Manual tab completions in zsh

autocompletezsh

I would like nm[TAB] to expand to node_modules in zsh. Is this possible? How can it be done?

Ideally, it wouldn't be triggered if there is another completion available, such as an already existing nm directory, and only trigger if there is a node_modules folder that exists, and complete if it is a part of a path, such as cd nm/mo[TAB] -> cd node_modules/moment.

Best Answer

Short & sweet answer

Try my zsh-autocomplete plugin. It configures Zsh's completion system to do what you're asking for out of the box, plus lots of other useful features.

Longer, DIY answer

To get fuzzy completion in Zsh, add this to your .zshrc:

zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list 'r:|?=**'

What this does is tell the completion system to allow any number of characters added anywhere to the string you've typed.

Next, to get the thing you want with directories, add this:

zstyle ':completion:*' accept-exact-dirs true
zstyle ':completion:*' list-suffixes true

accept-exact-dirs makes it so that when you have two dirs nm and node_modules and you type nm, it will never try to complete it to the latter.
list-suffixes tells it to try to complete every partial directory name in the path you've entered and not just the first one.

To get the accept-exact-dirs-style behavior also for all other completions, add this:

zstyle ':completion:*' accept-exact true

More info can be found here: http://zsh.sourceforge.net/Doc/Release/Completion-System.html#Standard-Styles

Related Solutions

Completing avfs fake directories in zsh

A fake answer appears insufficient for this fake question; the zsh builtin support for automount directories operates on directories (fake-files dir:names), and not on file patterns therein. This is handy to add specific named files to a directory, which may suit automount or sshfs or NetApp .snapshot type setups where the directory-to-be-mounted is a known static name, ALAS.

autoload -U compinit
compinit
zstyle ':completion:*' fake-files $HOME/.avfs:'ALAS POOR YORICK'

zshall(1) says the "names" are strings, and experiments indicate metacharacters (e.g. # or \# or '*(e:"echo hi":)') "do not work" in various ways, so there is no way I know of to sneak a glob onto the names portion of the fake-files statement. (Delving through Src/Zle/computil.c might reveal exactly what the names can be, but that would be more work.) (Also, using recursive globs in the directory position to name archive files did not fly, but again it will take C diving to see how much fake-files lets you get away with.)

With compdef, one can list the .avfs directory completions:

compdef '_files -g $HOME/.avfs/\*' -p \^
function andthehash {
  reply=($REPLY $REPLY\#)
}
compdef "_files -g $HOME/.avfs/'*(+andthehash)'" -p \^

Except this fails, as it will only show the # files when it does not matter, and thus cannot complete on them. (There are productive uses for this form, though not for this case.)

Using zstyle gets you closer, with the following .zshrc:

autoload -U compinit
compinit

function UnderAVFS {
  local pdir
  [[ -z $1 ]] && return 1
  pdir=$1:a
  [[ ! -d $pdir ]] && pdir=$pdir:h
  [[ ! -d $pdir || $pdir == . ]] && return 1
  while [[ $pdir != / ]]; do
    [[ $pdir == $HOME/.avfs ]] && return 0
    pdir=$pdir:h
  done
  return 1
}

function AVFSExtras {
  if UnderAVFS $REPLY; then
    reply=($REPLY)
    # TODO embiggen list of archive suffixes
    [[ $REPLY == *.(bz2|tbz2) ]] && reply+=($REPLY\#)
  fi
}

# Try to match avfs, otherwise the default pattern. Probably could greatly
# benefit from caching, to avoid hits on UnderAVFS function.
zstyle ':completion:*' file-patterns '*(+AVFSExtras):avfs-files' '%p:all-files'

However, it can only complete up to the \#/ bit (on a debian squeeze virt with a default avfs setup), but not into the virtual filesystem for an archive, so additional work will be necessary to tab complete into the archives. I'm guessing via _call_program ... ls or something along those lines for completions at the \# bit, unless there's a more elegant way to con zsh into believing that directories that do not exist do.

Bad news! The completion does not make it through _path_files for the fake directories; I suspect this is zsh globbing related. Both zsh 4.something on and zsh 5.0.8 exhibit the problem. So I suspect that a complete fix would require patches to _path_files, or to write something different that otherwise completes on these fake dirs. A completion debugging trace can be generated by typing in ls /root/.avfs/root/sometar.gz\#/ and then at the end of that typing control-x and then ?, assuming bindkey -e and that _complete_debug is bound to said keycombo, if someone wants to delve through why this is failing.

Tab completion of “../” in zsh

Add this to your .zshrc and ..[TAB] will complete to ../ as per bash.

zstyle ':completion:*' special-dirs true