ZSH tab completion: only complete files and not binaries

autocompletevimzsh

Is it possible to make a custom zsh completion file,so when hitting tab for filenames it avoids completing the binaries?
For example,I have 2 files , myprogram.c and myprogram,the binary,is it possible so when I do vim myprog(tab) it automagically completes it to myprogram.c,not myprogram?
Thanks in advance!

Best Answer

You can ignore some patterns in completions by tuning completion styles with the zstyle built-in. There are examples in the zsh guide.

For example, to ignore *.o files when completing files to edit with vim, you can put this in your .zshrc:

zstyle ':completion:*:*:vim:*:*files' ignored-patterns '*.o'

This won't work to exclude executables in a useful way. You can exclude *~*.*, or more precisely (|*/)[^/.]##, but this excludes every file name that doesn't contain a ., including scripts and even worse directories. As far as I know, the completion ignore mechanism can't check for the existence or type of files, it just matches text patterns.

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Git completion with zsh: filenames with spaces aren’t being escaped properly

This bug is mentioned on the mailing list.

The fix is to edit the file git-completion.zsh and remove the -Q option from compadd, in in __gitcomp_file.

--- i/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh
+++ w/contrib/completion/git-completion.zsh
@@ -90,7 +90,7 @@ __gitcomp_file ()

    local IFS=$'\n'
    compset -P '*[=:]'
-   compadd -Q -p "${2-}" -f -- ${=1} && _ret=0
+   compadd -p "${2-}" -f -- ${=1} && _ret=0
 }

 __git_zsh_bash_func ()

This file is installed from the contrib/completion directory, and its path may vary with your package manager. If you installed with homebrew on macOS, it's located in /usr/local/Cellar/git/2.10.2/share/zsh/site-functions.

Zsh: separate completion for command names and filenames

Generally speaking, you need to refine the zstyle call so that it doesn't apply to all completions, but only to file completion. For an ordinary completion, the syntax of the context specifier is :completion:WIDGET:COMPLETER:COMMAND:ARGUMENT:TAG.

WIDGET is only set by some special widgets, leave it generic (*).
COMPLETER is complete for normal completion, and can have other values for tasks such as autocorrection.
COMMAND is typically the name of the command whose arguments are being completed. More precisely, it's the word after compdef. Some complex commands change it while completing subcommands. For special places in the shell syntax, it's a context name between dashes, such as -parameter after a $ or -command- for the first word in a command.
ARGUMENT is typically something like argument-3 for the third non-option argument or option--foo-1 for the argument to the option --foo.
TAG is used internally by some completion function, often but not always one of the conventional tag names.

In zstyle declarations, more specific declarations take precedence over less specific ones.

A declaration with more colons (:) is more specific than one with fewer colons.
With an equal number of columns, a declaration is at least as specific than another if each colon-delimited part is at least as specific the corresponding part in the other. For a each part:
- * is more specific than anything else.
- Anything with wildcards is more specific than a simple string without wildcards.

Thus, in general, to make an exception for command names, just add another zstyle declaration that's specifically about commands.

However, there's a twist: matcher-list is applied globally, not in the context of completion. In your case, as long as you only want a single matcher, you can use matcher instead.

zstyle ':completion:*' matcher 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z} l:|=* r:|=*'
zstyle ':completion:*:*:-command-:*' matcher 'm:{a-zA-Z}={A-Za-z}'

Best Answer

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Git completion with zsh: filenames with spaces aren’t being escaped properly

Zsh: separate completion for command names and filenames

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