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POHow to Bash Complete Three-Part Pattern
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copied!<p>I have a command line tool which takes arguments in an three-part form:</p> <pre><code>$ t first_second_third </code></pre> <p>I have a set of valid values for <code>first</code>, a set of valid values for <code>second</code>, and a set of valid values for <code>third</code>. I want to use Bash complete functionality to complete each <em>part</em> of the option value, as in this example:</p> <pre><code>$ t [tab][tab] # shows options for first part walk run skip bike $ t w[tab] # completes first part and appends delimiter $ t walk_[tab][tab] # shows options for second part home work park $ t walk_h[tab] # completes second part and appends delimiter $ t walk_home_[tab][tab] # shows options for second part morning afternoon evening $ t walk_home_a[tab] # completes second part and appends space $ t walk_home_afternoon </code></pre> <p>I have this code:</p> <pre><code>_tool () { local cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}" local first="walk run skip bike" local second="home work park" local third="morning afternoon evening" case "${cur}" in *_*_*) COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${third}" -- "") ); return 0;; *_*) COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${second}" -S "_" -- ${cur}) ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;; *) COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${first}" -S "_" -- ${cur}) ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;; esac } complete -F _tool t </code></pre> <p>The first clause works great; nothing special there. But the second clause gives me no options or completions.</p> <pre><code>$ t [tab][tab] bike_ run_ skip_ walk_ $ t b[tab] $ t bike_[tab][tab] # nothing but bells </code></pre> <p>I replaced the second clause with the following (i.e. I replaced <code>${cur}</code> with an empty string in the <code>COMPREPLY</code> call):</p> <pre><code>COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${second}" -S "_" -- "") ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;; </code></pre> <p>I get a list of <em>all</em> options on the command line, but no completions.</p> <pre><code>$ t bike_[tab][tab] home_ park_ work_ $ t bike_h[tab][tab] home_ park_ work_ $ t bike_ho[tab][tab] home_ park_ work_ </code></pre> <p>I thought there might be some bad interaction with <code>${cur}</code> and the <code>COMPREPLY</code> word list, so I changed the second clause again, adding a prefix which matches the first part of the current word:</p> <pre><code>local prefix=( $(expr "${cur}" : '\(.*_\)') ) COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${second}" -P "${prefix}" -S "_" -- "") ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;; </code></pre> <p>This did not help much. With <code>${cur}</code> still in the <code>COMPREPLY</code> command, I got no options or completions again. With an empty string instead, I got the full option (not just the curent part). But, pressing tab would erase what is typed.</p> <pre><code>$ t bike_[tab][tab] bike_home_ bike_park_ bike_work_ $ t bike_ho[tab] $ t bike_ # "ho" was erased </code></pre> <p>Of course, I have the same problem with the third part, too.</p> <ol> <li>How can I get Bash to complete the current word, part by part?</li> <li>How can I get Bash to not append the delimiter until an option has been selected?</li> </ol> <p>This is similar to <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/q/3951628/1181574">another Bash complete question</a>, but I do not want to list every possible permutation of the values and they are not formatted as filenames (not sure if the filename pattern makes a difference).</p> <p>Thanks for the help!<br> --ap</p>

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