How to add all tab completitions to my current command? - zsh

Question

So I've typed a command (pacman -S perl-) and I hit tab and see that there are a whole bunch of completions (about 40), and I realize that I want to run every single completion (so I don't accidentally install from CPAN what is already a builtin).
How do I run all completions of a command?
BONUS: How do I run more than one and less than all of the commands (without typing them in individually)?
Example situation (the actual situation):
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX ❯❯❯ pacman -S perl-<Tab> ⏎
-- packages --
perl perl-IPC-Run3
perl-ack perl-libwww
perl-Archive-Zip perl-Locale-Gettext
perl-Authen-SASL perl-LWP-MediaTypes
perl-Benchmark-Timer perl-LWP-Protocol-https
perl-Capture-Tiny perl-MailTools
perl-common-sense perl-MIME-tools
perl-Compress-Bzip2 perl-Mozilla-CA
perl-Convert-BinHex perl-Net-DNS
perl-Crypt-SSLeay perl-Net-HTTP
perl-DBI perl-Net-IP
perl-Digest-HMAC perl-Net-SMTP-SSL
perl-Encode-Locale perl-Net-SSLeay
perl-Error perl-Path-Class
perl-Exporter-Lite perl-Probe-Perl
perl-ExtUtils-Depends perl-Regexp-Common
perl-ExtUtils-PkgConfig perl-Socket6
perl-File-Copy-Recursive perl-Sys-CPU
perl-File-Listing perl-TermReadKey
perl-File-Next perl-Test-Pod
perl-File-Which perl-Test-Script
perl-Getopt-Tabular perl-TimeDate
perl-HTML-Parser perl-Try-Tiny
perl-HTML-Tagset perl-URI
perl-HTTP-Cookies perl-WWW-RobotRules
perl-HTTP-Daemon perl-XML-LibXML
perl-HTTP-Date perl-XML-NamespaceSupport
perl-HTTP-Message perl-XML-Parser
perl-HTTP-Negotiate perl-XML-SAX
perl-IO-HTML perl-XML-SAX-Base
perl-IO-Socket-INET6 perl-XML-Simple
perl-IO-Socket-SSL perl-YAML
perl-IO-stringy perl-YAML-Syck

Answer 1

Here is my own solution to deal with,
To apply matching for completion results.
To insert all the completion matches into the command line.
To activate menu selection and select the completion more than one.
To apply matching for completion results, it could be done with the _match.
Here is an example ~/.zshrc:
# below is same as the zsh default effect
# zstyle ':completion:*::::' completer _complete _ignored
zstyle ':completion:*::::' completer _complete _match _ignored
# I don't like expand-or-complete to <Tab>, so I moved it to <C-x><Tab>
bindkey '^I' complete-word
bindkey '^X^I' expand-or-complete
Now, it could be ok to use *s to get the effects like this:
% ls m*e* ;# I have some local files that matches the glob.
main.epro mem.c mem.pro modentry.c module.o modules.stamp
makepro.awk mem.epro mem.syms module.c module.pro
math.epro mem.o mkmakemod.sh module.epro module.syms
% git m*e*<Tab>
;# This prompts completions rather than expands the local files
;# like this:
% git merge
merge -- join two or more development histories together
merge-base -- find as good a common ancestor as possible for a merge
merge-file -- run a three-way file merge
merge-index -- run merge for files needing merging
merge-one-file -- standard helper-program to use with git merge-index
merge-tree -- show three-way merge without touching index
mergetool -- run merge conflict resolution tools to resolve merge conflicts
mktree -- build tree-object from git ls-tree formatted text
m*e*
To insert all the compliteon matches into the command line, it cloud be done with the all-matches. If you have the below snippets in your ~/.zshrc:
zle -C all-matches complete-word _my_generic
zstyle ':completion:all-matches::::' completer _all_matches
zstyle ':completion:all-matches:*' old-matches only
_my_generic () {
local ZSH_TRACE_GENERIC_WIDGET= # works with "setopt nounset"
_generic "$#"
}
bindkey '^X^a' all-matches
typing Tab then Control-x,Control-a inserts the completion matches to the command line.
For example:
% vim string.<Tab>
string.c string.epro string.syms
;# then hit <C-x><C-a>
% vim string.c string.epro string.syms
To activate menu selection and select the completion more than one, it could be done by customizing menuselect keymap.
(From zhmodules(1) 22.7.3 Menu selection)
zstyle ':completion:*' menu select=0
zmodload zsh/complist
bindkey -M menuselect "^[a" accept-and-hold
bindkey -M menuselect '^[^[' vi-insert
This activete menu selection for the completion results. During the menu selection is active, typing M-a (or Esc-a) inserts the selected entry and advances the "menu cursor" to next entry.
For example session:
% ls sig*
sigcount.h signals.h signals.syms signames.o signames1.awk
signals.c signals.o signames.c signames.pro signames2.awk
signals.epro signals.pro signames.epro signames.syms
% vim sig<Tab> ;# this lists the matches
sigcount.h signals.epro signals.syms signames.epro signames1.awk
signals.c signals.h signames.c signames.syms signames2.awk
;# hitting <Tab> second time, the "menu cursor" appears and
;# the first entry will be activated
;# Note: "[[]]" denotes the "menu cursor" here
% vim sigcount.h
[[sigcount.h]] signals.epro signals.syms signames.epro signames1.awk
signals.c signals.h signames.c signames.syms signames2.awk
;# then hit <M-a>(Esc a)
;# "sigcount.h" is now in the command line and
;# the "menu cursor" points "signals.c" now.
% vim sigcout.h signals.c
sigcount.h signals.epro signals.syms signames.epro signames1.awk
[[signals.c]] signals.h signames.c signames.syms signames2.awk
;# then <Tab><Tab>
% vim sigcount.h signals.h
sigcount.h signals.epro signals.syms signames.epro signames1.awk
signals.c [[signals.h]] signames.c signames.syms signames2.awk
So, you could select multiple entries in the completion results to hit M-a(or Esc-a) as you like.
Below paragraph is not bad to know.
In this expample configration, hitting EscEsc (we did bindkey -M menuselect '^[^[' vi-insert in the above snippets) while the menu selection is active, it allows us to interactively limit the completion result based on input patterns.
;# activate "menu selection" and hit <Esc><Esc>,
;# the "interacitve:" mode will be shown at this point.
% vim sig*
interactive: sig[]
[[sigcount.h]] signals.epro signals.syms signames.epro signames1.awk
signals.c signals.h signames.c signames.syms signames2.awk
;# hitting "*awk" while interactive is activetad,
;# it colud limit the completion to "sig*awk"
% vim sig*awk
interactive: sig[]
[[signames1.awk]]signames2.awk
sig*awk
I'm not sure I describe correctly, so here is the portion of the zsh doc for the menu selection's "interactive mode".
vi-insert
this toggles between normal and interactive mode; in interactive mode the keys bound to self-insert and self-insert-unmeta insert into the command line as in normal editing mode but without leaving menu selection; after each character completion is tried again and the list changes to contain only the new matches; the completion widgets make the longest unambiguous string be inserted in the command line and undo and backward-delete-char go back to the previous set of matches
-- zhmodules(1) 22.7.3 Menu selection
It could be fine to see also edit-command-line for dealing with quite big command line buffers.
Now on my debian system, I can get the below effect:
# apt-get install perl-*<Tab><C-x><C-a><C-w>
;# ⇓
# apt-get install perl-base perl-byacc perl-cross-debian perl-debug perl-depends perl-doc perl-doc-html perl-modules perl-stacktrace perl-tk

Answer 2

I've found a solution to my problem, and it gets the job done, but it's not the kind of solution that I want.
I selected the completion text on my screen (I'm using mintty) and copied it into my editor. I then reformatted it like so:
perl perl-IPC-Run3 \
perl-ack perl-libwww \
perl-Archive-Zip perl-Locale-Gettext \
perl-Authen-SASL perl-LWP-MediaTypes \
perl-Benchmark-Timer perl-LWP-Protocol-https \
perl-Capture-Tiny perl-MailTools \
perl-common-sense perl-MIME-tools \
perl-Compress-Bzip2 perl-Mozilla-CA \
perl-Convert-BinHex perl-Net-DNS \
perl-Crypt-SSLeay perl-Net-HTTP \
perl-DBI perl-Net-IP \
perl-Digest-HMAC perl-Net-SMTP-SSL \
perl-Encode-Locale perl-Net-SSLeay \
perl-Error perl-Path-Class \
perl-Exporter-Lite perl-Probe-Perl \
perl-ExtUtils-Depends perl-Regexp-Common \
perl-ExtUtils-PkgConfig perl-Socket6 \
perl-File-Copy-Recursive perl-Sys-CPU \
perl-File-Listing perl-TermReadKey \
perl-File-Next perl-Test-Pod \
perl-File-Which perl-Test-Script \
perl-Getopt-Tabular perl-TimeDate \
perl-HTML-Parser perl-Try-Tiny \
perl-HTML-Tagset perl-URI \
perl-HTTP-Cookies perl-WWW-RobotRules \
perl-HTTP-Daemon perl-XML-LibXML \
perl-HTTP-Date perl-XML-NamespaceSupport \
perl-HTTP-Message perl-XML-Parser \
perl-HTTP-Negotiate perl-XML-SAX \
perl-IO-HTML perl-XML-SAX-Base \
perl-IO-Socket-INET6 perl-XML-Simple \
perl-IO-Socket-SSL perl-YAML \
perl-IO-stringy perl-YAML-Syck
And pasted it back into my terminal after pacman -S.
I've said that this isn't the kind of solution that I want, and so I should mention the sort of solution I'm looking for.
I'm looking for something like pacman -S perl-* which looks like it might glob up all of the completions or something (It doesn't).