Re: address@hidden: some other observations on pcomplete]

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> On Wed Mar 13, Kai writes:

>> Could someone tell me what [pcomplete's features] are?

> I'm not an expert on this, but two things at least come to my mind:

> * pcomplete can offer context-sensitive completion...

> * After hitting TAB to pop up a *Completions* buffer, typing makes
>   the buffer (window, actually) go away.

Here are a few others:

* It has several modes of prompting you with possible completions.  It
  can show you the list on first TAB, second TAB, or it can cycle.

* It can optionally expand the arguments that it completes, when
  variable references are involved.  Thus, calling pcomplete-expand on
  $HOME/.zsh<TAB> will yield /home/johnw/.zshrc.  This is not used by
  default.

* It offers context-sensitive help, as well as completion lists.  Try
  calling `M-x pcomplete-help' when you are at "cvs add ".  It will
  pop up the info page for adding files to cvs.

* It will optionally pare members of completion lists, if that
  argument has already been seen.  For example, if I type "ls .zshrc
  .zsh<TAB>", then .zshrc will not be in the second argument's
  completion list.

* Last but not least, writing new context-sensitive completion
  functions is EASY.  Granted, the process needs documentation, but
  basically you just call `pcomplete-here' and pass it a list, which
  will set the completion list for that argument position.  Take a
  look at pcomplete/tar.

John