 for the value `false'. The behavior for any other value is undefined
901 except where explicitly mentioned. The default value may be either
902 true or false if the style is not set.
903 Some of these styles are tested first for every possible tag corre‐
905 sponding to a type of match, and if no style was found, for the default
906 tag. The most notable styles of this type are menu, list-colors and
907 styles controlling completion listing such as list-packed and
908 last-prompt. When tested for the default tag, only the function field
909 of the context will be set so that a style using the default tag will
910 normally be defined along the lines of:
911 zstyle ':completion:*:default' menu ...
913 accept-exact
915 This is tested for the default tag in addition to the tags valid
916 for the current context. If it is set to `true' and any of the
917 trial matches is the same as the string on the command line,
918 this match will immediately be accepted (even if it would other‐
919 wise be considered ambiguous).
920 When completing pathnames (where the tag used is `paths') this
922 style accepts any number of patterns as the value in addition to
923 the boolean values. Pathnames matching one of these patterns
924 will be accepted immediately even if the command line contains
925 some more partially typed pathname components and these match no
926 file under the directory accepted.
927 This style is also used by the _expand completer to decide if
929 words beginning with a tilde or parameter expansion should be
930 expanded. For example, if there are parameters foo and foobar,
931 the string `$foo' will only be expanded if accept-exact is set
932 to `true'; otherwise the completion system will be allowed to
933 complete $foo to $foobar. If the style is set to `continue',
934 _expand will add the expansion as a match and the completion
935 system will also be allowed to continue.
936 accept-exact-dirs
938 This is used by filename completion. Unlike accept-exact it is
939 a boolean. By default, filename completion examines all compo‐
940 nents of a path to see if there are completions of that compo‐
941 nent, even if the component matches an existing directory. For
942 example, when completion after /usr/bin/, the function examines
943 possible completions to /usr.
944 When this style is true, any prefix of a path that matches an
946 existing directory is accepted without any attempt to complete
947 it further. Hence, in the given example, the path /usr/bin/ is
948 accepted immediately and completion tried in that directory.
949 If you wish to inhibit this behaviour entirely, set the
951 path-completion style (see below) to false.
952 add-space
954 This style is used by the _expand completer. If it is true (the
955 default), a space will be inserted after all words resulting
956 from the expansion, or a slash in the case of directory names.
957 If the value is `file', the completer will only add a space to
958 names of existing files. Either a boolean true or the value
959 `file' may be combined with `subst', in which case the completer
960 will not add a space to words generated from the expansion of a
961 substitution of the form `$(...)' or `${...}'.
962 The _prefix completer uses this style as a simple boolean value
964 to decide if a space should be inserted before the suffix.
965 ambiguous
967 This applies when completing non-final components of filename
968 paths, in other words those with a trailing slash. If it is
969 set, the cursor is left after the first ambiguous component,
970 even if menu completion is in use. The style is always tested
971 with the paths tag.
972 assign-list
974 When completing after an equals sign that is being treated as an
975 assignment, the completion system normally completes only one
976 filename. In some cases the value may be a list of filenames
977 separated by colons, as with PATH and similar parameters. This
978 style can be set to a list of patterns matching the names of
979 such parameters.
980 The default is to complete lists when the word on the line
982 already contains a colon.
983 auto-description
985 If set, this style's value will be used as the description for
986 options that are not described by the completion functions, but
987 that have exactly one argument. The sequence `%d' in the value
988 will be replaced by the description for this argument. Depend‐
989 ing on personal preferences, it may be useful to set this style
990 to something like `specify: %d'. Note that this may not work
991 for some commands.
992 avoid-completer
994 This is used by the _all_matches completer to decide if the
995 string consisting of all matches should be added to the list
996 currently being generated. Its value is a list of names of com‐
997 pleters. If any of these is the name of the completer that gen‐
998 erated the matches in this completion, the string will not be
999 added.
1000 The default value for this style is `_expand _old_list _correct
1002 _approximate', i.e. it contains the completers for which a
1003 string with all matches will almost never be wanted.
1004 cache-path
1006 This style defines the path where any cache files containing
1007 dumped completion data are stored. It defaults to `$ZDOT‐
1008 DIR/.zcompcache', or `$HOME/.zcompcache' if $ZDOTDIR is not
1009 defined. The completion cache will not be used unless the
1010 use-cache style is set.
1011 cache-policy
1013 This style defines the function that will be used to determine
1014 whether a cache needs rebuilding. See the section on the
1015 _cache_invalid function below.
1016 call-command
1018 This style is used in the function for commands such as make and
1019 ant where calling the command directly to generate matches suf‐
1020 fers problems such as being slow or, as in the case of make can
1021 potentially cause actions in the makefile to be executed. If it
1022 is set to `true' the command is called to generate matches. The
1023 default value of this style is `false'.
1024 command
1026 In many places, completion functions need to call external com‐
1027 mands to generate the list of completions. This style can be
1028 used to override the command that is called in some such cases.
1029 The elements of the value are joined with spaces to form a com‐
1030 mand line to execute. The value can also start with a hyphen,
1031 in which case the usual command will be added to the end; this
1032 is most useful for putting `builtin' or `command' in front to
1033 make sure the appropriate version of a command is called, for
1034 example to avoid calling a shell function with the same name as
1035 an external command.
1036 As an example, the completion function for process IDs uses this
1038 style with the processes tag to generate the IDs to complete and
1039 the list of processes to display (if the verbose style is
1040 `true'). The list produced by the command should look like the
1041 output of the ps command. The first line is not displayed, but
1042 is searched for the string `PID' (or `pid') to find the position
1043 of the process IDs in the following lines. If the line does not
1044 contain `PID', the first numbers in each of the other lines are
1045 taken as the process IDs to complete.
1046 Note that the completion function generally has to call the
1048 specified command for each attempt to generate the completion
1049 list. Hence care should be taken to specify only commands that
1050 take a short time to run, and in particular to avoid any that
1051 may never terminate.
1052 command-path
1054 This is a list of directories to search for commands to com‐
1055 plete. The default for this style is the value of the special
1056 parameter path.
1057 commands
1059 This is used by the function completing sub-commands for the
1060 system initialisation scripts (residing in /etc/init.d or some‐
1061 where not too far away from that). Its values give the default
1062 commands to complete for those commands for which the completion
1063 function isn't able to find them out automatically. The default
1064 for this style are the two strings `start' and `stop'.
1065 complete
1067 This is used by the _expand_alias function when invoked as a
1068 bindable command. If set to `true' and the word on the command
1069 line is not the name of an alias, matching alias names will be
1070 completed.
1071 complete-options
1073 This is used by the completer for cd, chdir and pushd. For
1074 these commands a - is used to introduce a directory stack entry
1075 and completion of these is far more common than completing
1076 options. Hence unless the value of this style is true options
1077 will not be completed, even after an initial -. If it is true,
1078 options will be completed after an initial - unless there is a
1079 preceding -- on the command line.
1080 completer
1082 The strings given as the value of this style provide the names
1083 of the completer functions to use. The available completer func‐
1084 tions are described in the section `Control Functions' below.
1085 Each string may be either the name of a completer function or a
1087 string of the form `function:name'. In the first case the com‐
1088 pleter field of the context will contain the name of the com‐
1089 pleter without the leading underscore and with all other under‐
1090 scores replaced by hyphens. In the second case the function is
1091 the name of the completer to call, but the context will contain
1092 the user-defined name in the completer field of the context. If
1093 the name starts with a hyphen, the string for the context will
1094 be build from the name of the completer function as in the first
1095 case with the name appended to it. For example:
1096 zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _complete:-foo
1098 Here, completion will call the _complete completer twice, once
1100 using `complete' and once using `complete-foo' in the completer
1101 field of the context. Normally, using the same completer more
1102 than once only makes sense when used with the `functions:name'
1103 form, because otherwise the context name will be the same in all
1104 calls to the completer; possible exceptions to this rule are the
1105 _ignored and _prefix completers.
1106 The default value for this style is `_complete _ignored': only
1108 completion will be done, first using the ignored-patterns style
1109 and the $fignore array and then without ignoring matches.
1110 condition
1112 This style is used by the _list completer function to decide if
1113 insertion of matches should be delayed unconditionally. The
1114 default is `true'.
1115 delimiters
1117 This style is used when adding a delimiter for use with history
1118 modifiers or glob qualifiers that have delimited arguments. It
1119 is an array of preferred delimiters to add. Non-special charac‐
1120 ters are preferred as the completion system may otherwise become
1121 confused. The default list is :, +, /, -, %. The list may be
1122 empty to force a delimiter to be typed.
1123 disabled
1125 If this is set to `true', the _expand_alias completer and bind‐
1126 able command will try to expand disabled aliases, too. The
1127 default is `false'.
1128 domains
1130 A list of names of network domains for completion. If this is
1131 not set, domain names will be taken from the file
1132 /etc/resolv.conf.
1133 environ
1135 The environ style is used when completing for `sudo'. It is set
1136 to an array of `VAR=value' assignments to be exported into the
1137 local environment before the completion for the target command
1138 is invoked.
1139 zstyle ':completion:*:sudo::' environ \
1140 PATH="/sbin:/usr/sbin:$PATH" HOME="/root"
1141 expand This style is used when completing strings consisting of multi‐
1143 ple parts, such as path names.
1144 If one of its values is the string `prefix', the partially typed
1146 word from the line will be expanded as far as possible even if
1147 trailing parts cannot be completed.
1148 If one of its values is the string `suffix', matching names for
1150 components after the first ambiguous one will also be added.
1151 This means that the resulting string is the longest unambiguous
1152 string possible. However, menu completion can be used to cycle
1153 through all matches.
1154 fake This style may be set for any completion context. It specifies
1156 additional strings that will always be completed in that con‐
1157 text. The form of each string is `value:description'; the colon
1158 and description may be omitted, but any literal colons in value
1159 must be quoted with a backslash. Any description provided is
1160 shown alongside the value in completion listings.
1161 It is important to use a sufficiently restrictive context when
1163 specifying fake strings. Note that the styles fake-files and
1164 fake-parameters provide additional features when completing
1165 files or parameters.
1166 fake-always
1168 This works identically to the fake style except that the
1169 ignored-patterns style is not applied to it. This makes it pos‐
1170 sible to override a set of matches completely by setting the
1171 ignored patterns to `*'.
1172 The following shows a way of supplementing any tag with arbi‐
1174 trary data, but having it behave for display purposes like a
1175 separate tag. In this example we use the features of the
1176 tag-order style to divide the named-directories tag into two
1177 when performing completion with the standard completer complete
1178 for arguments of cd. The tag named-directories-normal behaves
1179 as normal, but the tag named-directories-mine contains a fixed
1180 set of directories. This has the effect of adding the match
1181 group `extra directories' with the given completions.
1182 zstyle ':completion::complete:cd:*' tag-order \
1184 'named-directories:-mine:extra\ directories
1185 named-directories:-normal:named\ directories *'
1186 zstyle ':completion::complete:cd:*:named-directories-mine' \
1187 fake-always mydir1 mydir2
1188 zstyle ':completion::complete:cd:*:named-directories-mine' \
1189 ignored-patterns '*'
1190 fake-files
1192 This style is used when completing files and looked up without a
1193 tag. Its values are of the form `dir:names...'. This will add
1194 the names (strings separated by spaces) as possible matches when
1195 completing in the directory dir, even if no such files really
1196 exist. The dir may be a pattern; pattern characters or colons
1197 in dir should be quoted with a backslash to be treated liter‐
1198 ally.
1199 This can be useful on systems that support special file systems
1201 whose top-level pathnames can not be listed or generated with
1202 glob patterns. It can also be used for directories for which
1203 one does not have read permission.
1204 The pattern form can be used to add a certain `magic' entry to
1206 all directories on a particular file system.
1207 fake-parameters
1209 This is used by the completion function for parameter names.
1210 Its values are names of parameters that might not yet be set but
1211 should be completed nonetheless. Each name may also be followed
1212 by a colon and a string specifying the type of the parameter
1213 (like `scalar', `array' or `integer'). If the type is given,
1214 the name will only be completed if parameters of that type are
1215 required in the particular context. Names for which no type is
1216 specified will always be completed.
1217 file-list
1219 This style controls whether files completed using the standard
1220 builtin mechanism are to be listed with a long list similar to
1221 ls -l. Note that this feature uses the shell module zsh/stat
1222 for file information; this loads the builtin stat which will
1223 replace any external stat executable. To avoid this the follow‐
1224 ing code can be included in an initialization file:
1225 zmodload -i zsh/stat
1227 disable stat
1228 The style may either be set to a true value (or `all'), or one
1230 of the values `insert' or `list', indicating that files are to
1231 be listed in long format in all circumstances, or when attempt‐
1232 ing to insert a file name, or when listing file names without
1233 attempting to insert one.
1234 More generally, the value may be an array of any of the above
1236 values, optionally followed by =num. If num is present it gives
1237 the maximum number of matches for which long listing style will
1238 be used. For example,
1239 zstyle ':completion:*' file-list list=20 insert=10
1241 specifies that long format will be used when listing up to 20
1243 files or inserting a file with up to 10 matches (assuming a
1244 listing is to be shown at all, for example on an ambiguous com‐
1245 pletion), else short format will be used.
1246 zstyle -e ':completion:*' file-list '(( ${+NUMERIC} )) && reply=(true)'
1248 specifies that long format will be used any time a numeric argu‐
1250 ment is supplied, else short format.
1251 file-patterns
1253 This is used by the standard function for completing filenames,
1254 _files. If the style is unset up to three tags are offered,
1255 `globbed-files',`directories' and `all-files', depending on the
1256 types of files expected by the caller of _files. The first two
1257 (`globbed-files' and `directories') are normally offered
1258 together to make it easier to complete files in sub-directories.
1259 The file-patterns style provides alternatives to the default
1261 tags, which are not used. Its value consists of elements of the
1262 form `pattern:tag'; each string may contain any number of such
1263 specifications separated by spaces.
1264 The pattern is a pattern that is to be used to generate file‐
1266 names. Any occurrence of the sequence `%p' is replaced by any
1267 pattern(s) passed by the function calling _files. Colons in the
1268 pattern must be preceded by a backslash to make them distin‐
1269 guishable from the colon before the tag. If more than one pat‐
1270 tern is needed, the patterns can be given inside braces, sepa‐
1271 rated by commas.
1272 The tags of all strings in the value will be offered by _files
1274 and used when looking up other styles. Any tags in the same
1275 word will be offered at the same time and before later words.
1276 If no `:tag' is given the `files' tag will be used.
1277 The tag may also be followed by an optional second colon and a
1279 description, which will be used for the `%d' in the value of the
1280 format style (if that is set) instead of the default description
1281 supplied by the completion function. If the description given
1282 here contains itself a `%d', that is replaced with the descrip‐
1283 tion supplied by the completion function.
1284 For example, to make the rm command first complete only names of
1286 object files and then the names of all files if there is no
1287 matching object file:
1288 zstyle ':completion:*:*:rm:*' file-patterns \
1290 '*.o:object-files' '%p:all-files'
1291 To alter the default behaviour of file completion -- offer files
1293 matching a pattern and directories on the first attempt, then
1294 all files -- to offer only matching files on the first attempt,
1295 then directories, and finally all files:
1296 zstyle ':completion:*' file-patterns \
1298 '%p:globbed-files' '*(-/):directories' '*:all-files'
1299 This works even where there is no special pattern: _files
1301 matches all files using the pattern `*' at the first step and
1302 stops when it sees this pattern. Note also it will never try a
1303 pattern more than once for a single completion attempt.
1304 During the execution of completion functions, the EXTENDED_GLOB
1306 option is in effect, so the characters `#', `~' and `^' have
1307 special meanings in the patterns.
1308 file-sort
1310 The standard filename completion function uses this style with‐
1311 out a tag to determine in which order the names should be
1312 listed; menu completion will cycle through them in the same
1313 order. The possible values are: `size' to sort by the size of
1314 the file; `links' to sort by the number of links to the file;
1315 `modification' (or `time' or `date') to sort by the last modifi‐
1316 cation time; `access' to sort by the last access time; and
1317 `inode' (or `change') to sort by the last inode change time. If
1318 the style is set to any other value, or is unset, files will be
1319 sorted alphabetically by name. If the value contains the string
1320 `reverse', sorting is done in the opposite order. If the value
1321 contains the string `follow', timestamps are associated with the
1322 targets of symbolic links; the default is to use the timestamps
1323 of the links themselves.
1324 filter This is used by the LDAP plugin for e-mail address completion to
1326 specify the attributes to match against when filtering entries.
1327 So for example, if the style is set to `sn', matching is done
1328 against surnames. Standard LDAP filtering is used so normal
1329 completion matching is bypassed. If this style is not set, the
1330 LDAP plugin is skipped. You may also need to set the command
1331 style to specify how to connect to your LDAP server.
1332 force-list
1334 This forces a list of completions to be shown at any point where
1335 listing is done, even in cases where the list would usually be
1336 suppressed. For example, normally the list is only shown if
1337 there are at least two different matches. By setting this style
1338 to `always', the list will always be shown, even if there is
1339 only a single match that will immediately be accepted. The
1340 style may also be set to a number. In this case the list will
1341 be shown if there are at least that many matches, even if they
1342 would all insert the same string.
1343 This style is tested for the default tag as well as for each tag
1345 valid for the current completion. Hence the listing can be
1346 forced only for certain types of match.
1347 format If this is set for the descriptions tag, its value is used as a
1349 string to display above matches in completion lists. The
1350 sequence `%d' in this string will be replaced with a short
1351 description of what these matches are. This string may also
1352 contain the following sequences to specify output attributes, as
1353 described in the section EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES in zsh‐
1354 misc(1): `%B', `%S', `%U', `%F', `%K' and their lower case coun‐
1355 terparts, as well as `%{...%}'. `%F', `%K' and `%{...%}' take
1356 arguments in the same form as prompt expansion. Note that the
1357 %G sequence is not available; an argument to `%{' should be used
1358 instead.
1359 The style is tested with each tag valid for the current comple‐
1361 tion before it is tested for the descriptions tag. Hence dif‐
1362 ferent format strings can be defined for different types of
1363 match.
1364 Note also that some completer functions define additional
1366 `%'-sequences. These are described for the completer functions
1367 that make use of them.
1368 Some completion functions display messages that may be cus‐
1370 tomised by setting this style for the messages tag. Here, the
1371 `%d' is replaced with a message given by the completion func‐
1372 tion.
1373 Finally, the format string is looked up with the warnings tag,
1375 for use when no matches could be generated at all. In this case
1376 the `%d' is replaced with the descriptions for the matches that
1377 were expected separated by spaces. The sequence `%D' is
1378 replaced with the same descriptions separated by newlines.
1379 It is possible to use printf-style field width specifiers with
1381 `%d' and similar escape sequences. This is handled by the zfor‐
1382 mat builtin command from the zsh/zutil module, see zshmod‐
1383 ules(1).
1384 glob This is used by the _expand completer. If it is set to `true'
1386 (the default), globbing will be attempted on the words resulting
1387 from a previous substitution (see the substitute style) or else
1388 the original string from the line.
1389 global If this is set to `true' (the default), the _expand_alias com‐
1391 pleter and bindable command will try to expand global aliases.
1392 group-name
1394 The completion system can group different types of matches,
1395 which appear in separate lists. This style can be used to give
1396 the names of groups for particular tags. For example, in com‐
1397 mand position the completion system generates names of builtin
1398 and external commands, names of aliases, shell functions and
1399 parameters and reserved words as possible completions. To have
1400 the external commands and shell functions listed separately:
1401 zstyle ':completion:*:*:-command-:*:commands' group-name commands
1403 zstyle ':completion:*:*:-command-:*:functions' group-name functions
1404 As a consequence, any match with the same tag will be displayed
1406 in the same group.
1407 If the name given is the empty string the name of the tag for
1409 the matches will be used as the name of the group. So, to have
1410 all different types of matches displayed separately, one can
1411 just set:
1412 zstyle ':completion:*' group-name ''
1414 All matches for which no group name is defined will be put in a
1416 group named -default-.
1417 group-order
1419 This style is additional to the group-name style to specify the
1420 order for display of the groups defined by that style (compare
1421 tag-order, which determines which completions appear at all).
1422 The groups named are shown in the given order; any other groups
1423 are shown in the order defined by the completion function.
1424 For example, to have names of builtin commands, shell functions
1426 and external commands appear in that order when completing in
1427 command position:
1428 zstyle ':completion:*:*:-command-:*' group-order \
1430 builtins functions commands
1431 groups A list of names of UNIX groups. If this is not set, group names
1433 are taken from the YP database or the file `/etc/group'.
1434 hidden If this is set to true, matches for the given context will not
1436 be listed, although any description for the matches set with the
1437 format style will be shown. If it is set to `all', not even the
1438 description will be displayed.
1439 Note that the matches will still be completed; they are just not
1441 shown in the list. To avoid having matches considered as possi‐
1442 ble completions at all, the tag-order style can be modified as
1443 described below.
1444 hosts A list of names of hosts that should be completed. If this is
1446 not set, hostnames are taken from the file `/etc/hosts'.
1447 hosts-ports
1449 This style is used by commands that need or accept hostnames and
1450 network ports. The strings in the value should be of the form
1451 `host:port'. Valid ports are determined by the presence of
1452 hostnames; multiple ports for the same host may appear.
1453 ignore-line
1455 This is tested for each tag valid for the current completion.
1456 If it is set to `true', none of the words that are already on
1457 the line will be considered as possible completions. If it is
1458 set to `current', the word the cursor is on will not be consid‐
1459 ered as a possible completion. The value `current-shown' is
1460 similar but only applies if the list of completions is currently
1461 shown on the screen. Finally, if the style is set to `other',
1462 all words on the line except for the current one will be
1463 excluded from the possible completions.
1464 The values `current' and `current-shown' are a bit like the
1466 opposite of the accept-exact style: only strings with missing
1467 characters will be completed.
1468 Note that you almost certainly don't want to set this to `true'
1470 or `other' for a general context such as `:completion:*'. This
1471 is because it would disallow completion of, for example, options
1472 multiple times even if the command in question accepts the
1473 option more than once.
1474 ignore-parents
1476 The style is tested without a tag by the function completing
1477 pathnames in order to determine whether to ignore the names of
1478 directories already mentioned in the current word, or the name
1479 of the current working directory. The value must include one or
1480 both of the following strings:
1481 parent The name of any directory whose path is already contained
1483 in the word on the line is ignored. For example, when
1484 completing after foo/../, the directory foo will not be
1485 considered a valid completion.
1486 pwd The name of the current working directory will not be
1488 completed; hence, for example, completion after ../ will
1489 not use the name of the current directory.
1490 In addition, the value may include one or both of:
1492 .. Ignore the specified directories only when the word on
1494 the line contains the substring `../'.
1495 directory
1497 Ignore the specified directories only when names of
1498 directories are completed, not when completing names of
1499 files.
1500 Excluded values act in a similar fashion to values of the
1502 ignored-patterns style, so they can be restored to consideration
1503 by the _ignored completer.
1504 extra-verbose
1506 If set, the completion listing is more verbose at the cost of a
1507 probable decrease in completion speed. Completion performance
1508 will suffer if this style is set to `true'.
1509 ignored-patterns
1511 A list of patterns; any trial completion matching one of the
1512 patterns will be excluded from consideration. The _ignored com‐
1513 pleter can appear in the list of completers to restore the
1514 ignored matches. This is a more configurable version of the
1515 shell parameter $fignore.
1516 Note that the EXTENDED_GLOB option is set during the execution
1518 of completion functions, so the characters `#', `~' and `^' have
1519 special meanings in the patterns.
1520 insert This style is used by the _all_matches completer to decide
1522 whether to insert the list of all matches unconditionally
1523 instead of adding the list as another match.
1524 insert-ids
1526 When completing process IDs, for example as arguments to the
1527 kill and wait builtins the name of a command may be converted to
1528 the appropriate process ID. A problem arises when the process
1529 name typed is not unique. By default (or if this style is set
1530 explicitly to `menu') the name will be converted immediately to
1531 a set of possible IDs, and menu completion will be started to
1532 cycle through them.
1533 If the value of the style is `single', the shell will wait until
1535 the user has typed enough to make the command unique before con‐
1536 verting the name to an ID; attempts at completion will be unsuc‐
1537 cessful until that point. If the value is any other string,
1538 menu completion will be started when the string typed by the
1539 user is longer than the common prefix to the corresponding IDs.
1540 insert-tab
1542 If this is set to `true', the completion system will insert a
1543 TAB character (assuming that was used to start completion)
1544 instead of performing completion when there is no non-blank
1545 character to the left of the cursor. If it is set to `false',
1546 completion will be done even there.
1547 The value may also contain the substrings `pending' or `pend‐
1549 ing=val'. In this case, the typed character will be inserted
1550 instead of starting completion when there is unprocessed input
1551 pending. If a val is given, completion will not be done if
1552 there are at least that many characters of unprocessed input.
1553 This is often useful when pasting characters into a terminal.
1554 Note however, that it relies on the $PENDING special parameter
1555 from the zsh/zle module being set properly which is not guaran‐
1556 teed on all platforms.
1557 The default value of this style is `true' except for completion
1559 within vared builtin command where it is `false'.
1560 insert-unambiguous
1562 This is used by the _match and _approximate completers. These
1563 completers are often used with menu completion since the word
1564 typed may bear little resemblance to the final completion. How‐
1565 ever, if this style is `true', the completer will start menu
1566 completion only if it could find no unambiguous initial string
1567 at least as long as the original string typed by the user.
1568 In the case of the _approximate completer, the completer field
1570 in the context will already have been set to one of correct-num
1571 or approximate-num, where num is the number of errors that were
1572 accepted.
1573 In the case of the _match completer, the style may also be set
1575 to the string `pattern'. Then the pattern on the line is left
1576 unchanged if it does not match unambiguously.
1577 keep-prefix
1579 This style is used by the _expand completer. If it is `true',
1580 the completer will try to keep a prefix containing a tilde or
1581 parameter expansion. Hence, for example, the string `~/f*'
1582 would be expanded to `~/foo' instead of `/home/user/foo'. If
1583 the style is set to `changed' (the default), the prefix will
1584 only be left unchanged if there were other changes between the
1585 expanded words and the original word from the command line. Any
1586 other value forces the prefix to be expanded unconditionally.
1587 The behaviour of expand when this style is true is to cause
1589 _expand to give up when a single expansion with the restored
1590 prefix is the same as the original; hence any remaining com‐
1591 pleters may be called.
1592 last-prompt
1594 This is a more flexible form of the ALWAYS_LAST_PROMPT option.
1595 If it is true, the completion system will try to return the cur‐
1596 sor to the previous command line after displaying a completion
1597 list. It is tested for all tags valid for the current comple‐
1598 tion, then the default tag. The cursor will be moved back to
1599 the previous line if this style is `true' for all types of
1600 match. Note that unlike the ALWAYS_LAST_PROMPT option this is
1601 independent of the numeric prefix argument.
1602 known-hosts-files
1604 This style should contain a list of files to search for host
1605 names and (if the use-ip style is set) IP addresses in a format
1606 compatible with ssh known_hosts files. If it is not set, the
1607 files /etc/ssh/ssh_known_hosts and ~/.ssh/known_hosts are used.
1608 list This style is used by the _history_complete_word bindable com‐
1610 mand. If it is set to `true' it has no effect. If it is set to
1611 `false' matches will not be listed. This overrides the setting
1612 of the options controlling listing behaviour, in particular
1613 AUTO_LIST. The context always starts with `:completion:his‐
1614 tory-words'.
1615 list-colors
1617 If the zsh/complist module is loaded, this style can be used to
1618 set color specifications. This mechanism replaces the use of
1619 the ZLS_COLORS and ZLS_COLOURS parameters described in the sec‐
1620 tion `The zsh/complist Module' in zshmodules(1), but the syntax
1621 is the same.
1622 If this style is set for the default tag, the strings in the
1624 value are taken as specifications that are to be used every‐
1625 where. If it is set for other tags, the specifications are used
1626 only for matches of the type described by the tag. For this to
1627 work best, the group-name style must be set to an empty string.
1628 In addition to setting styles for specific tags, it is also pos‐
1630 sible to use group names specified explicitly by the group-name
1631 tag together with the `(group)' syntax allowed by the ZLS_COLORS
1632 and ZLS_COLOURS parameters and simply using the default tag.
1633 It is possible to use any color specifications already set up
1635 for the GNU version of the ls command:
1636 zstyle ':completion:*:default' list-colors ${(s.:.)LS_COLORS}
1638 The default colors are the same as for the GNU ls command and
1640 can be obtained by setting the style to an empty string (i.e.
1641 '').
1642 list-dirs-first
1644 This is used by file completion. If set, directories to be com‐
1645 pleted are listed separately from and before completion for
1646 other files, regardless of tag ordering. In addition, the tag
1647 other-files is used in place of all-files for the remaining
1648 files, to indicate that no directories are presented with that
1649 tag.
1650 list-grouped
1652 If this style is `true' (the default), the completion system
1653 will try to make certain completion listings more compact by
1654 grouping matches. For example, options for commands that have
1655 the same description (shown when the verbose style is set to
1656 `true') will appear as a single entry. However, menu selection
1657 can be used to cycle through all the matches.
1658 list-packed
1660 This is tested for each tag valid in the current context as well
1661 as the default tag. If it is set to `true', the corresponding
1662 matches appear in listings as if the LIST_PACKED option were
1663 set. If it is set to `false', they are listed normally.
1664 list-prompt
1666 If this style is set for the default tag, completion lists that
1667 don't fit on the screen can be scrolled (see the description of
1668 the zsh/complist module in zshmodules(1)). The value, if not
1669 the empty string, will be displayed after every screenful and
1670 the shell will prompt for a key press; if the style is set to
1671 the empty string, a default prompt will be used.
1672 The value may contain the escape sequences: `%l' or `%L', which
1674 will be replaced by the number of the last line displayed and
1675 the total number of lines; `%m' or `%M', the number of the last
1676 match shown and the total number of matches; and `%p' and `%P',
1677 `Top' when at the beginning of the list, `Bottom' when at the
1678 end and the position shown as a percentage of the total length
1679 otherwise. In each case the form with the uppercase letter will
1680 be replaced by a string of fixed width, padded to the right
1681 with spaces, while the lowercase form will be replaced by a
1682 variable width string. As in other prompt strings, the escape
1683 sequences `%S', `%s', `%B', `%b', `%U', `%u' for entering and
1684 leaving the display modes standout, bold and underline, and
1685 `%F', `%f', `%K', `%k' for changing the foreground background
1686 colour, are also available, as is the form `%{...%}' for enclos‐
1687 ing escape sequences which display with zero (or, with a numeric
1688 argument, some other) width.
1689 After deleting this prompt the variable LISTPROMPT should be
1691 unset for the removal to take effect.
1692 list-rows-first
1694 This style is tested in the same way as the list-packed style
1695 and determines whether matches are to be listed in a rows-first
1696 fashion as if the LIST_ROWS_FIRST option were set.
1697 list-suffixes
1699 This style is used by the function that completes filenames. If
1700 it is true, and completion is attempted on a string containing
1701 multiple partially typed pathname components, all ambiguous com‐
1702 ponents will be shown. Otherwise, completion stops at the first
1703 ambiguous component.
1704 list-separator
1706 The value of this style is used in completion listing to sepa‐
1707 rate the string to complete from a description when possible
1708 (e.g. when completing options). It defaults to `--' (two
1709 hyphens).
1710 local This is for use with functions that complete URLs for which the
1712 corresponding files are available directly from the file system.
1713 Its value should consist of three strings: a hostname, the path
1714 to the default web pages for the server, and the directory name
1715 used by a user placing web pages within their home area.
1716 For example:
1718 zstyle ':completion:*' local toast \
1720 /var/http/public/toast public_html
1721 Completion after `http://toast/stuff/' will look for files in
1723 the directory /var/http/public/toast/stuff, while completion
1724 after `http://toast/~yousir/' will look for files in the direc‐
1725 tory ~yousir/public_html.
1726 mail-directory
1728 If set, zsh will assume that mailbox files can be found in the
1729 directory specified. It defaults to `~/Mail'.
1730 match-original
1732 This is used by the _match completer. If it is set to only,
1733 _match will try to generate matches without inserting a `*' at
1734 the cursor position. If set to any other non-empty value, it
1735 will first try to generate matches without inserting the `*' and
1736 if that yields no matches, it will try again with the `*'
1737 inserted. If it is unset or set to the empty string, matching
1738 will only be performed with the `*' inserted.
1739 matcher
1741 This style is tested separately for each tag valid in the cur‐
1742 rent context. Its value is added to any match specifications
1743 given by the matcher-list style. It should be in the form
1744 described in the section `Completion Matching Control' in zsh‐
1745 compwid(1).
1746 matcher-list
1748 This style can be set to a list of match specifications that are
1749 to be applied everywhere. Match specifications are described in
1750 the section `Completion Matching Control' in zshcompwid(1). The
1751 completion system will try them one after another for each com‐
1752 pleter selected. For example, to try first simple completion
1753 and, if that generates no matches, case-insensitive completion:
1754 zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list '' 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z}'
1756 By default each specification replaces the previous one; how‐
1758 ever, if a specification is prefixed with +, it is added to the
1759 existing list. Hence it is possible to create increasingly gen‐
1760 eral specifications without repetition:
1761 zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list '' '+m{a-z}={A-Z}' '+m{A-Z}={a-z}'
1763 It is possible to create match specifications valid for particu‐
1765 lar completers by using the third field of the context. For
1766 example, to use the completers _complete and _prefix but only
1767 allow case-insensitive completion with _complete:
1768 zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _prefix
1770 zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*' matcher-list \
1771 '' 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z}'
1772 User-defined names, as explained for the completer style, are
1774 available. This makes it possible to try the same completer
1775 more than once with different match specifications each time.
1776 For example, to try normal completion without a match specifica‐
1777 tion, then normal completion with case-insensitive matching,
1778 then correction, and finally partial-word completion:
1779 zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _correct _complete:foo
1781 zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*' matcher-list \
1782 '' 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z}'
1783 zstyle ':completion:*:foo:*' matcher-list \
1784 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z} r:|[-_./]=* r:|=*'
1785 If the style is unset in any context no match specification is
1787 applied. Note also that some completers such as _correct and
1788 _approximate do not use the match specifications at all, though
1789 these completers will only ever be called once even if the
1790 matcher-list contains more than one element.
1791 Where multiple specifications are useful, note that the entire
1793 completion is done for each element of matcher-list, which can
1794 quickly reduce the shell's performance. As a rough rule of
1795 thumb, one to three strings will give acceptable performance.
1796 On the other hand, putting multiple space-separated values into
1797 the same string does not have an appreciable impact on perfor‐
1798 mance.
1799 If there is no current matcher or it is empty, and the option
1801 NO_CASE_GLOB is in effect, the matching for files is performed
1802 case-insensitively in any case. However, any matcher must
1803 explicitly specify case-insensitive matching if that is
1804 required.
1805 max-errors
1807 This is used by the _approximate and _correct completer func‐
1808 tions to determine the maximum number of errors to allow. The
1809 completer will try to generate completions by first allowing one
1810 error, then two errors, and so on, until either a match or
1811 matches were found or the maximum number of errors given by this
1812 style has been reached.
1813 If the value for this style contains the string `numeric', the
1815 completer function will take any numeric argument as the maximum
1816 number of errors allowed. For example, with
1817 zstyle ':completion:*:approximate:::' max-errors 2 numeric
1819 two errors are allowed if no numeric argument is given, but with
1821 a numeric argument of six (as in `ESC-6 TAB'), up to six errors
1822 are accepted. Hence with a value of `0 numeric', no correcting
1823 completion will be attempted unless a numeric argument is given.
1824 If the value contains the string `not-numeric', the completer
1826 will not try to generate corrected completions when given a
1827 numeric argument, so in this case the number given should be
1828 greater than zero. For example, `2 not-numeric' specifies that
1829 correcting completion with two errors will usually be performed,
1830 but if a numeric argument is given, correcting completion will
1831 not be performed.
1832 The default value for this style is `2 numeric'.
1834 max-matches-width
1836 This style is used to determine the trade off between the width
1837 of the display used for matches and the width used for their
1838 descriptions when the verbose style is in effect. The value
1839 gives the number of display columns to reserve for the matches.
1840 The default is half the width of the screen.
1841 This has the most impact when several matches have the same
1843 description and so will be grouped together. Increasing the
1844 style will allow more matches to be grouped together; decreasing
1845 it will allow more of the description to be visible.
1846 menu If this is true in the context of any of the tags defined for
1848 the current completion menu completion will be used. The value
1849 for a specific tag will take precedence over that for the
1850 `default' tag.
1851 If none of the values found in this way is true but at least one
1853 is set to `auto', the shell behaves as if the AUTO_MENU option
1854 is set.
1855 If one of the values is explicitly set to false, menu completion
1857 will be explicitly turned off, overriding the MENU_COMPLETE
1858 option and other settings.
1859 In the form `yes=num', where `yes' may be any of the true values
1861 (`yes', `true', `on' and `1'), menu completion will be turned on
1862 if there are at least num matches. In the form `yes=long', menu
1863 completion will be turned on if the list does not fit on the
1864 screen. This does not activate menu completion if the widget
1865 normally only lists completions, but menu completion can be
1866 activated in that case with the value `yes=long-list' (Typi‐
1867 cally, the value `select=long-list' described later is more use‐
1868 ful as it provides control over scrolling.)
1869 Similarly, with any of the `false' values (as in `no=10'), menu
1871 completion will not be used if there are num or more matches.
1872 The value of this widget also controls menu selection, as imple‐
1874 mented by the zsh/complist module. The following values may
1875 appear either alongside or instead of the values above.
1876 If the value contains the string `select', menu selection will
1878 be started unconditionally.
1879 In the form `select=num', menu selection will only be started if
1881 there are at least num matches. If the values for more than one
1882 tag provide a number, the smallest number is taken.
1883 Menu selection can be turned off explicitly by defining a value
1885 containing the string`no-select'.
1886 It is also possible to start menu selection only if the list of
1888 matches does not fit on the screen by using the value
1889 `select=long'. To start menu selection even if the current wid‐
1890 get only performs listing, use the value `select=long-list'.
1891 To turn on menu completion or menu selection when a there are a
1893 certain number of matches or the list of matches does not fit on
1894 the screen, both of `yes=' and `select=' may be given twice,
1895 once with a number and once with `long' or `long-list'.
1896 Finally, it is possible to activate two special modes of menu
1898 selection. The word `interactive' in the value causes interac‐
1899 tive mode to be entered immediately when menu selection is
1900 started; see the description of the zsh/complist module in zsh‐
1901 modules(1) for a description of interactive mode. Including the
1902 string `search' does the same for incremental search mode. To
1903 select backward incremental search, include the string
1904 `search-backward'.
1905 muttrc If set, gives the location of the mutt configuration file. It
1907 defaults to `~/.muttrc'.
1908 numbers
1910 This is used with the jobs tag. If it is `true', the shell will
1911 complete job numbers instead of the shortest unambiguous prefix
1912 of the job command text. If the value is a number, job numbers
1913 will only be used if that many words from the job descriptions
1914 are required to resolve ambiguities. For example, if the value
1915 is `1', strings will only be used if all jobs differ in the
1916 first word on their command lines.
1917 old-list
1919 This is used by the _oldlist completer. If it is set to
1920 `always', then standard widgets which perform listing will
1921 retain the current list of matches, however they were generated;
1922 this can be turned off explicitly with the value `never', giving
1923 the behaviour without the _oldlist completer. If the style is
1924 unset, or any other value, then the existing list of completions
1925 is displayed if it is not already; otherwise, the standard com‐
1926 pletion list is generated; this is the default behaviour of
1927 _oldlist. However, if there is an old list and this style con‐
1928 tains the name of the completer function that generated the
1929 list, then the old list will be used even if it was generated by
1930 a widget which does not do listing.
1931 For example, suppose you type ^Xc to use the _correct_word wid‐
1933 get, which generates a list of corrections for the word under
1934 the cursor. Usually, typing ^D would generate a standard list
1935 of completions for the word on the command line, and show that.
1936 With _oldlist, it will instead show the list of corrections
1937 already generated.
1938 As another example consider the _match completer: with the
1940 insert-unambiguous style set to `true' it inserts only a common
1941 prefix string, if there is any. However, this may remove parts
1942 of the original pattern, so that further completion could pro‐
1943 duce more matches than on the first attempt. By using the
1944 _oldlist completer and setting this style to _match, the list of
1945 matches generated on the first attempt will be used again.
1946 old-matches
1948 This is used by the _all_matches completer to decide if an old
1949 list of matches should be used if one exists. This is selected
1950 by one of the `true' values or by the string `only'. If the
1951 value is `only', _all_matches will only use an old list and
1952 won't have any effect on the list of matches currently being
1953 generated.
1954 If this style is set it is generally unwise to call the
1956 _all_matches completer unconditionally. One possible use is for
1957 either this style or the completer style to be defined with the
1958 -e option to zstyle to make the style conditional.
1959 old-menu
1961 This is used by the _oldlist completer. It controls how menu
1962 completion behaves when a completion has already been inserted
1963 and the user types a standard completion key such as TAB. The
1964 default behaviour of _oldlist is that menu completion always
1965 continues with the existing list of completions. If this style
1966 is set to `false', however, a new completion is started if the
1967 old list was generated by a different completion command; this
1968 is the behaviour without the _oldlist completer.
1969 For example, suppose you type ^Xc to generate a list of correc‐
1971 tions, and menu completion is started in one of the usual ways.
1972 Usually, or with this style set to false, typing TAB at this
1973 point would start trying to complete the line as it now appears.
1974 With _oldlist, it instead continues to cycle through the list of
1975 corrections.
1976 original
1978 This is used by the _approximate and _correct completers to
1979 decide if the original string should be added as a possible com‐
1980 pletion. Normally, this is done only if there are at least two
1981 possible corrections, but if this style is set to `true', it is
1982 always added. Note that the style will be examined with the
1983 completer field in the context name set to correct-num or
1984 approximate-num, where num is the number of errors that were
1985 accepted.
1986 packageset
1988 This style is used when completing arguments of the Debian
1989 `dpkg' program. It contains an override for the default package
1990 set for a given context. For example,
1991 zstyle ':completion:*:complete:dpkg:option--status-1:*' \
1993 packageset avail
1994 causes available packages, rather than only installed packages,
1996 to be completed for `dpkg --status'.
1997 path The function that completes color names uses this style with the
1999 colors tag. The value should be the pathname of a file contain‐
2000 ing color names in the format of an X11 rgb.txt file. If the
2001 style is not set but this file is found in one of various stan‐
2002 dard locations it will be used as the default.
2003 path-completion
2005 This is used by filename completion. By default, filename com‐
2006 pletion examines all components of a path to see if there are
2007 completions of that component. For example, /u/b/z can be com‐
2008 pleted to /usr/bin/zsh. Explicitly setting this style to false
2009 inhibits this behaviour for path components up to the / before
2010 the cursor; this overrides the setting of accept-exact-dirs.
2011 Even with the style set to false, it is still possible to com‐
2013 plete multiple paths by setting the option COMPLETE_IN_WORD and
2014 moving the cursor back to the first component in the path to be
2015 completed. For example, /u/b/z can be completed to /usr/bin/zsh
2016 if the cursor is after the /u.
2017 pine-directory
2019 If set, specifies the directory containing PINE mailbox files.
2020 There is no default, since recursively searching this directory
2021 is inconvenient for anyone who doesn't use PINE.
2022 ports A list of Internet service names (network ports) to complete.
2024 If this is not set, service names are taken from the file
2025 `/etc/services'.
2026 prefix-hidden
2028 This is used for certain completions which share a common pre‐
2029 fix, for example command options beginning with dashes. If it
2030 is `true', the prefix will not be shown in the list of matches.
2031 The default value for this style is `false'.
2033 prefix-needed
2035 This style is also relevant for matches with a common prefix.
2036 If it is set to `true' this common prefix must be typed by the
2037 user to generate the matches.
2038 The style is applicable to the options, signals, jobs, func‐
2040 tions, and parameters completion tags.
2041 For command options, this means that the initial `-', `+', or
2043 `--' must be typed explicitly before option names will be com‐
2044 pleted.
2045 For signals, an initial `-' is required before signal names will
2047 be completed.
2048 For jobs, an initial `%' is required before job names will be
2050 completed.
2051 For function and parameter names, an initial `_' or `.' is
2053 required before function or parameter names starting with those
2054 characters will be completed.
2055 The default value for this style is `false' for function and
2057 parameter completions, and `true' otherwise.
2058 preserve-prefix
2060 This style is used when completing path names. Its value should
2061 be a pattern matching an initial prefix of the word to complete
2062 that should be left unchanged under all circumstances. For
2063 example, on some Unices an initial `//' (double slash) has a
2064 special meaning; setting this style to the string `//' will pre‐
2065 serve it. As another example, setting this style to `?:/' under
2066 Cygwin would allow completion after `a:/...' and so on.
2067 range This is used by the _history completer and the _history_com‐
2069 plete_word bindable command to decide which words should be com‐
2070 pleted.
2071 If it is a singe number, only the last N words from the history
2073 will be completed.
2074 If it is a range of the form `max:slice', the last slice words
2076 will be completed; then if that yields no matches, the slice
2077 words before those will be tried and so on. This process stops
2078 either when at least one match was been found, or max words have
2079 been tried.
2080 The default is to complete all words from the history at once.
2082 recursive-files
2084 If this style is set, its value is an array of patterns to be
2085 tested against `$PWD/': note the trailing slash, which allows
2086 directories in the pattern to be delimited unambiguously by
2087 including slashes on both sides. If an ordinary file completion
2088 fails and the word on the command line does not yet have a
2089 directory part to its name, the style is retrieved using the
2090 same tag as for the completion just attempted, then the elements
2091 tested against $PWD/ in turn. If one matches, then the shell
2092 reattempts completion by prepending the word on the command line
2093 with each directory in the expansion of **/*(/) in turn. Typi‐
2094 cally the elements of the style will be set to restrict the num‐
2095 ber of directories beneath the current one to a manageable num‐
2096 ber, for example `*/.git/*'.
2097 For example,
2099 zstyle ':completion:*' recursive-files '*/zsh/*'
2101 If the current directory is /home/pws/zsh/Src, then zle_trTAB
2103 can be completed to Zle/zle_tricky.c.
2104 regular
2106 This style is used by the _expand_alias completer and bindable
2107 command. If set to `true' (the default), regular aliases will
2108 be expanded but only in command position. If it is set to
2109 `false', regular aliases will never be expanded. If it is set
2110 to `always', regular aliases will be expanded even if not in
2111 command position.
2112 rehash If this is set when completing external commands, the internal
2114 list (hash) of commands will be updated for each search by issu‐
2115 ing the rehash command. There is a speed penalty for this which
2116 is only likely to be noticeable when directories in the path
2117 have slow file access.
2118 remote-access
2120 If set to false, certain commands will be prevented from making
2121 Internet connections to retrieve remote information. This
2122 includes the completion for the CVS command.
2123 It is not always possible to know if connections are in fact to
2125 a remote site, so some may be prevented unnecessarily.
2126 remove-all-dups
2128 The _history_complete_word bindable command and the _history
2129 completer use this to decide if all duplicate matches should be
2130 removed, rather than just consecutive duplicates.
2131 select-prompt
2133 If this is set for the default tag, its value will be displayed
2134 during menu selection (see the menu style above) when the com‐
2135 pletion list does not fit on the screen as a whole. The same
2136 escapes as for the list-prompt style are understood, except that
2137 the numbers refer to the match or line the mark is on. A
2138 default prompt is used when the value is the empty string.
2139 select-scroll
2141 This style is tested for the default tag and determines how a
2142 completion list is scrolled during a menu selection (see the
2143 menu style above) when the completion list does not fit on the
2144 screen as a whole. If the value is `0' (zero), the list is
2145 scrolled by half-screenfuls; if it is a positive integer, the
2146 list is scrolled by the given number of lines; if it is a nega‐
2147 tive number, the list is scrolled by a screenful minus the abso‐
2148 lute value of the given number of lines. The default is to
2149 scroll by single lines.
2150 separate-sections
2152 This style is used with the manuals tag when completing names of
2153 manual pages. If it is `true', entries for different sections
2154 are added separately using tag names of the form `manual.X',
2155 where X is the section number. When the group-name style is
2156 also in effect, pages from different sections will appear sepa‐
2157 rately. This style is also used similarly with the words style
2158 when completing words for the dict command. It allows words from
2159 different dictionary databases to be added separately. The
2160 default for this style is `false'.
2161 show-completer
2163 Tested whenever a new completer is tried. If it is true, the
2164 completion system outputs a progress message in the listing area
2165 showing what completer is being tried. The message will be
2166 overwritten by any output when completions are found and is
2167 removed after completion is finished.
2168 single-ignored
2170 This is used by the _ignored completer when there is only one
2171 match. If its value is `show', the single match will be dis‐
2172 played but not inserted. If the value is `menu', then the sin‐
2173 gle match and the original string are both added as matches and
2174 menu completion is started, making it easy to select either of
2175 them.
2176 sort Many completion widgets call _description at some point which
2178 decides whether the matches are added sorted or unsorted (often
2179 indirectly via _wanted or _requested). This style can be set
2180 explicitly to one of the usual true or false values as an over‐
2181 ride. If it is not set for the context, the standard behaviour
2182 of the calling widget is used.
2183 The style is tested first against the full context including the
2185 tag, and if that fails to produce a value against the context
2186 without the tag.
2187 If the calling widget explicitly requests unsorted matches, this
2189 is usually honoured. However, the default (unsorted) behaviour
2190 of completion for the command history may be overridden by set‐
2191 ting the style to true.
2192 In the _expand completer, if it is set to `true', the expansions
2194 generated will always be sorted. If it is set to `menu', then
2195 the expansions are only sorted when they are offered as single
2196 strings but not in the string containing all possible expan‐
2197 sions.
2198 special-dirs
2200 Normally, the completion code will not produce the directory
2201 names `.' and `..' as possible completions. If this style is
2202 set to `true', it will add both `.' and `..' as possible comple‐
2203 tions; if it is set to `..', only `..' will be added.
2204 The following example sets special-dirs to `..' when the current
2206 prefix is empty, is a single `.', or consists only of a path
2207 beginning with `../'. Otherwise the value is `false'.
2208 zstyle -e ':completion:*' special-dirs \
2210 '[[ $PREFIX = (../)#(|.|..) ]] && reply=(..)'
2211 squeeze-slashes
2213 If set to `true', sequences of slashes in filename paths (for
2214 example in `foo//bar') will be treated as a single slash. This
2215 is the usual behaviour of UNIX paths. However, by default the
2216 file completion function behaves as if there were a `*' between
2217 the slashes.
2218 stop If set to `true', the _history_complete_word bindable command
2220 will stop once when reaching the beginning or end of the his‐
2221 tory. Invoking _history_complete_word will then wrap around to
2222 the opposite end of the history. If this style is set to
2223 `false' (the default), _history_complete_word will loop immedi‐
2224 ately as in a menu completion.
2225 strip-comments
2227 If set to `true', this style causes non-essential comment text
2228 to be removed from completion matches. Currently it is only
2229 used when completing e-mail addresses where it removes any dis‐
2230 play name from the addresses, cutting them down to plain
2231 user@host form.
2232 subst-globs-only
2234 This is used by the _expand completer. If it is set to `true',
2235 the expansion will only be used if it resulted from globbing;
2236 hence, if expansions resulted from the use of the substitute
2237 style described below, but these were not further changed by
2238 globbing, the expansions will be rejected.
2239 The default for this style is `false'.
2241 substitute
2243 This boolean style controls whether the _expand completer will
2244 first try to expand all substitutions in the string (such as
2245 `$(...)' and `${...}').
2246 The default is `true'.
2248 suffix This is used by the _expand completer if the word starts with a
2250 tilde or contains a parameter expansion. If it is set to
2251 `true', the word will only be expanded if it doesn't have a suf‐
2252 fix, i.e. if it is something like `~foo' or `$foo' rather than
2253 `~foo/' or `$foo/bar', unless that suffix itself contains char‐
2254 acters eligible for expansion. The default for this style is
2255 `true'.
2256 tag-order
2258 This provides a mechanism for sorting how the tags available in
2259 a particular context will be used.
2260 The values for the style are sets of space-separated lists of
2262 tags. The tags in each value will be tried at the same time; if
2263 no match is found, the next value is used. (See the file-pat‐
2264 terns style for an exception to this behavior.)
2265 For example:
2267 zstyle ':completion:*:complete:-command-:*' tag-order \
2269 'commands functions'
2270 specifies that completion in command position first offers
2272 external commands and shell functions. Remaining tags will be
2273 tried if no completions are found.
2274 In addition to tag names, each string in the value may take one
2276 of the following forms:
2277 - If any value consists of only a hyphen, then only the
2279 tags specified in the other values are generated. Nor‐
2280 mally all tags not explicitly selected are tried last if
2281 the specified tags fail to generate any matches. This
2282 means that a single value consisting only of a single
2283 hyphen turns off completion.
2284 ! tags...
2286 A string starting with an exclamation mark specifies
2287 names of tags that are not to be used. The effect is the
2288 same as if all other possible tags for the context had
2289 been listed.
2290 tag:label ...
2292 Here, tag is one of the standard tags and label is an
2293 arbitrary name. Matches are generated as normal but the
2294 name label is used in contexts instead of tag. This is
2295 not useful in words starting with !.
2296 If the label starts with a hyphen, the tag is prepended
2298 to the label to form the name used for lookup. This can
2299 be used to make the completion system try a certain tag
2300 more than once, supplying different style settings for
2301 each attempt; see below for an example.
2302 tag:label:description
2304 As before, but description will replace the `%d' in the
2305 value of the format style instead of the default descrip‐
2306 tion supplied by the completion function. Spaces in the
2307 description must be quoted with a backslash. A `%d'
2308 appearing in description is replaced with the description
2309 given by the completion function.
2310 In any of the forms above the tag may be a pattern or several
2312 patterns in the form `{pat1,pat2...}'. In this case all match‐
2313 ing tags will be used except for any given explicitly in the
2314 same string.
2315 One use of these features is to try one tag more than once, set‐
2317 ting other styles differently on each attempt, but still to use
2318 all the other tags without having to repeat them all. For exam‐
2319 ple, to make completion of function names in command position
2320 ignore all the completion functions starting with an underscore
2321 the first time completion is tried:
2322 zstyle ':completion:*:*:-command-:*' tag-order \
2324 'functions:-non-comp *' functions
2325 zstyle ':completion:*:functions-non-comp' ignored-patterns '_*'
2326 On the first attempt, all tags will be offered but the functions
2328 tag will be replaced by functions-non-comp. The ignored-pat‐
2329 terns style is set for this tag to exclude functions starting
2330 with an underscore. If there are no matches, the second value
2331 of the tag-order style is used which completes functions using
2332 the default tag, this time presumably including all function
2333 names.
2334 The matches for one tag can be split into different groups. For
2336 example:
2337 zstyle ':completion:*' tag-order \
2339 'options:-long:long\ options
2340 options:-short:short\ options
2341 options:-single-letter:single\ letter\ options'
2342 zstyle ':completion:*:options-long' ignored-patterns '[-+](|-|[^-]*)'
2344 zstyle ':completion:*:options-short' ignored-patterns '--*' '[-+]?'
2345 zstyle ':completion:*:options-single-letter' ignored-patterns '???*'
2346 With the group-names style set, options beginning with `--',
2348 options beginning with a single `-' or `+' but containing multi‐
2349 ple characters, and single-letter options will be displayed in
2350 separate groups with different descriptions.
2351 Another use of patterns is to try multiple match specifications
2353 one after another. The matcher-list style offers something sim‐
2354 ilar, but it is tested very early in the completion system and
2355 hence can't be set for single commands nor for more specific
2356 contexts. Here is how to try normal completion without any
2357 match specification and, if that generates no matches, try again
2358 with case-insensitive matching, restricting the effect to argu‐
2359 ments of the command foo:
2360 zstyle ':completion:*:*:foo:*' tag-order '*' '*:-case'
2362 zstyle ':completion:*-case' matcher 'm:{a-z}={A-Z}'
2363 First, all the tags offered when completing after foo are tried
2365 using the normal tag name. If that generates no matches, the
2366 second value of tag-order is used, which tries all tags again
2367 except that this time each has -case appended to its name for
2368 lookup of styles. Hence this time the value for the matcher
2369 style from the second call to zstyle in the example is used to
2370 make completion case-insensitive.
2371 It is possible to use the -e option of the zstyle builtin com‐
2373 mand to specify conditions for the use of particular tags. For
2374 example:
2375 zstyle -e '*:-command-:*' tag-order '
2377 if [[ -n $PREFIX$SUFFIX ]]; then
2378 reply=( )
2379 else
2380 reply=( - )
2381 fi'
2382 Completion in command position will be attempted only if the
2384 string typed so far is not empty. This is tested using the PRE‐
2385 FIX special parameter; see zshcompwid for a description of
2386 parameters which are special inside completion widgets. Setting
2387 reply to an empty array provides the default behaviour of trying
2388 all tags at once; setting it to an array containing only a
2389 hyphen disables the use of all tags and hence of all comple‐
2390 tions.
2391 If no tag-order style has been defined for a context, the
2393 strings `(|*-)argument-* (|*-)option-* values' and `options'
2394 plus all tags offered by the completion function will be used to
2395 provide a sensible default behavior that causes arguments
2396 (whether normal command arguments or arguments of options) to be
2397 completed before option names for most commands.
2398 urls This is used together with the urls tag by functions completing
2400 URLs.
2401 If the value consists of more than one string, or if the only
2403 string does not name a file or directory, the strings are used
2404 as the URLs to complete.
2405 If the value contains only one string which is the name of a
2407 normal file the URLs are taken from that file (where the URLs
2408 may be separated by white space or newlines).
2409 Finally, if the only string in the value names a directory, the
2411 directory hierarchy rooted at this directory gives the comple‐
2412 tions. The top level directory should be the file access
2413 method, such as `http', `ftp', `bookmark' and so on. In many
2414 cases the next level of directories will be a filename. The
2415 directory hierarchy can descend as deep as necessary.
2416 For example,
2418 zstyle ':completion:*' urls ~/.urls
2420 mkdir -p ~/.urls/ftp/ftp.zsh.org/pub
2421 allows completion of all the components of the URL
2423 ftp://ftp.zsh.org/pub after suitable commands such as `netscape'
2424 or `lynx'. Note, however, that access methods and files are
2425 completed separately, so if the hosts style is set hosts can be
2426 completed without reference to the urls style.
2427 See the description in the function _urls itself for more infor‐
2429 mation (e.g. `more $^fpath/_urls(N)').
2430 use-cache
2432 If this is set, the completion caching layer is activated for
2433 any completions which use it (via the _store_cache,
2434 _retrieve_cache, and _cache_invalid functions). The directory
2435 containing the cache files can be changed with the cache-path
2436 style.
2437 use-compctl
2439 If this style is set to a string not equal to false, 0, no, and
2440 off, the completion system may use any completion specifications
2441 defined with the compctl builtin command. If the style is
2442 unset, this is done only if the zsh/compctl module is loaded.
2443 The string may also contain the substring `first' to use comple‐
2444 tions defined with `compctl -T', and the substring `default' to
2445 use the completion defined with `compctl -D'.
2446 Note that this is only intended to smooth the transition from
2448 compctl to the new completion system and may disappear in the
2449 future.
2450 Note also that the definitions from compctl will only be used if
2452 there is no specific completion function for the command in
2453 question. For example, if there is a function _foo to complete
2454 arguments to the command foo, compctl will never be invoked for
2455 foo. However, the compctl version will be tried if foo only
2456 uses default completion.
2457 use-ip By default, the function _hosts that completes host names strips
2459 IP addresses from entries read from host databases such as NIS
2460 and ssh files. If this style is true, the corresponding IP
2461 addresses can be completed as well. This style is not use in
2462 any context where the hosts style is set; note also it must be
2463 set before the cache of host names is generated (typically the
2464 first completion attempt).
2465 users This may be set to a list of usernames to be completed. If it
2467 is not set all usernames will be completed. Note that if it is
2468 set only that list of users will be completed; this is because
2469 on some systems querying all users can take a prohibitive amount
2470 of time.
2471 users-hosts
2473 The values of this style should be of the form `user@host' or
2474 `user:host'. It is used for commands that need pairs of user-
2475 and hostnames. These commands will complete usernames from this
2476 style (only), and will restrict subsequent hostname completion
2477 to hosts paired with that user in one of the values of the
2478 style.
2479 It is possible to group values for sets of commands which allow
2481 a remote login, such as rlogin and ssh, by using the my-accounts
2482 tag. Similarly, values for sets of commands which usually refer
2483 to the accounts of other people, such as talk and finger, can be
2484 grouped by using the other-accounts tag. More ambivalent com‐
2485 mands may use the accounts tag.
2486 users-hosts-ports
2488 Like users-hosts but used for commands like telnet and contain‐
2489 ing strings of the form `user@host:port'.
2490 verbose
2492 If set, as it is by default, the completion listing is more ver‐
2493 bose. In particular many commands show descriptions for options
2494 if this style is `true'.
2495 word This is used by the _list completer, which prevents the inser‐
2497 tion of completions until a second completion attempt when the
2498 line has not changed. The normal way of finding out if the line
2499 has changed is to compare its entire contents between the two
2500 occasions. If this style is true, the comparison is instead
2501 performed only on the current word. Hence if completion is per‐
2502 formed on another word with the same contents, completion will
2503 not be delayed.
2504
2506 The initialization script compinit redefines all the widgets which per‐
2507 form completion to call the supplied widget function _main_complete.
2508 This function acts as a wrapper calling the so-called `completer' func‐
2509 tions that generate matches. If _main_complete is called with argu‐
2510 ments, these are taken as the names of completer functions to be called
2511 in the order given. If no arguments are given, the set of functions to
2512 try is taken from the completer style. For example, to use normal com‐
2513 pletion and correction if that doesn't generate any matches:
2514 zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _correct
2516 after calling compinit. The default value for this style is `_complete
2518 _ignored', i.e. normally only ordinary completion is tried, first with
2519 the effect of the ignored-patterns style and then without it. The
2520 _main_complete function uses the return status of the completer func‐
2521 tions to decide if other completers should be called. If the return
2522 status is zero, no other completers are tried and the _main_complete
2523 function returns.
2524 If the first argument to _main_complete is a single hyphen, the argu‐
2526 ments will not be taken as names of completers. Instead, the second
2527 argument gives a name to use in the completer field of the context and
2528 the other arguments give a command name and arguments to call to gener‐
2529 ate the matches.
2530 The following completer functions are contained in the distribution,
2532 although users may write their own. Note that in contexts the leading
2533 underscore is stripped, for example basic completion is performed in
2534 the context `:completion::complete:...'.
2535 _all_matches
2537 This completer can be used to add a string consisting of all
2538 other matches. As it influences later completers it must appear
2539 as the first completer in the list. The list of all matches is
2540 affected by the avoid-completer and old-matches styles described
2541 above.
2542 It may be useful to use the _generic function described below to
2544 bind _all_matches to its own keystroke, for example:
2545 zle -C all-matches complete-word _generic
2547 bindkey '^Xa' all-matches
2548 zstyle ':completion:all-matches:*' old-matches only
2549 zstyle ':completion:all-matches::::' completer _all_matches
2550 Note that this does not generate completions by itself: first
2552 use any of the standard ways of generating a list of comple‐
2553 tions, then use ^Xa to show all matches. It is possible instead
2554 to add a standard completer to the list and request that the
2555 list of all matches should be directly inserted:
2556 zstyle ':completion:all-matches::::' completer _all_matches _complete
2558 zstyle ':completion:all-matches:*' insert true
2559 In this case the old-matches style should not be set.
2561 _approximate
2563 This is similar to the basic _complete completer but allows the
2564 completions to undergo corrections. The maximum number of
2565 errors can be specified by the max-errors style; see the
2566 description of approximate matching in zshexpn(1) for how errors
2567 are counted. Normally this completer will only be tried after
2568 the normal _complete completer:
2569 zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete _approximate
2571 This will give correcting completion if and only if normal com‐
2573 pletion yields no possible completions. When corrected comple‐
2574 tions are found, the completer will normally start menu comple‐
2575 tion allowing you to cycle through these strings.
2576 This completer uses the tags corrections and original when gen‐
2578 erating the possible corrections and the original string. The
2579 format style for the former may contain the additional sequences
2580 `%e' and `%o' which will be replaced by the number of errors
2581 accepted to generate the corrections and the original string,
2582 respectively.
2583 The completer progressively increases the number of errors
2585 allowed up to the limit by the max-errors style, hence if a com‐
2586 pletion is found with one error, no completions with two errors
2587 will be shown, and so on. It modifies the completer name in the
2588 context to indicate the number of errors being tried: on the
2589 first try the completer field contains `approximate-1', on the
2590 second try `approximate-2', and so on.
2591 When _approximate is called from another function, the number of
2593 errors to accept may be passed with the -a option. The argument
2594 is in the same format as the max-errors style, all in one
2595 string.
2596 Note that this completer (and the _correct completer mentioned
2598 below) can be quite expensive to call, especially when a large
2599 number of errors are allowed. One way to avoid this is to set
2600 up the completer style using the -e option to zstyle so that
2601 some completers are only used when completion is attempted a
2602 second time on the same string, e.g.:
2603 zstyle -e ':completion:*' completer '
2605 if [[ $_last_try != "$HISTNO$BUFFER$CURSOR" ]]; then
2606 _last_try="$HISTNO$BUFFER$CURSOR"
2607 reply=(_complete _match _prefix)
2608 else
2609 reply=(_ignored _correct _approximate)
2610 fi'
2611 This uses the HISTNO parameter and the BUFFER and CURSOR special
2613 parameters that are available inside zle and completion widgets
2614 to find out if the command line hasn't changed since the last
2615 time completion was tried. Only then are the _ignored, _correct
2616 and _approximate completers called.
2617 _complete
2619 This completer generates all possible completions in a con‐
2620 text-sensitive manner, i.e. using the settings defined with the
2621 compdef function explained above and the current settings of all
2622 special parameters. This gives the normal completion behaviour.
2623 To complete arguments of commands, _complete uses the utility
2625 function _normal, which is in turn responsible for finding the
2626 particular function; it is described below. Various contexts of
2627 the form -context- are handled specifically. These are all men‐
2628 tioned above as possible arguments to the #compdef tag.
2629 Before trying to find a function for a specific context, _com‐
2631 plete checks if the parameter `compcontext' is set. Setting
2632 `compcontext' allows the usual completion dispatching to be
2633 overridden which is useful in places such as a function that
2634 uses vared for input. If it is set to an array, the elements are
2635 taken to be the possible matches which will be completed using
2636 the tag `values' and the description `value'. If it is set to an
2637 associative array, the keys are used as the possible completions
2638 and the values (if non-empty) are used as descriptions for the
2639 matches. If `compcontext' is set to a string containing colons,
2640 it should be of the form `tag:descr:action'. In this case the
2641 tag and descr give the tag and description to use and the action
2642 indicates what should be completed in one of the forms accepted
2643 by the _arguments utility function described below.
2644 Finally, if `compcontext' is set to a string without colons, the
2646 value is taken as the name of the context to use and the func‐
2647 tion defined for that context will be called. For this purpose,
2648 there is a special context named -command-line- that completes
2649 whole command lines (commands and their arguments). This is not
2650 used by the completion system itself but is nonetheless handled
2651 when explicitly called.
2652 _correct
2654 Generate corrections, but not completions, for the current word;
2655 this is similar to _approximate but will not allow any number of
2656 extra characters at the cursor as that completer does. The
2657 effect is similar to spell-checking. It is based on _approxi‐
2658 mate, but the completer field in the context name is correct.
2659 For example, with:
2661 zstyle ':completion:::::' completer _complete _correct _approximate
2663 zstyle ':completion:*:correct:::' max-errors 2 not-numeric
2664 zstyle ':completion:*:approximate:::' max-errors 3 numeric
2665 correction will accept up to two errors. If a numeric argument
2667 is given, correction will not be performed, but correcting com‐
2668 pletion will be, and will accept as many errors as given by the
2669 numeric argument. Without a numeric argument, first correction
2670 and then correcting completion will be tried, with the first one
2671 accepting two errors and the second one accepting three errors.
2672 When _correct is called as a function, the number of errors to
2674 accept may be given following the -a option. The argument is in
2675 the same form a values to the accept style, all in one string.
2676 This completer function is intended to be used without the
2678 _approximate completer or, as in the example, just before it.
2679 Using it after the _approximate completer is useless since
2680 _approximate will at least generate the corrected strings gener‐
2681 ated by the _correct completer -- and probably more.
2682 _expand
2684 This completer function does not really perform completion, but
2685 instead checks if the word on the command line is eligible for
2686 expansion and, if it is, gives detailed control over how this
2687 expansion is done. For this to happen, the completion system
2688 needs to be invoked with complete-word, not expand-or-complete
2689 (the default binding for TAB), as otherwise the string will be
2690 expanded by the shell's internal mechanism before the completion
2691 system is started. Note also this completer should be called
2692 before the _complete completer function.
2693 The tags used when generating expansions are all-expansions for
2695 the string containing all possible expansions, expansions when
2696 adding the possible expansions as single matches and original
2697 when adding the original string from the line. The order in
2698 which these strings are generated, if at all, can be controlled
2699 by the group-order and tag-order styles, as usual.
2700 The format string for all-expansions and for expansions may con‐
2702 tain the sequence `%o' which will be replaced by the original
2703 string from the line.
2704 The kind of expansion to be tried is controlled by the substi‐
2706 tute, glob and subst-globs-only styles.
2707 It is also possible to call _expand as a function, in which case
2709 the different modes may be selected with options: -s for substi‐
2710 tute, -g for glob and -o for subst-globs-only.
2711 _expand_alias
2713 If the word the cursor is on is an alias, it is expanded and no
2714 other completers are called. The types of aliases which are to
2715 be expanded can be controlled with the styles regular, global
2716 and disabled.
2717 This function is also a bindable command, see the section `Bind‐
2719 able Commands' below.
2720 _history
2722 Complete words from the shell's command history. This com‐
2723 pleter can be controlled by the remove-all-dups, and sort styles
2724 as for the _history_complete_word bindable command, see the sec‐
2725 tion `Bindable Commands' below and the section `Completion Sys‐
2726 tem Configuration' above.
2727 _ignored
2729 The ignored-patterns style can be set to a list of patterns
2730 which are compared against possible completions; matching ones
2731 are removed. With this completer those matches can be rein‐
2732 stated, as if no ignored-patterns style were set. The completer
2733 actually generates its own list of matches; which completers are
2734 invoked is determined in the same way as for the _prefix com‐
2735 pleter. The single-ignored style is also available as described
2736 above.
2737 _list This completer allows the insertion of matches to be delayed
2739 until completion is attempted a second time without the word on
2740 the line being changed. On the first attempt, only the list of
2741 matches will be shown. It is affected by the styles condition
2742 and word, see the section `Completion System Configuration'
2743 above.
2744 _match This completer is intended to be used after the _complete com‐
2746 pleter. It behaves similarly but the string on the command line
2747 may be a pattern to match against trial completions. This gives
2748 the effect of the GLOB_COMPLETE option.
2749 Normally completion will be performed by taking the pattern from
2751 the line, inserting a `*' at the cursor position and comparing
2752 the resulting pattern with the possible completions generated.
2753 This can be modified with the match-original style described
2754 above.
2755 The generated matches will be offered in a menu completion
2757 unless the insert-unambiguous style is set to `true'; see the
2758 description above for other options for this style.
2759 Note that matcher specifications defined globally or used by the
2761 completion functions (the styles matcher-list and matcher) will
2762 not be used.
2763 _menu This completer was written as simple example function to show
2765 how menu completion can be enabled in shell code. However, it
2766 has the notable effect of disabling menu selection which can be
2767 useful with _generic based widgets. It should be used as the
2768 first completer in the list. Note that this is independent of
2769 the setting of the MENU_COMPLETE option and does not work with
2770 the other menu completion widgets such as reverse-menu-complete,
2771 or accept-and-menu-complete.
2772 _oldlist
2774 This completer controls how the standard completion widgets
2775 behave when there is an existing list of completions which may
2776 have been generated by a special completion (i.e. a sepa‐
2777 rately-bound completion command). It allows the ordinary com‐
2778 pletion keys to continue to use the list of completions thus
2779 generated, instead of producing a new list of ordinary contex‐
2780 tual completions. It should appear in the list of completers
2781 before any of the widgets which generate matches. It uses two
2782 styles: old-list and old-menu, see the section `Completion Sys‐
2783 tem Configuration' above.
2784 _prefix
2786 This completer can be used to try completion with the suffix
2787 (everything after the cursor) ignored. In other words, the suf‐
2788 fix will not be considered to be part of the word to complete.
2789 The effect is similar to the expand-or-complete-prefix command.
2790 The completer style is used to decide which other completers are
2792 to be called to generate matches. If this style is unset, the
2793 list of completers set for the current context is used --
2794 except, of course, the _prefix completer itself. Furthermore,
2795 if this completer appears more than once in the list of com‐
2796 pleters only those completers not already tried by the last
2797 invocation of _prefix will be called.
2798 For example, consider this global completer style:
2800 zstyle ':completion:*' completer \
2802 _complete _prefix _correct _prefix:foo
2803 Here, the _prefix completer tries normal completion but ignoring
2805 the suffix. If that doesn't generate any matches, and neither
2806 does the call to the _correct completer after it, _prefix will
2807 be called a second time and, now only trying correction with the
2808 suffix ignored. On the second invocation the completer part of
2809 the context appears as `foo'.
2810 To use _prefix as the last resort and try only normal completion
2812 when it is invoked:
2813 zstyle ':completion:*' completer _complete ... _prefix
2815 zstyle ':completion::prefix:*' completer _complete
2816 The add-space style is also respected. If it is set to `true'
2818 then _prefix will insert a space between the matches generated
2819 (if any) and the suffix.
2820 Note that this completer is only useful if the COMPLETE_IN_WORD
2822 option is set; otherwise, the cursor will be moved to the end of
2823 the current word before the completion code is called and hence
2824 there will be no suffix.
2825 _user_expand
2827 This completer behaves similarly to the _expand completer but
2828 instead performs expansions defined by users. The styles
2829 add-space and sort styles specific to the _expand completer are
2830 usable with _user_expand in addition to other styles handled
2831 more generally by the completion system. The tag all-expansions
2832 is also available.
2833 The expansion depends on the array style user-expand being
2835 defined for the current context; remember that the context for
2836 completers is less specific than that for contextual completion
2837 as the full context has not yet been determined. Elements of
2838 the array may have one of the following forms:
2839 $hash
2840 hash is the name of an associative array. Note this is
2842 not a full parameter expression, merely a $, suitably
2843 quoted to prevent immediate expansion, followed by the
2844 name of an associative array. If the trial expansion
2845 word matches a key in hash, the resulting expansion is
2846 the corresponding value.
2847 _func
2848 _func is the name of a shell function whose name must
2850 begin with _ but is not otherwise special to the comple‐
2851 tion system. The function is called with the trial word
2852 as an argument. If the word is to be expanded, the func‐
2853 tion should set the array reply to a list of expansions.
2854 Optionally, it can set REPLY to a word that will be used
2855 as a description for the set of expansions. The return
2856 status of the function is irrelevant.
2858 In addition to the context-dependent completions provided, which are
2859 expected to work in an intuitively obvious way, there are a few widgets
2860 implementing special behaviour which can be bound separately to keys.
2861 The following is a list of these and their default bindings.
2862 _bash_completions
2864 This function is used by two widgets, _bash_complete-word and
2865 _bash_list-choices. It exists to provide compatibility with
2866 completion bindings in bash. The last character of the binding
2867 determines what is completed: `!', command names; `$', environ‐
2868 ment variables; `@', host names; `/', file names; `~' user
2869 names. In bash, the binding preceded by `\e' gives completion,
2870 and preceded by `^X' lists options. As some of these bindings
2871 clash with standard zsh bindings, only `\e~' and `^X~' are bound
2872 by default. To add the rest, the following should be added to
2873 .zshrc after compinit has been run:
2874 for key in '!' '$' '@' '/' '~'; do
2876 bindkey "\e$key" _bash_complete-word
2877 bindkey "^X$key" _bash_list-choices
2878 done
2879 This includes the bindings for `~' in case they were already
2881 bound to something else; the completion code does not override
2882 user bindings.
2883 _correct_filename (^XC)
2885 Correct the filename path at the cursor position. Allows up to
2886 six errors in the name. Can also be called with an argument to
2887 correct a filename path, independently of zle; the correction is
2888 printed on standard output.
2889 _correct_word (^Xc)
2891 Performs correction of the current argument using the usual con‐
2892 textual completions as possible choices. This stores the string
2893 `correct-word' in the function field of the context name and
2894 then calls the _correct completer.
2895 _expand_alias (^Xa)
2897 This function can be used as a completer and as a bindable com‐
2898 mand. It expands the word the cursor is on if it is an alias.
2899 The types of alias expanded can be controlled with the styles
2900 regular, global and disabled.
2901 When used as a bindable command there is one additional feature
2903 that can be selected by setting the complete style to `true'.
2904 In this case, if the word is not the name of an alias,
2905 _expand_alias tries to complete the word to a full alias name
2906 without expanding it. It leaves the cursor directly after the
2907 completed word so that invoking _expand_alias once more will
2908 expand the now-complete alias name.
2909 _expand_word (^Xe)
2911 Performs expansion on the current word: equivalent to the stan‐
2912 dard expand-word command, but using the _expand completer.
2913 Before calling it, the function field of the context is set to
2914 `expand-word'.
2915 _generic
2917 This function is not defined as a widget and not bound by
2918 default. However, it can be used to define a widget and will
2919 then store the name of the widget in the function field of the
2920 context and call the completion system. This allows custom com‐
2921 pletion widgets with their own set of style settings to be
2922 defined easily. For example, to define a widget that performs
2923 normal completion and starts menu selection:
2924 zle -C foo complete-word _generic
2926 bindkey '...' foo
2927 zstyle ':completion:foo:*' menu yes select=1
2928 Note in particular that the completer style may be set for the
2930 context in order to change the set of functions used to generate
2931 possible matches. If _generic is called with arguments, those
2932 are passed through to _main_complete as the list of completers
2933 in place of those defined by the completer style.
2934 _history_complete_word (\e/)
2936 Complete words from the shell's command history. This uses the
2937 list, remove-all-dups, sort, and stop styles.
2938 _most_recent_file (^Xm)
2940 Complete the name of the most recently modified file matching
2941 the pattern on the command line (which may be blank). If given
2942 a numeric argument N, complete the Nth most recently modified
2943 file. Note the completion, if any, is always unique.
2944 _next_tags (^Xn)
2946 This command alters the set of matches used to that for the next
2947 tag, or set of tags, either as given by the tag-order style or
2948 as set by default; these matches would otherwise not be avail‐
2949 able. Successive invocations of the command cycle through all
2950 possible sets of tags.
2951 _read_comp (^X^R)
2953 Prompt the user for a string, and use that to perform completion
2954 on the current word. There are two possibilities for the
2955 string. First, it can be a set of words beginning `_', for
2956 example `_files -/', in which case the function with any argu‐
2957 ments will be called to generate the completions. Unambiguous
2958 parts of the function name will be completed automatically (nor‐
2959 mal completion is not available at this point) until a space is
2960 typed.
2961 Second, any other string will be passed as a set of arguments to
2963 compadd and should hence be an expression specifying what should
2964 be completed.
2965 A very restricted set of editing commands is available when
2967 reading the string: `DEL' and `^H' delete the last character;
2968 `^U' deletes the line, and `^C' and `^G' abort the function,
2969 while `RET' accepts the completion. Note the string is used
2970 verbatim as a command line, so arguments must be quoted in
2971 accordance with standard shell rules.
2972 Once a string has been read, the next call to _read_comp will
2974 use the existing string instead of reading a new one. To force
2975 a new string to be read, call _read_comp with a numeric argu‐
2976 ment.
2977 _complete_debug (^X?)
2979 This widget performs ordinary completion, but captures in a tem‐
2980 porary file a trace of the shell commands executed by the com‐
2981 pletion system. Each completion attempt gets its own file. A
2982 command to view each of these files is pushed onto the editor
2983 buffer stack.
2984 _complete_help (^Xh)
2986 This widget displays information about the context names, the
2987 tags, and the completion functions used when completing at the
2988 current cursor position. If given a numeric argument other than
2989 1 (as in `ESC-2 ^Xh'), then the styles used and the contexts for
2990 which they are used will be shown, too.
2991 Note that the information about styles may be incomplete; it
2993 depends on the information available from the completion func‐
2994 tions called, which in turn is determined by the user's own
2995 styles and other settings.
2996 _complete_help_generic
2998 Unlike other commands listed here, this must be created as a
2999 normal ZLE widget rather than a completion widget (i.e. with zle
3000 -N). It is used for generating help with a widget bound to the
3001 _generic widget that is described above.
3002 If this widget is created using the name of the function, as it
3004 is by default, then when executed it will read a key sequence.
3005 This is expected to be bound to a call to a completion function
3006 that uses the _generic widget. That widget will be executed,
3007 and information provided in the same format that the _com‐
3008 plete_help widget displays for contextual completion.
3009 If the widget's name contains debug, for example if it is cre‐
3011 ated as `zle -N _complete_debug_generic _complete_help_generic',
3012 it will read and execute the keystring for a generic widget as
3013 before, but then generate debugging information as done by _com‐
3014 plete_debug for contextual completion.
3015 If the widget's name contains noread, it will not read a
3017 keystring but instead arrange that the next use of a generic
3018 widget run in the same shell will have the effect as described
3019 above.
3020 The widget works by setting the shell parameter
3022 ZSH_TRACE_GENERIC_WIDGET which is read by _generic. Unsetting
3023 the parameter cancels any pending effect of the noread form.
3024 For example, after executing the following:
3026 zle -N _complete_debug_generic _complete_help_generic
3028 bindkey '^x:' _complete_debug_generic
3029 typing `C-x :' followed by the key sequence for a generic widget
3031 will cause trace output for that widget to be saved to a file.
3032 _complete_tag (^Xt)
3034 This widget completes symbol tags created by the etags or ctags
3035 programmes (note there is no connection with the completion sys‐
3036 tem's tags) stored in a file TAGS, in the format used by etags,
3037 or tags, in the format created by ctags. It will look back up
3038 the path hierarchy for the first occurrence of either file; if
3039 both exist, the file TAGS is preferred. You can specify the
3040 full path to a TAGS or tags file by setting the parameter $TAGS‐
3041 FILE or $tagsfile respectively. The corresponding completion
3042 tags used are etags and vtags, after emacs and vi respectively.
3043
3045 Descriptions follow for utility functions that may be useful when writ‐
3046 ing completion functions. If functions are installed in subdirecto‐
3047 ries, most of these reside in the Base subdirectory. Like the example
3048 functions for commands in the distribution, the utility functions gen‐
3049 erating matches all follow the convention of returning status zero if
3050 they generated completions and non-zero if no matching completions
3051 could be added.
3052 Two more features are offered by the _main_complete function. The
3054 arrays compprefuncs and comppostfuncs may contain names of functions
3055 that are to be called immediately before or after completion has been
3056 tried. A function will only be called once unless it explicitly rein‐
3057 serts itself into the array.
3058 _all_labels [ -x ] [ -12VJ ] tag name descr [ command args ... ]
3060 This is a convenient interface to the _next_label function
3061 below, implementing the loop shown in the _next_label example.
3062 The command and its arguments are called to generate the
3063 matches. The options stored in the parameter name will automat‐
3064 ically be inserted into the args passed to the command. Nor‐
3065 mally, they are put directly after the command, but if one of
3066 the args is a single hyphen, they are inserted directly before
3067 that. If the hyphen is the last argument, it will be removed
3068 from the argument list before the command is called. This
3069 allows _all_labels to be used in almost all cases where the
3070 matches can be generated by a single call to the compadd builtin
3071 command or by a call to one of the utility functions.
3072 For example:
3074 local expl
3076 ...
3077 if _requested foo; then
3078 ...
3079 _all_labels foo expl '...' compadd ... - $matches
3080 fi
3081 Will complete the strings from the matches parameter, using com‐
3083 padd with additional options which will take precedence over
3084 those generated by _all_labels.
3085 _alternative [ -O name ] [ -C name ] spec ...
3087 This function is useful in simple cases where multiple tags are
3088 available. Essentially it implements a loop like the one
3089 described for the _tags function below.
3090 The tags to use and the action to perform if a tag is requested
3092 are described using the specs which are of the form:
3093 `tag:descr:action'. The tags are offered using _tags and if the
3094 tag is requested, the action is executed with the given descrip‐
3095 tion descr. The actions are those accepted by the _arguments
3096 function (described below), excluding the `->state' and `=...'
3097 forms.
3098 For example, the action may be a simple function call:
3100 _alternative \
3102 'users:user:_users' \
3103 'hosts:host:_hosts'
3104 offers usernames and hostnames as possible matches, generated by
3106 the _users and _hosts functions respectively.
3107 Like _arguments, this function uses _all_labels to execute the
3109 actions, which will loop over all sets of tags. Special han‐
3110 dling is only required if there is an additional valid tag, for
3111 example inside a function called from _alternative.
3112 The option `-O name' is used in the same way as by the _argu‐
3114 ments function. In other words, the elements of the name array
3115 will be passed to compadd when executing an action.
3116 Like _tags this function supports the -C option to give a dif‐
3118 ferent name for the argument context field.
3119 _arguments [ -nswWACRS ] [ -O name ] [ -M matchspec ] [ : ] spec ...
3121 This function can be used to give a complete specification for
3122 completion for a command whose arguments follow standard UNIX
3123 option and argument conventions. The following forms specify
3124 individual sets of options and arguments; to avoid ambiguity,
3125 these may be separated from the options to _arguments itself by
3126 a single colon. Options to _arguments itself must be in sepa‐
3127 rate words, i.e. -s -w, not -sw.
3128 With the option -n, _arguments sets the parameter NORMARG to the
3130 position of the first normal argument in the $words array, i.e.
3131 the position after the end of the options. If that argument has
3132 not been reached, NORMARG is set to -1. The caller should
3133 declare `integer NORMARG' if the -n option is passed; otherwise
3134 the parameter is not used.
3135 n:message:action
3137 n::message:action
3138 This describes the n'th normal argument. The message
3139 will be printed above the matches generated and the
3140 action indicates what can be completed in this position
3141 (see below). If there are two colons before the message
3142 the argument is optional. If the message contains only
3143 white space, nothing will be printed above the matches
3144 unless the action adds an explanation string itself.
3145 :message:action
3147 ::message:action
3148 Similar, but describes the next argument, whatever number
3149 that happens to be. If all arguments are specified in
3150 this form in the correct order the numbers are unneces‐
3151 sary.
3152 *:message:action
3154 *::message:action
3155 *:::message:action
3156 This describes how arguments (usually non-option argu‐
3157 ments, those not beginning with - or +) are to be com‐
3158 pleted when neither of the first two forms was provided.
3159 Any number of arguments can be completed in this fashion.
3160 With two colons before the message, the words special
3162 array and the CURRENT special parameter are modified to
3163 refer only to the normal arguments when the action is
3164 executed or evaluated. With three colons before the mes‐
3165 sage they are modified to refer only to the normal argu‐
3166 ments covered by this description.
3167 optspec
3169 optspec:...
3170 This describes an option. The colon indicates handling
3171 for one or more arguments to the option; if it is not
3172 present, the option is assumed to take no arguments.
3173 By default, options are multi-character name, one `-word'
3175 per option. With -s, options may be single characters,
3176 with more than one option per word, although words start‐
3177 ing with two hyphens, such as `--prefix', are still con‐
3178 sidered complete option names. This is suitable for
3179 standard GNU options.
3180 The combination of -s with -w allows single-letter
3182 options to be combined in a single word even if one or
3183 more of the options take arguments. For example, if -a
3184 takes an argument, with no -s `-ab' is considered as a
3185 single (unhandled) option; with -s -ab is an option with
3186 the argument `b'; with both -s and -w, -ab may be the
3187 option -a and the option -b with arguments still to come.
3188 The option -W takes this a stage further: it is possible
3190 to complete single-letter options even after an argument
3191 that occurs in the same word. However, it depends on the
3192 action performed whether options will really be completed
3193 at this point. For more control, use a utility function
3194 like _guard as part of the action.
3195 The following forms are available for the initial opt‐
3197 spec, whether or not the option has arguments.
3198 *optspec
3200 Here optspec is one of the remaining forms below.
3201 This indicates the following optspec may be
3202 repeated. Otherwise if the corresponding option
3203 is already present on the command line to the left
3204 of the cursor it will not be offered again.
3205 -optname
3207 +optname
3208 In the simplest form the optspec is just the
3209 option name beginning with a minus or a plus sign,
3210 such as `-foo'. The first argument for the option
3211 (if any) must follow as a separate word directly
3212 after the option.
3213 Either of `-+optname' and `+-optname' can be used
3215 to specify that -optname and +optname are both
3216 valid.
3217 In all the remaining forms, the leading `-' may be
3219 replaced by or paired with `+' in this way.
3220 -optname-
3222 The first argument of the option must come
3223 directly after the option name in the same word.
3224 For example, `-foo-:...' specifies that the com‐
3225 pleted option and argument will look like
3226 `-fooarg'.
3227 -optname+
3229 The first argument may appear immediately after
3230 optname in the same word, or may appear as a sepa‐
3231 rate word after the option. For example,
3232 `-foo+:...' specifies that the completed option
3233 and argument will look like either `-fooarg' or
3234 `-foo arg'.
3235 -optname=
3237 The argument may appear as the next word, or in
3238 same word as the option name provided that it is
3239 separated from it by an equals sign, for example
3240 `-foo=arg' or `-foo arg'.
3241 -optname=-
3243 The argument to the option must appear after an
3244 equals sign in the same word, and may not be given
3245 in the next argument.
3246 optspec[explanation]
3248 An explanation string may be appended to any of
3249 the preceding forms of optspec by enclosing it in
3250 brackets, as in `-q[query operation]'.
3251 The verbose style is used to decide whether the
3253 explanation strings are displayed with the option
3254 in a completion listing.
3255 If no bracketed explanation string is given but
3257 the auto-description style is set and only one
3258 argument is described for this optspec, the value
3259 of the style is displayed, with any appearance of
3260 the sequence `%d' in it replaced by the message of
3261 the first optarg that follows the optspec; see
3262 below.
3263 It is possible for options with a literal `+' or `=' to appear,
3265 but that character must be quoted, for example `-\+'.
3266 Each optarg following an optspec must take one of the following
3268 forms:
3269 :message:action
3271 ::message:action
3272 An argument to the option; message and action are treated
3273 as for ordinary arguments. In the first form, the argu‐
3274 ment is mandatory, and in the second form it is optional.
3275 This group may be repeated for options which take multi‐
3277 ple arguments. In other words, :message1:action1:mes‐
3278 sage2:action2 specifies that the option takes two argu‐
3279 ments.
3280 :*pattern:message:action
3282 :*pattern::message:action
3283 :*pattern:::message:action
3284 This describes multiple arguments. Only the last optarg
3285 for an option taking multiple arguments may be given in
3286 this form. If the pattern is empty (i.e., :*:), all the
3287 remaining words on the line are to be completed as
3288 described by the action; otherwise, all the words up to
3289 and including a word matching the pattern are to be com‐
3290 pleted using the action.
3291 Multiple colons are treated as for the `*:...' forms for
3293 ordinary arguments: when the message is preceded by two
3294 colons, the words special array and the CURRENT special
3295 parameter are modified during the execution or evaluation
3296 of the action to refer only to the words after the
3297 option. When preceded by three colons, they are modified
3298 to refer only to the words covered by this description.
3299 Any literal colon in an optname, message, or action must be preceded by
3301 a backslash, `\:'.
3302 Each of the forms above may be preceded by a list in parentheses of
3304 option names and argument numbers. If the given option is on the com‐
3305 mand line, the options and arguments indicated in parentheses will not
3306 be offered. For example, `(-two -three 1)-one:...' completes the
3307 option `-one'; if this appears on the command line, the options -two
3308 and -three and the first ordinary argument will not be completed after
3309 it. `(-foo):...' specifies an ordinary argument completion; -foo will
3310 not be completed if that argument is already present.
3311 Other items may appear in the list of excluded options to indicate var‐
3313 ious other items that should not be applied when the current specifica‐
3314 tion is matched: a single star (*) for the rest arguments (i.e. a spec‐
3315 ification of the form `*:...'); a colon (:) for all normal
3316 (non-option-) arguments; and a hyphen (-) for all options. For exam‐
3317 ple, if `(*)' appears before an option and the option appears on the
3318 command line, the list of remaining arguments (those shown in the above
3319 table beginning with `*:') will not be completed.
3320 To aid in reuse of specifications, it is possible to precede any of the
3322 forms above with `!'; then the form will no longer be completed,
3323 although if the option or argument appears on the command line they
3324 will be skipped as normal. The main use for this is when the arguments
3325 are given by an array, and _arguments is called repeatedly for more
3326 specific contexts: on the first call `_arguments $global_options' is
3327 used, and on subsequent calls `_arguments !$^global_options'.
3328 In each of the forms above the action determines how completions should
3330 be generated. Except for the `->string' form below, the action will be
3331 executed by calling the _all_labels function to process all tag labels.
3332 No special handling of tags is needed unless a function call introduces
3333 a new one.
3334 The forms for action are as follows.
3336 (single unquoted space)
3338 This is useful where an argument is required but it is not pos‐
3339 sible or desirable to generate matches for it. The message will
3340 be displayed but no completions listed. Note that even in this
3341 case the colon at the end of the message is needed; it may only
3342 be omitted when neither a message nor an action is given.
3343 (item1 item2 ...)
3345 One of a list of possible matches, for example:
3346 :foo:(foo bar baz)
3348 ((item1\:desc1 ...))
3350 Similar to the above, but with descriptions for each possible
3351 match. Note the backslash before the colon. For example,
3352 :foo:((a\:bar b\:baz))
3354 The matches will be listed together with their descriptions if
3356 the description style is set with the values tag in the context.
3357 ->string
3359 In this form, _arguments processes the arguments and options and
3360 then returns control to the calling function with parameters set
3361 to indicate the state of processing; the calling function then
3362 makes its own arrangements for generating completions. For
3363 example, functions that implement a state machine can use this
3364 type of action.
3365 Where _arguments encounters action in the `->string' format, it
3367 will strip all leading and trailing whitespace from string and
3368 set the array state to the set of all strings for which an
3369 action is to be performed. The elements of the array
3370 state_descr are assigned the corresponding message field from
3371 each optarg containing such an action.
3372 By default and in common with all other well behaved completion
3374 functions, _arguments returns status zero if it was able to add
3375 matches and non-zero otherwise. However, if the -R option is
3376 given, _arguments will instead return a status of 300 to indi‐
3377 cate that $state is to be handled.
3378 In addition to $state and $state_descr, _arguments also sets the
3380 global parameters `context', `line' and `opt_args' as described
3381 below, and does not reset any changes made to the special param‐
3382 eters such as PREFIX and words. This gives the calling function
3383 the choice of resetting these parameters or propagating changes
3384 in them.
3385 A function calling _arguments with at least one action contain‐
3387 ing a `->string' must therefore declare appropriate local param‐
3388 eters:
3389 local context state state_descr line
3391 typeset -A opt_args
3392 to prevent _arguments from altering the global environment.
3394 {eval-string}
3396 A string in braces is evaluated as shell code to generate
3397 matches. If the eval-string itself does not begin with an open‐
3398 ing parenthesis or brace it is split into separate words before
3399 execution.
3400 = action
3402 If the action starts with `= ' (an equals sign followed by a
3403 space), _arguments will insert the contents of the argument
3404 field of the current context as the new first element in the
3405 words special array and increment the value of the CURRENT spe‐
3406 cial parameter. This has the effect of inserting a dummy word
3407 onto the completion command line while not changing the point at
3408 which completion is taking place.
3409 This is most useful with one of the specifiers that restrict the
3411 words on the command line on which the action is to operate (the
3412 two- and three-colon forms above). One particular use is when
3413 an action itself causes _arguments on a restricted range; it is
3414 necessary to use this trick to insert an appropriate command
3415 name into the range for the second call to _arguments to be able
3416 to parse the line.
3417 word...
3419 word...
3420 This covers all forms other than those above. If the action
3421 starts with a space, the remaining list of words will be invoked
3422 unchanged.
3423 Otherwise it will be invoked with some extra strings placed
3425 after the first word; these are to be passed down as options to
3426 the compadd builtin. They ensure that the state specified by
3427 _arguments, in particular the descriptions of options and argu‐
3428 ments, is correctly passed to the completion command. These
3429 additional arguments are taken from the array parameter `expl';
3430 this will be set up before executing the action and hence may be
3431 referred to inside it, typically in an expansion of the form
3432 `$expl[@]' which preserves empty elements of the array.
3433 During the performance of the action the array `line' will be set to
3435 the command name and normal arguments from the command line, i.e. the
3436 words from the command line excluding all options and their arguments.
3437 Options are stored in the associative array `opt_args' with option
3438 names as keys and their arguments as the values. For options that have
3439 more than one argument these are given as one string, separated by
3440 colons. All colons in the original arguments are preceded with back‐
3441 slashes.
3442 The parameter `context' is set when returning to the calling function
3444 to perform an action of the form `->string'. It is set to an array of
3445 elements corresponding to the elements of $state. Each element is a
3446 suitable name for the argument field of the context: either a string of
3447 the form `option-opt-n' for the n'th argument of the option -opt, or a
3448 string of the form `argument-n' for the n'th argument. For `rest'
3449 arguments, that is those in the list at the end not handled by posi‐
3450 tion, n is the string `rest'. For example, when completing the argu‐
3451 ment of the -o option, the name is `option-o-1', while for the second
3452 normal (non-option-) argument it is `argument-2'.
3453 Furthermore, during the evaluation of the action the context name in
3455 the curcontext parameter is altered to append the same string that is
3456 stored in the context parameter.
3457 It is possible to specify multiple sets of options and arguments with
3459 the sets separated by single hyphens. The specifications before the
3460 first hyphen (if any) are shared by all the remaining sets. The first
3461 word in every other set provides a name for the set which may appear in
3462 exclusion lists in specifications, either alone or before one of the
3463 possible values described above. In the second case a `-' should
3464 appear between this name and the remainder.
3465 For example:
3467 _arguments \
3469 -a \
3470 - set1 \
3471 -c \
3472 - set2 \
3473 -d \
3474 ':arg:(x2 y2)'
3475 This defines two sets. When the command line contains the option `-c',
3477 the `-d' option and the argument will not be considered possible com‐
3478 pletions. When it contains `-d' or an argument, the option `-c' will
3479 not be considered. However, after `-a' both sets will still be consid‐
3480 ered valid.
3481 If the name given for one of the mutually exclusive sets is of the form
3483 `(name)' then only one value from each set will ever be completed; more
3484 formally, all specifications are mutually exclusive to all other speci‐
3485 fications in the same set. This is useful for defining multiple sets
3486 of options which are mutually exclusive and in which the options are
3487 aliases for each other. For example:
3488 _arguments \
3490 -a -b \
3491 - '(compress)' \
3492 {-c,--compress}'[compress]' \
3493 - '(uncompress)' \
3494 {-d,--decompress}'[decompress]'
3495 As the completion code has to parse the command line separately for
3497 each set this form of argument is slow and should only be used when
3498 necessary. A useful alternative is often an option specification with
3499 rest-arguments (as in `-foo:*:...'); here the option -foo swallows up
3500 all remaining arguments as described by the optarg definitions.
3501 The options -S and -A are available to simplify the specifications for
3503 commands with standard option parsing. With -S, no option will be com‐
3504 pleted after a `--' appearing on its own on the line; this argument
3505 will otherwise be ignored; hence in the line
3506 foobar -a -- -b
3508 the `-a' is considered an option but the `-b' is considered an argu‐
3510 ment, while the `--' is considered to be neither.
3511 With -A, no options will be completed after the first non-option argu‐
3513 ment on the line. The -A must be followed by a pattern matching all
3514 strings which are not to be taken as arguments. For example, to make
3515 _arguments stop completing options after the first normal argument, but
3516 ignoring all strings starting with a hyphen even if they are not
3517 described by one of the optspecs, the form is `-A "-*"'.
3518 The option `-O name' specifies the name of an array whose elements will
3520 be passed as arguments to functions called to execute actions. For
3521 example, this can be used to pass the same set of options for the com‐
3522 padd builtin to all actions.
3523 The option `-M spec' sets a match specification to use to completion
3525 option names and values. It must appear before the first argument
3526 specification. The default is `r:|[_-]=* r:|=*': this allows partial
3527 word completion after `_' and `-', for example `-f-b' can be completed
3528 to `-foo-bar'.
3529 The option -C tells _arguments to modify the curcontext parameter for
3531 an action of the form `->state'. This is the standard parameter used
3532 to keep track of the current context. Here it (and not the context
3533 array) should be made local to the calling function to avoid passing
3534 back the modified value and should be initialised to the current value
3535 at the start of the function:
3536 local curcontext="$curcontext"
3538 This is useful where it is not possible for multiple states to be valid
3540 together.
3541 The option `--' allows _arguments to work out the names of long options
3543 that support the `--help' option which is standard in many GNU com‐
3544 mands. The command word is called with the argument `--help' and the
3545 output examined for option names. Clearly, it can be dangerous to pass
3546 this to commands which may not support this option as the behaviour of
3547 the command is unspecified.
3548 In addition to options, `_arguments --' will try to deduce the types of
3550 arguments available for options when the form `--opt=val' is valid. It
3551 is also possible to provide hints by examining the help text of the
3552 command and adding specifiers of the form `pattern:message:action';
3553 note that normal _arguments specifiers are not used. The pattern is
3554 matched against the help text for an option, and if it matches the mes‐
3555 sage and action are used as for other argument specifiers. For exam‐
3556 ple:
3557 _arguments -- '*\*:toggle:(yes no)' \
3559 '*=FILE*:file:_files' \
3560 '*=DIR*:directory:_files -/' \
3561 '*=PATH*:directory:_files -/'
3562 Here, `yes' and `no' will be completed as the argument of options whose
3564 description ends in a star; file names will be completed for options
3565 that contain the substring `=FILE' in the description; and directories
3566 will be completed for options whose description contains `=DIR' or
3567 `=PATH'. The last three are in fact the default and so need not be
3568 given explicitly, although it is possible to override the use of these
3569 patterns. A typical help text which uses this feature is:
3570 -C, --directory=DIR change to directory DIR
3572 so that the above specifications will cause directories to be completed
3574 after `--directory', though not after `-C'.
3575 Note also that _arguments tries to find out automatically if the argu‐
3577 ment for an option is optional. This can be specified explicitly by
3578 doubling the colon before the message.
3579 If the pattern ends in `(-)', this will be removed from the pattern and
3581 the action will be used only directly after the `=', not in the next
3582 word. This is the behaviour of a normal specification defined with the
3583 form `=-'.
3584 The `_arguments --' can be followed by the option `-i patterns' to give
3586 patterns for options which are not to be completed. The patterns can
3587 be given as the name of an array parameter or as a literal list in
3588 parentheses. For example,
3589 _arguments -- -i \
3591 "(--(en|dis)able-FEATURE*)"
3592 will cause completion to ignore the options `--enable-FEATURE' and
3594 `--disable-FEATURE' (this example is useful with GNU configure).
3595 The `_arguments --' form can also be followed by the option `-s pair'
3597 to describe option aliases. Each pair consists of a pattern and a
3598 replacement. For example, some configure-scripts describe options only
3599 as `--enable-foo', but also accept `--disable-foo'. To allow comple‐
3600 tion of the second form:
3601 _arguments -- -s "(#--enable- --disable-)"
3603 Here is a more general example of the use of _arguments:
3605 _arguments '-l+:left border:' \
3607 '-format:paper size:(letter A4)' \
3608 '*-copy:output file:_files::resolution:(300 600)' \
3609 ':postscript file:_files -g \*.\(ps\|eps\)' \
3610 '*:page number:'
3611 This describes three options: `-l', `-format', and `-copy'. The first
3613 takes one argument described as `left border' for which no completion
3614 will be offered because of the empty action. Its argument may come
3615 directly after the `-l' or it may be given as the next word on the
3616 line.
3617 The `-format' option takes one argument in the next word, described as
3619 `paper size' for which only the strings `letter' and `A4' will be com‐
3620 pleted.
3621 The `-copy' option may appear more than once on the command line and
3623 takes two arguments. The first is mandatory and will be completed as a
3624 filename. The second is optional (because of the second colon before
3625 the description `resolution') and will be completed from the strings
3626 `300' and `600'.
3627 The last two descriptions say what should be completed as arguments.
3629 The first describes the first argument as a `postscript file' and makes
3630 files ending in `ps' or `eps' be completed. The last description gives
3631 all other arguments the description `page numbers' but does not offer
3632 completions.
3633 _cache_invalid cache_identifier
3635 This function returns status zero if the completions cache cor‐
3636 responding to the given cache identifier needs rebuilding. It
3637 determines this by looking up the cache-policy style for the
3638 current context. This should provide a function name which is
3639 run with the full path to the relevant cache file as the only
3640 argument.
3641 Example:
3643 _example_caching_policy () {
3645 # rebuild if cache is more than a week old
3646 local -a oldp
3647 oldp=( "$1"(Nm+7) )
3648 (( $#oldp ))
3649 }
3650 _call_function return name [ args ... ]
3652 If a function name exists, it is called with the arguments args.
3653 The return argument gives the name of a parameter in which the
3654 return status from the function name should be stored; if return
3655 is empty or a single hyphen it is ignored.
3656 The return status of _call_function itself is zero if the func‐
3658 tion name exists and was called and non-zero otherwise.
3659 _call_program tag string ...
3661 This function provides a mechanism for the user to override the
3662 use of an external command. It looks up the command style with
3663 the supplied tag. If the style is set, its value is used as the
3664 command to execute. The strings from the call to _call_program,
3665 or from the style if set, are concatenated with spaces between
3666 them and the resulting string is evaluated. The return status
3667 is the return status of the command called.
3668 _combination [ -s pattern ] tag style spec ... field opts ...
3670 This function is used to complete combinations of values, for
3671 example pairs of hostnames and usernames. The style argument
3672 gives the style which defines the pairs; it is looked up in a
3673 context with the tag specified.
3674 The style name consists of field names separated by hyphens, for
3676 example `users-hosts-ports'. For each field for a value is
3677 already known, a spec of the form `field=pattern' is given. For
3678 example, if the command line so far specifies a user `pws', the
3679 argument `users=pws' should appear.
3680 The next argument with no equals sign is taken as the name of
3682 the field for which completions should be generated (presumably
3683 not one of the fields for which the value is known).
3684 The matches generated will be taken from the value of the style.
3686 These should contain the possible values for the combinations in
3687 the appropriate order (users, hosts, ports in the example
3688 above). The different fields the values for the different
3689 fields are separated by colons. This can be altered with the
3690 option -s to _combination which specifies a pattern. Typically
3691 this is a character class, as for example `-s "[:@]"' in the
3692 case of the users-hosts style. Each `field=pattern' specifi‐
3693 cation restricts the completions which apply to elements of the
3694 style with appropriately matching fields.
3695 If no style with the given name is defined for the given tag, or
3697 if none of the strings in style's value match, but a function
3698 name of the required field preceded by an underscore is defined,
3699 that function will be called to generate the matches. For exam‐
3700 ple, if there is no `users-hosts-ports' or no matching hostname
3701 when a host is required, the function `_hosts' will automati‐
3702 cally be called.
3703 If the same name is used for more than one field, in both the
3705 `field=pattern' and the argument that gives the name of the
3706 field to be completed, the number of the field (starting with
3707 one) may be given after the fieldname, separated from it by a
3708 colon.
3709 All arguments after the required field name are passed to com‐
3711 padd when generating matches from the style value, or to the
3712 functions for the fields if they are called.
3713 _describe [ -oO | -t tag ] descr name1 [ name2 ] opts ... -- ...
3715 This function associates completions with descriptions. Multi‐
3716 ple groups separated by -- can be supplied, potentially with
3717 different completion options opts.
3718 The descr is taken as a string to display above the matches if
3720 the format style for the descriptions tag is set. This is fol‐
3721 lowed by one or two names of arrays followed by options to pass
3722 to compadd. The first array contains the possible completions
3723 with their descriptions in the form `completion:description'.
3724 Any literal colons in completion must be quoted with a back‐
3725 slash. If a second array is given, it should have the same num‐
3726 ber of elements as the first; in this case the corresponding
3727 elements are added as possible completions instead of the com‐
3728 pletion strings from the first array. The completion list will
3729 retain the descriptions from the first array. Finally, a set of
3730 completion options can appear.
3731 If the option `-o' appears before the first argument, the
3733 matches added will be treated as names of command options (N.B.
3734 not shell options), typically following a `-', `--' or `+' on
3735 the command line. In this case _describe uses the prefix-hid‐
3736 den, prefix-needed and verbose styles to find out if the strings
3737 should be added as completions and if the descriptions should be
3738 shown. Without the `-o' option, only the verbose style is used
3739 to decide how descriptions are shown. If `-O' is used instead
3740 of `-o', command options are completed as above but _describe
3741 will not handle the prefix-needed style.
3742 With the -t option a tag can be specified. The default is `val‐
3744 ues' or, if the -o option is given, `options'.
3745 If selected by the list-grouped style, strings with the same
3747 description will appear together in the list.
3748 _describe uses the _all_labels function to generate the matches,
3750 so it does not need to appear inside a loop over tag labels.
3751 _description [ -x ] [ -12VJ ] tag name descr [ spec ... ]
3753 This function is not to be confused with the previous one; it is
3754 used as a helper function for creating options to compadd. It
3755 is buried inside many of the higher level completion functions
3756 and so often does not need to be called directly.
3757 The styles listed below are tested in the current context using
3759 the given tag. The resulting options for compadd are put into
3760 the array named name (this is traditionally `expl', but this
3761 convention is not enforced). The description for the corre‐
3762 sponding set of matches is passed to the function in descr.
3763 The styles tested are: format, hidden, matcher, ignored-patterns
3765 and group-name. The format style is first tested for the given
3766 tag and then for the descriptions tag if no value was found,
3767 while the remainder are only tested for the tag given as the
3768 first argument. The function also calls _setup which tests some
3769 more styles.
3770 The string returned by the format style (if any) will be modi‐
3772 fied so that the sequence `%d' is replaced by the descr given as
3773 the third argument without any leading or trailing white space.
3774 If, after removing the white space, the descr is the empty
3775 string, the format style will not be used and the options put
3776 into the name array will not contain an explanation string to be
3777 displayed above the matches.
3778 If _description is called with more than three arguments, the
3780 additional specs should be of the form `char:str'. These supply
3781 escape sequence replacements for the format style: every appear‐
3782 ance of `%char' will be replaced by string.
3783 If the -x option is given, the description will be passed to
3785 compadd using the -x option instead of the default -X. This
3786 means that the description will be displayed even if there are
3787 no corresponding matches.
3788 The options placed in the array name take account of the
3790 group-name style, so matches are placed in a separate group
3791 where necessary. The group normally has its elements sorted (by
3792 passing the option -J to compadd), but if an option starting
3793 with `-V', `-J', `-1', or `-2' is passed to _description, that
3794 option will be included in the array. Hence it is possible for
3795 the completion group to be unsorted by giving the option `-V',
3796 `-1V', or `-2V'.
3797 In most cases, the function will be used like this:
3799 local expl
3801 _description files expl file
3802 compadd "$expl[@]" - "$files[@]"
3803 Note the use of the parameter expl, the hyphen, and the list of
3805 matches. Almost all calls to compadd within the completion sys‐
3806 tem use a similar format; this ensures that user-specified
3807 styles are correctly passed down to the builtins which implement
3808 the internals of completion.
3809 _dispatch context string ...
3811 This sets the current context to context and looks for comple‐
3812 tion functions to handle this context by hunting through the
3813 list of command names or special contexts (as described above
3814 for compdef) given as string .... The first completion function
3815 to be defined for one of the contexts in the list is used to
3816 generate matches. Typically, the last string is -default- to
3817 cause the function for default completion to be used as a fall‐
3818 back.
3819 The function sets the parameter $service to the string being
3821 tried, and sets the context/command field (the fourth) of the
3822 $curcontext parameter to the context given as the first argu‐
3823 ment.
3824 _files The function _files calls _path_files with all the arguments it
3826 was passed except for -g and -/. The use of these two options
3827 depends on the setting of the file-patterns style.
3828 This function accepts the full set of options allowed by
3830 _path_files, described below.
3831 _gnu_generic
3833 This function is a simple wrapper around the _arguments function
3834 described above. It can be used to determine automatically the
3835 long options understood by commands that produce a list when
3836 passed the option `--help'. It is intended to be used as a
3837 top-level completion function in its own right. For example, to
3838 enable option completion for the commands foo and bar, use
3839 compdef _gnu_generic foo bar
3841 after the call to compinit.
3843 The completion system as supplied is conservative in its use of
3845 this function, since it is important to be sure the command
3846 understands the option `--help'.
3847 _guard [ options ] pattern descr
3849 This function is intended to be used in the action for the spec‐
3850 ifications passed to _arguments and similar functions. It
3851 returns immediately with a non-zero return status if the string
3852 to be completed does not match the pattern. If the pattern
3853 matches, the descr is displayed; the function then returns sta‐
3854 tus zero if the word to complete is not empty, non-zero other‐
3855 wise.
3856 The pattern may be preceded by any of the options understood by
3858 compadd that are passed down from _description, namely -M, -J,
3859 -V, -1, -2, -n, -F and -X. All of these options will be
3860 ignored. This fits in conveniently with the argument-passing
3861 conventions of actions for _arguments.
3862 As an example, consider a command taking the options -n and
3864 -none, where -n must be followed by a numeric value in the same
3865 word. By using:
3866 _arguments '-n-: :_guard "[0-9]#" "numeric value"' '-none'
3868 _arguments can be made to both display the message `numeric
3870 value' and complete options after `-n<TAB>'. If the `-n' is
3871 already followed by one or more digits (the pattern passed to
3872 _guard) only the message will be displayed; if the `-n' is fol‐
3873 lowed by another character, only options are completed.
3874 _message [ -r12 ] [ -VJ group ] descr
3876 _message -e [ tag ] descr
3877 The descr is used in the same way as the third argument to the
3878 _description function, except that the resulting string will
3879 always be shown whether or not matches were generated. This is
3880 useful for displaying a help message in places where no comple‐
3881 tions can be generated.
3882 The format style is examined with the messages tag to find a
3884 message; the usual tag, descriptions, is used only if the style
3885 is not set with the former.
3886 If the -r option is given, no style is used; the descr is taken
3888 literally as the string to display. This is most useful when
3889 the descr comes from a pre-processed argument list which already
3890 contains an expanded description.
3891 The -12VJ options and the group are passed to compadd and hence
3893 determine the group the message string is added to.
3894 The second form gives a description for completions with the tag
3896 tag to be shown even if there are no matches for that tag. The
3897 tag can be omitted and if so the tag is taken from the parameter
3898 $curtag; this is maintained by the completion system and so is
3899 usually correct.
3900 _multi_parts sep array
3902 The argument sep is a separator character. The array may be
3903 either the name of an array parameter or a literal array in the
3904 form `(foo bar)', a parenthesised list of words separated by
3905 whitespace. The possible completions are the strings from the
3906 array. However, each chunk delimited by sep will be completed
3907 separately. For example, the _tar function uses `_multi_parts /
3908 patharray' to complete partial file paths from the given array
3909 of complete file paths.
3910 The -i option causes _multi_parts to insert a unique match even
3912 if that requires multiple separators to be inserted. This is
3913 not usually the expected behaviour with filenames, but certain
3914 other types of completion, for example those with a fixed set of
3915 possibilities, may be more suited to this form.
3916 Like other utility functions, this function accepts the `-V',
3918 `-J', `-1', `-2', `-n', `-f', `-X', `-M', `-P', `-S', `-r',
3919 `-R', and `-q' options and passes them to the compadd builtin.
3920 _next_label [ -x ] [ -12VJ ] tag name descr [ options ... ]
3922 This function is used to implement the loop over different tag
3923 labels for a particular tag as described above for the tag-order
3924 style. On each call it checks to see if there are any more tag
3925 labels; if there is it returns status zero, otherwise non-zero.
3926 As this function requires a current tag to be set, it must
3927 always follow a call to _tags or _requested.
3928 The -x12VJ options and the first three arguments are passed to
3930 the _description function. Where appropriate the tag will be
3931 replaced by a tag label in this call. Any description given in
3932 the tag-order style is preferred to the descr passed to
3933 _next_label.
3934 The options given after the descr are set in the parameter given
3936 by name, and hence are to be passed to compadd or whatever func‐
3937 tion is called to add the matches.
3938 Here is a typical use of this function for the tag foo. The
3940 call to _requested determines if tag foo is required at all; the
3941 loop over _next_label handles any labels defined for the tag in
3942 the tag-order style.
3943 local expl ret=1
3945 ...
3946 if _requested foo; then
3947 ...
3948 while _next_label foo expl '...'; do
3949 compadd "$expl[@]" ... && ret=0
3950 done
3951 ...
3952 fi
3953 return ret
3954 _normal
3956 This is the standard function called to handle completion out‐
3957 side any special -context-. It is called both to complete the
3958 command word and also the arguments for a command. In the sec‐
3959 ond case, _normal looks for a special completion for that com‐
3960 mand, and if there is none it uses the completion for the
3961 -default- context.
3962 A second use is to reexamine the command line specified by the
3964 $words array and the $CURRENT parameter after those have been
3965 modified. For example, the function _precommand, which com‐
3966 pletes after pre-command specifiers such as nohup, removes the
3967 first word from the words array, decrements the CURRENT parame‐
3968 ter, then calls _normal again. The effect is that `nohup cmd
3969 ...' is treated in the same way as `cmd ...'.
3970 If the command name matches one of the patterns given by one of
3972 the options -p or -P to compdef, the corresponding completion
3973 function is called and then the parameter _compskip is checked.
3974 If it is set completion is terminated at that point even if no
3975 matches have been found. This is the same effect as in the
3976 -first- context.
3977 _options
3979 This can be used to complete the names of shell options. It
3980 provides a matcher specification that ignores a leading `no',
3981 ignores underscores and allows upper-case letters to match their
3982 lower-case counterparts (for example, `glob', `noglob',
3983 `NO_GLOB' are all completed). Any arguments are propagated to
3984 the compadd builtin.
3985 _options_set and _options_unset
3987 These functions complete only set or unset options, with the
3988 same matching specification used in the _options function.
3989 Note that you need to uncomment a few lines in the _main_com‐
3991 plete function for these functions to work properly. The lines
3992 in question are used to store the option settings in effect
3993 before the completion widget locally sets the options it needs.
3994 Hence these functions are not generally used by the completion
3995 system.
3996 _parameters
3998 This is used to complete the names of shell parameters.
3999 The option `-g pattern' limits the completion to parameters
4001 whose type matches the pattern. The type of a parameter is that
4002 shown by `print ${(t)param}', hence judicious use of `*' in pat‐
4003 tern is probably necessary.
4004 All other arguments are passed to the compadd builtin.
4006 _path_files
4008 This function is used throughout the completion system to com‐
4009 plete filenames. It allows completion of partial paths. For
4010 example, the string `/u/i/s/sig' may be completed to
4011 `/usr/include/sys/signal.h'.
4012 The options accepted by both _path_files and _files are:
4014 -f Complete all filenames. This is the default.
4016 -/ Specifies that only directories should be completed.
4018 -g pattern
4020 Specifies that only files matching the pattern should be
4021 completed.
4022 -W paths
4024 Specifies path prefixes that are to be prepended to the
4025 string from the command line to generate the filenames
4026 but that should not be inserted as completions nor shown
4027 in completion listings. Here, paths may be the name of
4028 an array parameter, a literal list of paths enclosed in
4029 parentheses or an absolute pathname.
4030 -F ignored-files
4032 This behaves as for the corresponding option to the com‐
4033 padd builtin. It gives direct control over which file‐
4034 names should be ignored. If the option is not present,
4035 the ignored-patterns style is used.
4036 Both _path_files and _files also accept the following options
4038 which are passed to compadd: `-J', `-V', `-1', `-2', `-n', `-X',
4039 `-M', `-P', `-S', `-q', `-r', and `-R'.
4040 Finally, the _path_files function uses the styles expand,
4042 ambiguous, special-dirs, list-suffixes and file-sort described
4043 above.
4044 _pick_variant [ -b builtin-label ] [ -c
4046 command ] [ -r name ]
4047 label=pattern ... label [ args ... ]
4048 This function is used to resolve situations where a single com‐
4049 mand name requires more than one type of handling, either
4050 because it has more than one variant or because there is a name
4051 clash between two different commands.
4052 The command to run is taken from the first element of the array
4054 words unless this is overridden by the option -c. This command
4055 is run and its output is compared with a series of patterns.
4056 Arguments to be passed to the command can be specified at the
4057 end after all the other arguments. The patterns to try in order
4058 are given by the arguments label=pattern; if the output of `com‐
4059 mand args ...' contains pattern, then label is selected as the
4060 label for the command variant. If none of the patterns match,
4061 the final command label is selected and status 1 is returned.
4062 If the `-b builtin-label' is given, the command is tested to see
4064 if it is provided as a shell builtin, possibly autoloaded; if
4065 so, the label builtin-label is selected as the label for the
4066 variant.
4067 If the `-r name' is given, the label picked is stored in the
4069 parameter named name.
4070 The results are also cached in the _cmd_variant associative
4072 array indexed by the name of the command run.
4073 _regex_arguments name spec ...
4075 This function generates a completion function name which matches
4076 the specifications spec ..., a set of regular expressions as
4077 described below. After running _regex_arguments, the function
4078 name should be called as a normal completion function. The pat‐
4079 tern to be matched is given by the contents of the words array
4080 up to the current cursor position joined together with null
4081 characters; no quotation is applied.
4082 The arguments are grouped as sets of alternatives separated by
4084 `|', which are tried one after the other until one matches.
4085 Each alternative consists of a one or more specifications which
4086 are tried left to right, with each pattern matched being
4087 stripped in turn from the command line being tested, until all
4088 of the group succeeds or until one fails; in the latter case,
4089 the next alternative is tried. This structure can be repeated
4090 to arbitrary depth by using parentheses; matching proceeds from
4091 inside to outside.
4092 A special procedure is applied if no test succeeds but the
4094 remaining command line string contains no null character (imply‐
4095 ing the remaining word is the one for which completions are to
4096 be generated). The completion target is restricted to the
4097 remaining word and any actions for the corresponding patterns
4098 are executed. In this case, nothing is stripped from the com‐
4099 mand line string. The order of evaluation of the actions can be
4100 determined by the tag-order style; the various formats supported
4101 by _alternative can be used in action. The descr is used for
4102 setting up the array parameter expl.
4103 Specification arguments take one of following forms, in which
4105 metacharacters such as `(', `)', `#' and `|' should be quoted.
4106 /pattern/ [%lookahead%] [-guard] [:tag:descr:action]
4108 This is a single primitive component. The function tests
4109 whether the combined pattern `(#b)((#B)pattern)looka‐
4110 head*' matches the command line string. If so, `guard'
4111 is evaluated and its return status is examined to deter‐
4112 mine if the test has succeeded. The pattern string `[]'
4113 is guaranteed never to match. The lookahead is not
4114 stripped from the command line before the next pattern is
4115 examined.
4116 The argument starting with : is used in the same manner
4118 as an argument to _alternative.
4119 A component is used as follows: pattern is tested to see
4121 if the component already exists on the command line. If
4122 it does, any following specifications are examined to
4123 find something to complete. If a component is reached
4124 but no such pattern exists yet on the command line, the
4125 string containing the action is used to generate matches
4126 to insert at that point.
4127 /pattern/+ [%lookahead%] [-guard] [:tag:descr:action]
4129 This is similar to `/pattern/ ...' but the left part of
4130 the command line string (i.e. the part already matched by
4131 previous patterns) is also considered part of the comple‐
4132 tion target.
4133 /pattern/- [%lookahead%] [-guard] [:tag:descr:action]
4135 This is similar to `/pattern/ ...' but the actions of the
4136 current and previously matched patterns are ignored even
4137 if the following `pattern' matches the empty string.
4138 ( spec )
4140 Parentheses may be used to groups specs; note each paren‐
4141 thesis is a single argument to _regex_arguments.
4142 spec # This allows any number of repetitions of spec.
4144 spec spec
4146 The two specs are to be matched one after the other as
4147 described above.
4148 spec | spec
4150 Either of the two specs can be matched.
4151 The function _regex_words can be used as a helper function to
4153 generate matches for a set of alternative words possibly with
4154 their own arguments as a command line argument.
4155 Examples:
4157 _regex_arguments _tst /$'[^\0]#\0'/ \
4159 /$'[^\0]#\0'/ :'compadd aaa'
4160 This generates a function _tst that completes aaa as its only
4162 argument. The tag and description for the action have been
4163 omitted for brevity (this works but is not recommended in normal
4164 use). The first component matches the command word, which is
4165 arbitrary; the second matches any argument. As the argument is
4166 also arbitrary, any following component would not depend on aaa
4167 being present.
4168 _regex_arguments _tst /$'[^\0]#\0'/ \
4170 /$'aaa\0'/ :'compadd aaa'
4171 This is a more typical use; it is similar, but any following
4173 patterns would only match if aaa was present as the first argu‐
4174 ment.
4175 _regex_arguments _tst /$'[^\0]#\0'/ \( \
4177 /$'aaa\0'/ :'compadd aaa' \
4178 /$'bbb\0'/ :'compadd bbb' \) \#
4179 In this example, an indefinite number of command arguments may
4181 be completed. Odd arguments are completed as aaa and even argu‐
4182 ments as bbb. Completion fails unless the set of aaa and bbb
4183 arguments before the current one is matched correctly.
4184 _regex_arguments _tst /$'[^\0]#\0'/ \
4186 \( /$'aaa\0'/ :'compadd aaa' \| \
4187 /$'bbb\0'/ :'compadd bbb' \) \#
4188 This is similar, but either aaa or bbb may be completed for any
4190 argument. In this case _regex_words could be used to generate a
4191 suitable expression for the arguments.
4192 _regex_words tag description spec ...
4194 This function can be used to generate arguments for the
4195 _regex_arguments command which may be inserted at any point
4196 where a set of rules is expected. The tag and description give
4197 a standard tag and description pertaining to the current con‐
4198 text. Each spec contains two or three arguments separated by a
4199 colon: note that there is no leading colon in this case.
4200 Each spec gives one of a set of words that may be completed at
4202 this point, together with arguments. It is thus roughly equiva‐
4203 lent to the _arguments function when used in normal (non-regex)
4204 completion.
4205 The part of the spec before the first colon is the word to be
4207 completed. This may contain a *; the entire word, before and
4208 after the * is completed, but only the text before the * is
4209 required for the context to be matched, so that further argu‐
4210 ments may be completed after the abbreviated form.
4211 The second part of spec is a description for the word being com‐
4213 pleted.
4214 The optional third part of the spec describes how words follow‐
4216 ing the one being completed are themselves to be completed. It
4217 will be evaluated in order to avoid problems with quoting. This
4218 means that typically it contains a reference to an array con‐
4219 taining previously generated regex arguments.
4220 The option -t term specifies a terminator for the word instead
4222 of the usual space. This is handled as an auto-removable suffix
4223 in the manner of the option -s sep to _values.
4224 The result of the processing by _regex_words is placed in the
4226 array reply, which should be made local to the calling function.
4227 If the set of words and arguments may be matched repeatedly, a #
4228 should be appended to the generated array at that point.
4229 For example:
4231 local -a reply
4233 _regex_words mydb-commands 'mydb commands' \
4234 'add:add an entry to mydb:$mydb_add_cmds' \
4235 'show:show entries in mydb'
4236 _regex_arguments _mydb "$reply[@]"
4237 _mydb "$@"
4238 This shows a completion function for a command mydb which takes
4240 two command arguments, add and show. show takes no arguments,
4241 while the arguments for add have already been prepared in an
4242 array mydb_add_cmds, quite possibly by a previous call to
4243 _regex_words.
4244 _requested [ -x ] [ -12VJ ] tag [ name descr [ command args ... ] ]
4246 This function is called to decide whether a tag already regis‐
4247 tered by a call to _tags (see below) has been requested by the
4248 user and hence completion should be performed for it. It
4249 returns status zero if the tag is requested and non-zero other‐
4250 wise. The function is typically used as part of a loop over
4251 different tags as follows:
4252 _tags foo bar baz
4254 while _tags; do
4255 if _requested foo; then
4256 ... # perform completion for foo
4257 fi
4258 ... # test the tags bar and baz in the same way
4259 ... # exit loop if matches were generated
4260 done
4261 Note that the test for whether matches were generated is not
4263 performed until the end of the _tags loop. This is so that the
4264 user can set the tag-order style to specify a set of tags to be
4265 completed at the same time.
4266 If name and descr are given, _requested calls the _description
4268 function with these arguments together with the options passed
4269 to _requested.
4270 If command is given, the _all_labels function will be called
4272 immediately with the same arguments. In simple cases this makes
4273 it possible to perform the test for the tag and the matching in
4274 one go. For example:
4275 local expl ret=1
4277 _tags foo bar baz
4278 while _tags; do
4279 _requested foo expl 'description' \
4280 compadd foobar foobaz && ret=0
4281 ...
4282 (( ret )) || break
4283 done
4284 If the command is not compadd, it must nevertheless be prepared
4286 to handle the same options.
4287 _retrieve_cache cache_identifier
4289 This function retrieves completion information from the file
4290 given by cache_identifier, stored in a directory specified by
4291 the cache-path style which defaults to ~/.zcompcache. The
4292 return status is zero if retrieval was successful. It will only
4293 attempt retrieval if the use-cache style is set, so you can call
4294 this function without worrying about whether the user wanted to
4295 use the caching layer.
4296 See _store_cache below for more details.
4298 _sep_parts
4300 This function is passed alternating arrays and separators as
4301 arguments. The arrays specify completions for parts of strings
4302 to be separated by the separators. The arrays may be the names
4303 of array parameters or a quoted list of words in parentheses.
4304 For example, with the array `hosts=(ftp news)' the call
4305 `_sep_parts '(foo bar)' @ hosts' will complete the string `f'
4306 to `foo' and the string `b@n' to `bar@news'.
4307 This function accepts the compadd options `-V', `-J', `-1',
4309 `-2', `-n', `-X', `-M', `-P', `-S', `-r', `-R', and `-q' and
4310 passes them on to the compadd builtin used to add the matches.
4311 _setup tag [ group ]
4313 This function sets up the special parameters used by the comple‐
4314 tion system appropriately for the tag given as the first argu‐
4315 ment. It uses the styles list-colors, list-packed,
4316 list-rows-first, last-prompt, accept-exact, menu and force-list.
4317 The optional group supplies the name of the group in which the
4319 matches will be placed. If it is not given, the tag is used as
4320 the group name.
4321 This function is called automatically from _description and
4323 hence is not normally called explicitly.
4324 _store_cache cache_identifier params ...
4326 This function, together with _retrieve_cache and _cache_invalid,
4327 implements a caching layer which can be used in any completion
4328 function. Data obtained by costly operations are stored in
4329 parameters; this function then dumps the values of those parame‐
4330 ters to a file. The data can then be retrieved quickly from
4331 that file via _retrieve_cache, even in different instances of
4332 the shell.
4333 The cache_identifier specifies the file which the data should be
4335 dumped to. The file is stored in a directory specified by the
4336 cache-path style which defaults to ~/.zcompcache. The remaining
4337 params arguments are the parameters to dump to the file.
4338 The return status is zero if storage was successful. The func‐
4340 tion will only attempt storage if the use-cache style is set, so
4341 you can call this function without worrying about whether the
4342 user wanted to use the caching layer.
4343 The completion function may avoid calling _retrieve_cache when
4345 it already has the completion data available as parameters.
4346 However, in that case it should call _cache_invalid to check
4347 whether the data in the parameters and in the cache are still
4348 valid.
4349 See the _perl_modules completion function for a simple example
4351 of the usage of the caching layer.
4352 _tags [ [ -C name ] tags ... ]
4354 If called with arguments, these are taken to be the names of
4355 tags valid for completions in the current context. These tags
4356 are stored internally and sorted by using the tag-order style.
4357 Next, _tags is called repeatedly without arguments from the same
4359 completion function. This successively selects the first, sec‐
4360 ond, etc. set of tags requested by the user. The return status
4361 is zero if at least one of the tags is requested and non-zero
4362 otherwise. To test if a particular tag is to be tried, the
4363 _requested function should be called (see above).
4364 If `-C name' is given, name is temporarily stored in the argu‐
4366 ment field (the fifth) of the context in the curcontext parame‐
4367 ter during the call to _tags; the field is restored on exit.
4368 This allows _tags to use a more specific context without having
4369 to change and reset the curcontext parameter (which has the same
4370 effect).
4371 _values [ -O name ] [ -s sep ] [ -S sep ] [ -wC ] desc spec ...
4373 This is used to complete arbitrary keywords (values) and their
4374 arguments, or lists of such combinations.
4375 If the first argument is the option `-O name', it will be used
4377 in the same way as by the _arguments function. In other words,
4378 the elements of the name array will be passed to compadd when
4379 executing an action.
4380 If the first argument (or the first argument after `-O name') is
4382 `-s', the next argument is used as the character that separates
4383 multiple values. This character is automatically added after
4384 each value in an auto-removable fashion (see below); all values
4385 completed by `_values -s' appear in the same word on the command
4386 line, unlike completion using _arguments. If this option is not
4387 present, only a single value will be completed per word.
4388 Normally, _values will only use the current word to determine
4390 which values are already present on the command line and hence
4391 are not to be completed again. If the -w option is given, other
4392 arguments are examined as well.
4393 The first non-option argument is used as a string to print as a
4395 description before listing the values.
4396 All other arguments describe the possible values and their argu‐
4398 ments in the same format used for the description of options by
4399 the _arguments function (see above). The only differences are
4400 that no minus or plus sign is required at the beginning, values
4401 can have only one argument, and the forms of action beginning
4402 with an equal sign are not supported.
4403 The character separating a value from its argument can be set
4405 using the option -S (like -s, followed by the character to use
4406 as the separator in the next argument). By default the equals
4407 sign will be used as the separator between values and arguments.
4408 Example:
4410 _values -s , 'description' \
4412 '*foo[bar]' \
4413 '(two)*one[number]:first count:' \
4414 'two[another number]::second count:(1 2 3)'
4415 This describes three possible values: `foo', `one', and `two'.
4417 The first is described as `bar', takes no argument and may
4418 appear more than once. The second is described as `number', may
4419 appear more than once, and takes one mandatory argument
4420 described as `first count'; no action is specified, so it will
4421 not be completed. The `(two)' at the beginning says that if the
4422 value `one' is on the line, the value `two' will no longer be
4423 considered a possible completion. Finally, the last value
4424 (`two') is described as `another number' and takes an optional
4425 argument described as `second count' for which the completions
4426 (to appear after an `=') are `1', `2', and `3'. The _values
4427 function will complete lists of these values separated by com‐
4428 mas.
4429 Like _arguments, this function temporarily adds another context
4431 name component to the arguments element (the fifth) of the cur‐
4432 rent context while executing the action. Here this name is just
4433 the name of the value for which the argument is completed.
4434 The style verbose is used to decide if the descriptions for the
4436 values (but not those for the arguments) should be printed.
4437 The associative array val_args is used to report values and
4439 their arguments; this works similarly to the opt_args associa‐
4440 tive array used by _arguments. Hence the function calling _val‐
4441 ues should declare the local parameters state, state_descr,
4442 line, context and val_args:
4443 local context state state_descr line
4445 typeset -A val_args
4446 when using an action of the form `->string'. With this function
4448 the context parameter will be set to the name of the value whose
4449 argument is to be completed. Note that for _values, the state
4450 and state_descr are scalars rather than arrays. Only a single
4451 matching state is returned.
4452 Note also that _values normally adds the character used as the
4454 separator between values as an auto-removable suffix (similar to
4455 a `/' after a directory). However, this is not possible for a
4456 `->string' action as the matches for the argument are generated
4457 by the calling function. To get the usual behaviour, the call‐
4458 ing function can add the separator x as a suffix by passing the
4459 options `-qS x' either directly or indirectly to compadd.
4460 The option -C is treated in the same way as it is by _arguments.
4462 In that case the parameter curcontext should be made local
4463 instead of context (as described above).
4464 _wanted [ -x ] [ -C name ] [ -12VJ ] tag name descr command args ...
4466 In many contexts, completion can only generate one particular
4467 set of matches, usually corresponding to a single tag. However,
4468 it is still necessary to decide whether the user requires
4469 matches of this type. This function is useful in such a case.
4470 The arguments to _wanted are the same as those to _requested,
4472 i.e. arguments to be passed to _description. However, in this
4473 case the command is not optional; all the processing of tags,
4474 including the loop over both tags and tag labels and the genera‐
4475 tion of matches, is carried out automatically by _wanted.
4476 Hence to offer only one tag and immediately add the correspond‐
4478 ing matches with the given description:
4479 local expl
4481 _wanted tag expl 'description' \
4482 compadd matches...
4483 Note that, as for _requested, the command must be able to accept
4485 options to be passed down to compadd.
4486 Like _tags this function supports the -C option to give a dif‐
4488 ferent name for the argument context field. The -x option has
4489 the same meaning as for _description.
4490
4492 In the source distribution, the files are contained in various subdi‐
4493 rectories of the Completion directory. They may have been installed in
4494 the same structure, or into one single function directory. The follow‐
4495 ing is a description of the files found in the original directory
4496 structure. If you wish to alter an installed file, you will need to
4497 copy it to some directory which appears earlier in your fpath than the
4498 standard directory where it appears.
4499 Base The core functions and special completion widgets automatically
4501 bound to keys. You will certainly need most of these, though
4502 will probably not need to alter them. Many of these are docu‐
4503 mented above.
4504 Zsh Functions for completing arguments of shell builtin commands and
4506 utility functions for this. Some of these are also used by
4507 functions from the Unix directory.
4508 Unix Functions for completing arguments of external commands and
4510 suites of commands. They may need modifying for your system,
4511 although in many cases some attempt is made to decide which ver‐
4512 sion of a command is present. For example, completion for the
4513 mount command tries to determine the system it is running on,
4514 while completion for many other utilities try to decide whether
4515 the GNU version of the command is in use, and hence whether the
4516 --help option is supported.
4517 X, AIX, BSD, ...
4519 Completion and utility function for commands available only on
4520 some systems. These are not arranged hierarchically, so, for
4521 example, both the Linux and Debian directories, as well as the X
4522 directory, may be useful on your system.
4523zsh 5.0.2 December 21, 2012 ZSHCOMPSYS(1)