Re: tcsh's autocorrect functionality wanted

["Bart Schaefer" <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Nov 14,  6:18pm, Matthew Braun wrote:
} Subject: Re: tcsh's autocorrect functionality wanted
}
} > }      autocorrect (+)
} > 
} > That would be pretty trivial to add, I think, except for the bugs in
} > spell-word described below.
} 
} Trivial for someone who already knows the code.  Any maintainers out
} there listening?  Please add this.  Thanks!

I already sent a partial patch to zsh-workers for consideration.  No one
has bitten yet.

} Bart, mind giving me some examples of how completeinword and awaystoend
} work?  I tried setting these and hitting tab in a few instances, but it
} didn't seem to change the behavior.  I can see where it would be nice if
} COMPLETE_IN_WORD worked for spell-word, but I don't see it actually
} affecting anything right now.

First, note that complete_in_word works only with expand-or-complete,
not with expand-or-complete-prefix.  If you have tab bound to complete
prefixes, you won't see any change in behavior.

Complete_in_word lets you place the cursor in the middle of a word (it's
really only interesting for file paths) and do completion on the part of
the word to the left of the cursor.

Normally, the cursor is left in the middle of the word when this happens;
but if you also set always_to_end, the cursor moves to the end of the word
when the completion is unique.

Complete_in_word succeeds on the left portion only if continuing the
completion with the right portion would also succeed.  This is the
desired behavior (otherwise it'd just be expand-or-complete-prefix), but
it means that it is nearly useless unless you also set glob_complete (so
that partial file (or directory) names may appear to the right).

Here's an example, starting from "zsh -f".

zagzig% ls -dF ~/*/farm*
/home/schaefer/homepage/farm/     /home/schaefer/tmp/farm1.xbm
/home/schaefer/public_html/farm/  /home/schaefer/tmp/farm2.xbm
/home/schaefer/tmp/farm.gif
zagzig% setopt completeinword menucomplete
zagzig% xv ~//farm

At this point, if I move the cursor to the second slash (so insertion
is between the two slashes) and press TAB, I first see:

zagzig% xv ~/homepage/farm

with cursor still on the second slash.  Press TAB again:

zagzig% xv ~/public_html/farm

with cursor still on the second slash.  Repeated presses of TAB cycle
back and forth through these two choices.  Now:

zagzig% setopt alwaystoend
zagzig% xv ~//farm

Again move the cursor to the second slash and press TAB.  This time:

zagzig% xv ~/homepage/farm/

and the cursor is at the end of the word.  TAB again cycles to

zagzig% xv ~/public_html/farm/

Next:

zagzig% setopt globcomplete
zagzig% xv ~//farm

Now "farm" can act as a partial word, and I can cycle THREE choices:

zagzig% xv ~/homepage/farm/
zagzig% xv ~/public_html/farm/
zagzig% xv ~/tmp/farm

The cursor moves to the end of each path because of always_to_end;
with that unset, the cursor would stay at the second slash, but I'd
still be cycling the same three choices.

Again, the difference vs. bindkey \\t expand-or-complete-prefix is
that your choices for the completion of the left part of the word
are limited by what appears in the right part of the word.

Personally, what I'd really like is to be able to attempt this kind
of behavior, and then revert to expand-or-complete-prefix only if
this finds no possible completions.  But zsh doesn't support that
kind of conditional action in bindkey sequences; instead, you have to
write a custom function and figure out a compctl for it, which can be
a lot slower and can't be bound directly to a key.

-- 
Bart Schaefer                             Brass Lantern Enterprises
http://www.well.com/user/barts            http://www.nbn.com/people/lantern