Stop completion on certain characters

Question

With the grep command, I tend to use various combinations of -irln and restrict it to include one or more of the same file types py, js, html, css.

E.g.

grep -ril --include=*{html,css}

I'm defining a suite of aliases for various permutations of grep which I use in the following format:

grep.[options].[extensions]

I generate the alias file with a python script which iterates over combinations of options and generates around 100 aliases in this case. Here are some of them:

alias grep.il.html-css='grep -ril --include=*{html,css}'
alias grep.il.html-css='grep -ril --include=*{html,css}'
alias grep.il.html-js='grep -ril --include=*{html,js}'
alias grep.iln.html-js-css='grep -riln --include=*{html,js,css}'

(they also all exclude the node_modules dir. I hid that for brevity, but now you know why I want these aliases!)

The reason I use full stops is because thanks to completion, it feels almost like typing properties on objects in an IDE, but not quite, and that's what I need help with.

The tab key attempts to select the first complete command it finds. I want it to cycle through the options up until the full stop (in the current namespace if you like).

Currently (untouched Mint/Ubuntu/Debian bash defaults) if I type this:

grep.i

And hit tab, it goes straight to:

grep.i.css

Whereas I would like it not to do that, but to cycle through the options available up until the next full stop first:

grep.i
grep.il
grep.in
grep.iln
grep.l
grep.n

And when I hit . it selects that option, after which tab would then cycle through the options available from off there, such as:

grep.il.css
grep.il.css_html
grep.il.css_js_html

Is this possible? Advisable?

I'm using bash, would consider moving to zshell if that's the only way.

UPDATE:

I can improve this situation with a little hack, which is to create a stub alias for every intermediate alias, so in the above example:

alias grep.='echo stub'
alias grep.il.='echo stub'

This stops on the full stop, but completion adds a space after so I end up with:

"grep. "

at the terminal. I can still tab to cycle through the options, but need to backspace before I start typing else I get:

"grep. i"

I've looked at the option of creating custom autocompletion behaviour making it not add a space after commands which have a . in them, but that catches files too (e.g. it would mess up main.py hello) I'll keep digging...

Answer 1

This is how you can make it work in zsh:

autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
bindkey '^I' complete-word

zle -C complete-word complete-word complete-word
complete-word() {
  _main_complete
  (( compstate[unambiguous_cursor] > ${#:-$PREFIX$SUFFIX}+1 )) \
  && compstate[insert]='automenu-unambiguous'
  compstate[list]='list force'
}

zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*' show-ambiguity '07'

Then, when you type grep and press tab, you get: You can then keep pressing tab to cycle through the shown completions: Or you can type one of the highlighted characters and press tab again to insert the next set of characters that is common to the listed completions: Then press tab again to show a new completion list: Etc., etc., etc. Lather, rinse and repeat.