bug#57673: [PATCH] Parse --help messages for pcomplete

[Augusto Stoffel <arstoffel@gmail.com>]

On Fri,  9 Sep 2022 at 19:02, Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> wrote:

> Augusto Stoffel <arstoffel@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> IIUC this package is like Python's
>> "native completion", i.e., it relies on sending "prefix\t\t" to the bash
>> process and hopes readline will do its thing.
>
> I see.
>
>> Exploiting bash could work nicely if it had a
>> please_complete_this_partial_command function, but this doesn't seem
>> possible.  I might be wrong, though.
>
> I wondered whether we could use those files more directly -- executing
> them or something in the right context?  (Like I said, I know nothing
> about how this works. 😀)

Yeah, I'm not sure either, but I would suspect the MELPA package
mentioned above didn't choose the hardest path gratuitously :-).  It
would be good to hear from someone who knows for sure, though.

One additional advantage of parsing the help files which I didn't
mention before is that we get a modicum of self-documenting behavior,
since we can collect the argument descriptions.  For example, while
completing you can remind yourself which switch is for recursive, -r or
-R.