Autocompletion Use Cases

(Back to Shell Autocompletion)

• Completing flags names and args
• Families of tools
  • GNU coreutils and family tend to use the same syntax. bash_completion treats them all the same.
  • tools in Go tend to use the flags package, which has a consistent syntax.
• Rare tools
  • Diversity in Command Line Syntax -- bash itself has a nonstandard flag syntax, python -c, test, etc.
• Very Large Command Line Tools -- where it would be nicer to reuse the work from upstream
  • git
  • clang
  • npm?
• Parsing languages within arguments
  • sed -e -- completing all the one letter commands with descriptions, completing the one letter flags with descriptions (from Oliver Kiddle)
  • ssh -- this is equivalent to parsing all of shell! i.e. the OSH parser. (from Oliver Kiddle)
  • awk
  • Regexes? I always forget how spell character classes like [[:space:]].