Re: compgen -I (programmable completion as if initial word)

[Chet Ramey]

On 9/24/24 3:15 PM, Stephen Gildea wrote:
> I would like these two partially entered commands to complete the
> same way:
>
> $ ca<Tab>
> $ sudo ca<Tab>
>
> The first completion nicely takes into account any previous
> "complete -I" setting (because it is completing the initial
> word of a command).
>
> But the second completion relies on a programmable completion,
> and in Bash 5.2 it is hard to program the same behavior.  In
> particular, the programmed completion cannot easily tell Bash
> to obey my -I setting.
>
> I can get _almost_ the same effect by having the "sudo" compspec
> run "compgen -c" (generate completions over command names), but
> that would ignore my -I setting.
>
> I would like to be able to say "compgen -I" in my compspec and
> have Bash generate completions as if this were the initial
> word of a command, applying whatever settings it would to an
> actual initial word.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will add it to the requested feature list
for a future bash version.

Chet


--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/