Re: [RFC] support 'COMP_WORDBREAKS' value on a per-completion basis

[Chet Ramey]

On 5/30/11 2:05 PM, Raphaël Droz wrote:
> It seems like if gnu.bash.bug@googlegroups.com eat the first occurrence
> of this email (not in the mailman archives)... second attempt:
> 
> === Rationale:
> Let's say you want to complete http URL (which contain ':').
> 
> The completion probably contains this kind of statement:
> 
> _comp() {
>       COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "http://foo http://bar"; -- "$cur") )
> }
> 
> After the completion function is evaluated, readline will consider
> the value of $COMP_WORDBREAKS to split the word to complete...

I sent an earlier message explaining how this explanation was slightly
wrong, but I looked at the patches and they do the right thing.  The
patch attempts to determine the command name before readline performs
its wordbreak processing, and installs a new value for the set of word
break characters before that happens.

The question that comes to mind is whether or not this complication is
worth it.  This seems like a pretty heavyweight solution to an
occasional problem with `:'.  The best approach might be to remove the
colon from the default set of word break characters.  I have to think
that the number of users completing colon-separated path values is
smaller than the number attempting to complete URLs.

Chet

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