Re: [bug?] How to make _expand behave like the expand-word or list-expand widgets?

[Marlon Richert <marlon.richert@xxxxxxxxx>]

This actually seems to do what I want:

  _expand() {
    local -a expl
    local expansion
    expansion="${(b)$( eval print -r -- $words[CURRENT] )}" 2> /dev/null || return 1
    _description expansions expl expansion
    compadd -QU "$expl[@]" -- $expansion

  }

This code can of course cause undesirable side effects when expanding certain special parameters and command substitutions, but _expand suffers from this, too.

Is there a way to locally disable special parameters and command substitutions? Are there any other drawbacks to this approach? Why isn't _expand doing something like this?

On Tue, Apr 2, 2024 at 10:12 AM Marlon Richert <marlon.richert@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I would expect _expand to behave by default like expand-word or list-expand, but it doesn't.

For example, given default shell options, if `foo=*`, then expand-word and list-expand will complete `$foo` to `*` and `$~foo` to the files matched by `*` as a glob _expression_.

However, no matter what zstyle options I set, _expand will either complete both of these to `\*` or both of these to the files globbed by `*`. 

By default, I would expect _expand to complete expressions in the same way as the shell substitutes them when evaluating the command line. 

Is there a combination of zstyles that makes _expand complete `$foo` to its literal value and `$~foo` to the files globbed by its value?

If not, then I would like to see this being added somehow and preferably be made the default behavior.