Re: Specify completion without name

[Chet Ramey]

On 1/4/12 10:37 PM, Peng Yu wrote:
>> empty lines.  There is no programmable completion mechanism to complete
>> on non-empty command names.
> 
> I'm wondering if it is worthwhile to add such a feature. I have run
> into the problem that it is very slow to command complete an
> incomplete command especially when other programs are accessing the
> disk (note that I frequently open new terminals, so the caching done
> within a bash process does not help me much).

That's a pretty good idea.  I'll take a look and see what I can do.
I have a feeling the most difficult part of the whole exercise will
be choosing an appropriately mnemonic option letter.

> If I can configure how to complete on non-empty command names, I could
> just check a file with all the commands in PATH are stored. By
> checking just a single file, presumable the search can be much faster
> than searching many directories.

Presumably you would also include aliases, shell builtins, and functions
in this file.

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/