How can I prevent zsh from trying to autocomplete URLs?

Question

The default completion of the curl and open commands tries to fill in URLs. For example, typing curl <TAB> gives

file:    ftp://    gopher://    http://    https://

alongside any files in the current directory.

I never want to autocomplete URLs, so these suggestions are just visual noise mixed in with the filenames etc. that I’m actually interested in. How can I prevent zsh from offering URL completion for a particular command? How can I prevent it from offering this for any command?

Answer 1

I found an answer in a 2011 post by Mikael Magnusson to the zsh users mailing list.

To prevent zsh from ever trying to autocomplete URLs for the open command, run

zstyle ':completion:*:open:argument*' tag-order - '! urls'

I believe you can do this for all commands, not just open, by saying

zstyle ':completion:*:*:argument*' tag-order - '! urls'

If you want to disable URL autocompletion most of the time, but allow it when the current directory is empty, run

zstyle ':completion:*:open:argument*' tag-order '! urls'