Zsh completion for media player

autocompletezsh

In my .zshrc, I have menu select disabled globally, except for mpv/mplayer:

zstyle ':completion:*' menu select=0
zstyle ':completion::complete:mpv:*' menu yes select

This works as expected, but I would like to modify the rule so that when menu is invoked, mpv only shows media files, ie 'mp3|mp4|mpg|avi|…'

I tried to change * to *.mp3 to test it, but that does not work.

How do I have to modify my rule?

Best Answer

zstyle completion settings affect how completions are displayed, and can tune how completions are generated, but does not determine the code to generate completions. That code is set with compdef, compctl or equivalent methods.

If you just want to specify media files as completions for mpv, call compctl in your .zshrc:

compctl -/ -g '*.(#i)(mp3|mp4|mpg|avi)' mpv

The -/ option says to complete directories in addition to other completions (otherwise you wouldn't be able to reach files in subdirectories). The -g option specifies a glob pattern to select files for completion. (#i) causes a case-insensitive match.

For a more complex selection of completions, write a function (out of scope for this answer) and associate it with the command with compdef or through autoload magic. This function can query zstyle styles if it wants to tune how it generates completions.

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Cancel zsh tab completion

A SIGINT interrupts the current completion operation and brings you back to the line editor. So press Ctrl+C. The effect might not be immediate: the interpreter only checks for signals at certain points during execution (they're frequent, though), and the signal might take a while if the zsh process is blocked in a system call (for example, if it's waiting for a filesystem to respond).

Unfortunately, if you press Ctrl+C at the wrong time and there is no completion in progress by the time the signal is delivered, your current command line will be canceled. This is difficult to fix without having two different interrupt keys, one for completion and one for the rest, and I'm not sure if zsh supports this.

It's not really feasible to warn you if a completion might take a long time. The speed of a completion function is often mainly driven by the speed at which some information can be read from the filesystem; whether this information is in cache or not, how much there is, and what kind of a filesystem it is (e.g. ramdisk, hard disk or NFS mount) has a lot of influence.

Zsh: menu completion for glob

% PS1='%% ' exec zsh -f
% autoload -U compinit && compinit
% setopt GLOB_COMPLETE
% touch aa ab ac ad
% vim a*

Will cycle through the options; and then for a menu (on, like, everything)

% zstyle ':completion*:default' menu 'select=0'
% vim a*

For more information see zshoptions(1) and the "From Bash to Z Shell" book for slightly readable docs on the completion system.

Menu completion on demand would require a custom widget:

function blaah {
  local revert
  revert=0
  if [[ $options[(k)globcomplete] = off ]]; then
    setopt globcomplete
    revert=1
  fi
  zle menu-expand-or-complete
  if [[ $revert -eq 1 ]]; then
    unsetopt globcomplete
  fi
}
zle -N blaah

# or perhaps additionally 'vicmd' or instead 'emacs', depending
binkey -M viins "^W" blaah

Best Answer

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Zsh: menu completion for glob

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