How to pass a function with arguments to another function

Question

I'm trying to make a generic autocomplete function (which actually takes several parameters, and has a bunch of shared logic), so that I can easily and neatly maintain a long list of similar commands, with similar autocompletes (number of arguments, etc).

I've got a bash function, which takes an argument (simplified as much as possible):

_autocomplete() {
    COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$1" -- "${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}") )
    return 0
}

And when I reference it, using a command which takes a function name as an argument, I want to also pass it a parameter to run in the function:

complete -F "_autocomplete example_param" some_function

However, this does not work when I hit tab, and instead errors with:

some_function bash: completion: function `_autocomplete example_param' not found

Is this a limitation of complete?
Is there any way around this, or a better approach?

Thanks.

Barmar · Accepted Answer · 2019-05-17 01:13:05Z

3

The -F option is supposed to be followed by just a function name. If you want to execute a command with options, you need to use -C. But the command is required to print the completions to standard output, not set COMPREPLY. So change the function to:

_autocomplete() {
    COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "$1" -- "${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}") )
    for reply in "${COMPREPLY[@]}"
    do
        printf '%s\n' "$reply"
    done
    return 0
}

complete -C "_autocomplete example_param" some_function

answered May 17, 2019 at 1:13

Barmar

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2 Comments

dbzix Over a year ago

in this case the function some_function shows arguments but doesn't auto-complete them; do you know how to fix that?

Barmar Over a year ago

I don't personally use customized completions, but I can't imagine why it would list completions that it doesn't use. The two features should go hand in hand.

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