Re: zle messes up 'words' variable?

[Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On May 3,  8:36pm, Felipe Contreras wrote:
} Subject: Re: zle messes up 'words' variable?
}
} On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 5:39 PM, Bart Schaefer <schaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
} >    change the current values of these parameters. Any existing values
} >    will be hidden during execution of completion widgets; EXCEPT FOR
} >    COMPSTATE, THE PARAMETERS ARE RESET ON EACH FUNCTION EXIT (INCLUDING
} >    NESTED FUNCTION CALLS FROM WITHIN THE COMPLETION WIDGET) to the
} >    values they had when the function was entered.
} >
} > In other words, these variable are always local in all scopes, unless
} > they are explicitly declared otherwise (which in this case requires
} > the use of typeset -h).  That's part of their special-ness, and is one
} > of the things I assert is extremely unlikely to change.
} 
} Except that 'words' is not really acting as local, and 'local' should
} be considered 'declared otherwise'. That's part of the weirdness.

"local" without -h has never changed the special properties of a zsh
variable.  It would be "weird" in a large number of other cases if it
were to be "fixed" for this case.

} +typeset -h words
}  complete -F _foo foo

No, that's making words non-special at the wrong scope; it may work
for your example because _foo never attempts to examine the special
value of $words, but in practice you can't create a useful completion
function without some reference to that special value.

(However, I think it still fails for your example, because the
typeset at global scope will be supplanted by the special local at
completion scope.  You have to wait until the local scope exists
before you can hide it with "typeset -h".)

Once the special "words" is hidden, the bash completion widgets can
ignore it because for them, the relevant bits are passed in "$@"; but
the _bash_complete wrapper that's installed by "complete -F" needs
access to $words in order to create the arguments it passes to _foo.

Hence the scope where my patch added typeset -h is only correct place
outside the the function called as $OPTARG where words can become non-
special without changing the arguments passed by that function call.