Fish-like argument completion search in ZSH

Question

I was messing around with fish and noticed this handy behavior

If I typed wget -<tab><tab><tab>, I was put into an interactive menu. However, when I typed, I searched the descriptions of the arguments themselves. I tried this in zsh, and typing in this menu only seemed to bring me back to my interactive prompt. Is there a way to achieve similar functionality in zsh?

Answer 1

Try to put this in your .zshrc file:

 # load module for list-style selection
 zmodload zsh/complist

 # use the module above for autocomplete selection
 zstyle ':completion:*' menu yes select

 # now we can define keybindings for complist module
 # you want to trigger search on autocomplete items
 # so we'll bind some key to trigger history-incremental-search-forward function
 bindkey -M menuselect '?' history-incremental-search-forward

Now if you type wget -<tab> menu with autocompletions appears. We defined keybind for this menu, so if you press ? search line appears on the top of the completions:

davidsykora~%wget --referer
isearch: refe

Some additional tips:

• you can also define bindkey -M menuselect '/' history-incremental-search-backward for backward search
• if you press ? during a search again selection will jump to the next search result. Use / for jump to previous result
• it takes a lot of tweaking to make it works as you want so take a look at complist documentation to find additional functions and options
• for me is usually much quicker to use vi-insert complist function - it filters completions based on what you type.

Answer 2

I think this does what you want:

  zmodload zsh/complist
  setopt menucomplete
  zstyle ':completion:*' menu select=0 search

This will cause the list to show up when you hit tab, and then if you continue typing it will search the available options, including descriptions, with an incremental search.

You may also be interested in the same configuration, but with interactive instead of search. In that case as you type it will filter down the completions to just the ones that match what you have typed so far.