Zsh apt list options completion

autocompletezsh

I'm used to using tab completion in bash to get apt list --upgradable by typing apt ltab--utab, but I can't do the same thing with zsh: --u doesn't expand to --upgradable when I press tab.

I googled up some solutions suggesting installing zsh-completions and adding setopt completealiases to ./zshrc, but neither of these helped.

Is there any way to make it work like it did in bash?

Best Answer

It's an old question but since this has bugged me as well I took a look. I couldn't make heads of tails out of the zsh completion stuff for apt and trying to use the bash completion in zsh via bashcompinit failed also.

However, I'm happy to report that this has been fixed as of version 5.8 of zsh which was released in early 2020. That version of zsh is bundled with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS and will be in the soon to be released Debian 11.

The commit is actually here: zsh commit 44614: apt list option completion

Related Solutions

Add arguments from previous command to zsh completion

You can add your completer to the list of completers used by default:

zstyle ':completion:*' completer _last_command_args _complete

Zsh alias expansion

Try looking up zsh abbreviations. They allow you to enter an "abbreviation" which automatically gets replaced with its full form when you hit a magic key such as space. So you can create one which changes ...<SPACE> to ../...

For example, this is what you need in your profile:

typeset -A abbrevs
abbrevs=(
        "..." "../.."
        "...." "../../.."        
)

#create aliases for the abbrevs too
for abbr in ${(k)abbrevs}; do
   alias -g $abbr="${abbrevs[$abbr]}"
done

my-expand-abbrev() {
    local MATCH
    LBUFFER=${LBUFFER%%(#m)[_a-zA-Z0-9]#}
    LBUFFER+=${abbrevs[$MATCH]:-$MATCH}
    zle self-insert
}

zle -N my-expand-abbrev    
bindkey " " my-expand-abbrev 
bindkey -M isearch " " self-insert

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Add arguments from previous command to zsh completion

Zsh alias expansion

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