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Asked: 2009-07-17 07:12:48 +0800 CST

Bash completion dynamic behavior

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I would like to have 2 different behavior of "tab" depending of the usage context.
I would like to have the default behavior of bind '"\t":complete' any time except when users are trying to complete arguments of the "mybashfunction" command. In this case I call a special function to generate the completion, but I would like "tab" to work like if bind '"\t":menu-complete' was set.

bash command-line-interface

3 Answers

  1. I believe that its readline library will only support one kind of tab-completion behaviour at a time.

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  2. Is this what you're looking for? Bash: menu-complete only for few matches

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  3. You can achieve this by using bash complete rules ...

    _myfunc() {
    _opts="zero one two"
    # COMPREPLY is bash built-in for array of possible completions
    COMPREPLY=()
    # cur & prev are current & previous words typed in shell
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
    prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"
    COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "${_opts}" -- ${cur} ))
    return 0
}
complete -F _myfunc myfunc

    This won't touch bash's normal completion but when you tab complete myfunc you'll have "zero one two" as possible completions.

    Edit: oh yeah, jam this into your bashrc or similar so it's sourced in new shells.

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