Sorted file-completion by attributes

[dezza]

Hello and thanks again for a totally underrated project!

ble.sh/lib/core-complete.sh

Lines 1880 to 1897 in 2f564e6

	function ble/complete/action:file/complete {
	local ret
	ble/complete/action:file/.get-filename
	if [[ -e $ret || -h $ret ]]; then
	if [[ -d $ret ]]; then
	ble/complete/action/requote-final-insert
	ble/complete/action/complete.mark-directory
	else
	ble/complete/action:word/complete
	fi
	else
	# Note (#D2096): When "compopt -o filenames" is specified by progcomp, the
	# candidates are processed by action:file/complete. However, words that
	# are not local filenames can also be generated. Such a word would also
	# want to be suffixed by a space.
	ble/complete/action:word/complete
	fi
	}

I'm wondering if there's a way to override file-completion and sort it by say created, modified?

Maybe its already possible? I've been surprised so many times how complete it is!

[akinomyoga]

Maybe its already possible? I've been surprised so many times how complete it is!

There are two completion generations for filenames. One is ble.sh's built-in completion generation, and the other is the generation by external settings (such as bash-completion).

• As for ble.sh's built-in filename completion, the ordering is actually affected by the global value of GLOBSORT (if you use Bash >= 5.3). If you don't mind changing the global behavior of the pathname expansions (i.e., the globbing), you may set e.g. GLOBSORT=-mtime. If you don't want to change the global behavior and only specify the sorting order of ble.sh's filename generation, there isn't a dedicated setting. However, you may patch the function ble/complete/util/eval-pathname-expansion in your ~/.blerc:

  # blerc
  ble-import core-complete -C "
    ble/function#advice around ble/complete/uti/eval-pathname-expansion 'GLOBSORT=-mtime ble/function#advice/do'"

• As for the external completions, ble.sh doesn't have the control. The external completion needs to specify -o nosort and sort the filenames as you want.

[dezza]

Sorry for the delay in getting back. I had a planned visit from a friend for the weekend right as you got back to me.

I could get it to work with menu-complete context=filename as triggered with C-x / in vi-mode.

However TAB menu-complete seems unaffected by that.

I asume what you meant by ;

ble-import core-complete -C "
  ble/function#advice around ble/complete/uti/eval-pathname-expansion 'GLOBSORT=-mtime ble/function#advice/do'"

was copying eval-pathname-expansion into my config/blesh/init.sh and setting GLOBSORT in that function and restoring the defaults potentially.

I tried doing that also, but saw no effect on the TAB menu complete.

[akinomyoga]

I could get it to work with menu-complete context=filename as triggered with C-x / in vi-mode.

When context=filename is specified, ble.sh doesn't use external completion settings and only uses ble.sh's built-in filename generation.

However TAB menu-complete seems unaffected by that.

The TAB/menu completion (without specifying context) by default uses external completion settings (if any are set by the complete builtin), and falls back to ble.sh's built-in filename generation only when external completion settings are not found. Your observation implies that you have external completion settings such as bash-completion, which override ble.sh's built-in completion generation for filenames. In this case, you need to modify the external completion settings but not ble.sh.

I asume what you meant by ;

ble-import core-complete -C "
  ble/function#advice around ble/complete/uti/eval-pathname-expansion 'GLOBSORT=-mtime ble/function#advice/do'"

was copying eval-pathname-expansion into my config/blesh/init.sh and setting GLOBSORT in that function and restoring the defaults potentially.

You can just put the above two lines in .config/blesh/init.sh for ble.sh's built-in completion.

If you directly put your modified version of eval-pathname-expansion in your ~/.config/blesh/init.sh, your function will be overwritten by the original one in core-complete.sh because init.sh is evaluated before core-complete.sh is loaded. So it doesn't work.

[dezza]

Thanks a lot! I had to really squint and search the codebase cuz it really looks like pseudo-code :)

  ble/function#advice around ble/complete/uti/eval-pathname-expansion 'GLOBSORT=-mtime ble/function#advice/do

I did before to disable bash-completions

while IFS= read -r; do
  case $REPLY in
    *'-o filenames'*)
      set -- $REPLY; complete -r "${!#}" ;;
  esac
done < <(complete -p)