bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Carlos Pita]

Hi,

I've asked about this in gmane.emacs.help but then realized that it
might be a bug.

In shell-mode there are a number of c-a-p functions registered:

   comint-c-a-p-replace-by-expanded-history
   shell-environment-variable-completion
   shell-command-completion
   shell-c-a-p-replace-by-expanded-directory
   pcomplete-completions-at-point
   shell-filename-completion
   comint-filename-completion

Most of the time it is pcomplete-completions-at-point the one which
returns the completion candidates, and this works great as long as the
there is a pcomplete/xxx function registered for the command xxx.

Now, many usual commands like cp don't have a pcomplete handler so they
behave very poorly regarding completion, take for example:

     cp <TAB>

this doesn't give me any completion candidate! If I instead do:

     cp ./<TAB>

I then get filename completions (although not from pcomplete). I find
this behavior very inconvenient since often commands take filenames as
arguments and I would prefer filename completion to be triggered by
default for commands not known by pcomplete.

Doing some debugging reveals that this might be a bug.

In shell.el we have:

  ;; Don't use pcomplete's defaulting mechanism, rely on
  ;; shell-dynamic-complete-functions instead.
  (setq-local pcomplete-default-completion-function #'ignore)

So pcomplete is falling back to the ignore (no-op) function. If you
kill the local binding in the shell buffer, then the default of the
default does complete paths.

And what are those dynamic complete functions that are favored in lieu of
pcomplete's default? I don't know, but next in the completion sequence
we have:

	(defun comint-filename-completion ()
      "Return completion data for filename at point, if any."
      (when (comint--match-partial-filename)
        (comint--complete-file-name-data)))

Here (comint--match-partial-filename) will never be true so, ultimately,
we get no completion at all.

Anyone knows what might be the reason to set
pcomplete-default-completion-function to #'ignore when the next
functions in the sequence are unable to do a better job?

Best regards,
Carlos

---

In GNU Emacs 29.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-apple-darwin20.6.0, NS appkit-2022.60 Version 11.6 (Build 20G165))
 of 2021-10-07 built on Carloss-MacBook-Pro.local
Repository revision: d2611920685ca415a1d85ffb9567b968518028d6
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'Apple', version 10.3.2022
System Description:  macOS 11.6

Configured using:
 'configure --without-native-compilation'

Configured features:
ACL DBUS GLIB GMP GNUTLS JPEG JSON LCMS2 LIBXML2 MODULES NOTIFY KQUEUE
NS PDUMPER PNG RSVG THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS XIM ZLIB

Important settings:
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  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Article

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bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Carlos Pita <carlosjosepita2@gmail.com> writes:

> Now, many usual commands like cp don't have a pcomplete handler so they
> behave very poorly regarding completion, take for example:
>
>      cp <TAB>
>
> this doesn't give me any completion candidate!

[...]

> In shell.el we have:
>
>   ;; Don't use pcomplete's defaulting mechanism, rely on
>   ;; shell-dynamic-complete-functions instead.
>   (setq-local pcomplete-default-completion-function #'ignore)
>
> So pcomplete is falling back to the ignore (no-op) function. If you
> kill the local binding in the shell buffer, then the default of the
> default does complete paths.

This was possibly added by:

commit e17d9003618cef75852a0b88334cea66a5c4b016
Author:     Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
AuthorDate: Sat Jun 4 09:31:34 2011 -0300

    * lisp/shell.el: Require and use pcomplete.
    (shell-dynamic-complete-functions): Add pcomplete-completions-at-point.
    (shell-completion-vars): Set pcomplete-default-completion-function.

Just leaving pcomplete-default-completion-function alone seems to give
better results in shell-mode (after testing very briefly), so I'm not
sure why that was added.

Perhaps Stefan has some comments; added to the CCs.

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

> commit e17d9003618cef75852a0b88334cea66a5c4b016
> Author:     Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> AuthorDate: Sat Jun 4 09:31:34 2011 -0300
>
>     * lisp/shell.el: Require and use pcomplete.
>     (shell-dynamic-complete-functions): Add pcomplete-completions-at-point.
>     (shell-completion-vars): Set pcomplete-default-completion-function.
>
> Just leaving pcomplete-default-completion-function alone seems to give
> better results in shell-mode (after testing very briefly), so I'm not
> sure why that was added.

It was added because leaving `pcomplete-default-completion-function`
alone means that the functions after `pcomplete-completions-at-point` in
`shell-dynamic-complete-functions` are not used any more.

Maybe that's indeed what we want.

I don't use `shell` enough to make such a decision.
[ And I don't understand why there's both `shell-filename-completion`
  and `comint-filename-completion` in there either, which makes it even
  more clear to me that I don't know what such changes imply.  ]


        Stefan

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>>     * lisp/shell.el: Require and use pcomplete.
>>     (shell-dynamic-complete-functions): Add pcomplete-completions-at-point.
>>     (shell-completion-vars): Set pcomplete-default-completion-function.
>>
>> Just leaving pcomplete-default-completion-function alone seems to give
>> better results in shell-mode (after testing very briefly), so I'm not
>> sure why that was added.
>
> It was added because leaving `pcomplete-default-completion-function`
> alone means that the functions after `pcomplete-completions-at-point` in
> `shell-dynamic-complete-functions` are not used any more.

Uhm...  I don't follow the logic at all.
pcomplete-default-completion-function is documented to be applied if
everything else has failed to do completion, isn't it?

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

Lars Ingebrigtsen [2022-09-13 13:19:07] wrote:

> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:
>
>>>     * lisp/shell.el: Require and use pcomplete.
>>>     (shell-dynamic-complete-functions): Add pcomplete-completions-at-point.
>>>     (shell-completion-vars): Set pcomplete-default-completion-function.
>>>
>>> Just leaving pcomplete-default-completion-function alone seems to give
>>> better results in shell-mode (after testing very briefly), so I'm not
>>> sure why that was added.
>>
>> It was added because leaving `pcomplete-default-completion-function`
>> alone means that the functions after `pcomplete-completions-at-point` in
>> `shell-dynamic-complete-functions` are not used any more.
>
> Uhm...  I don't follow the logic at all.
> pcomplete-default-completion-function is documented to be applied if
> everything else has failed to do completion, isn't it?

Look at `shell-dynamic-complete-functions`:

    (defcustom shell-dynamic-complete-functions
      '(comint-c-a-p-replace-by-expanded-history
        shell-environment-variable-completion
        shell-command-completion
        shell-c-a-p-replace-by-expanded-directory
        pcomplete-completions-at-point
        shell-filename-completion
        comint-filename-completion)
      "List of functions called to perform completion.
    This variable is used to initialize `comint-dynamic-complete-functions' in the
    shell buffer."
      :type '(repeat function)
      :group 'shell)

if `pcomplete-default-completion-function` is left at its default value,
then `pcomplete-completions-at-point` will never return nil, so the
functions that appear after it in the above list will just never
be used.

The change I introduced tried to preserve as much of the existing
completion as possible, by only using the non-fallback pcomplete rules
and keeping the existing `shell-filename-completion` and
`comint-filename-completion` thingies as the fallback.

I don't know that it's the best choice.  It was just the
conservative choice.


        Stefan

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> Look at `shell-dynamic-complete-functions`:
>
>     (defcustom shell-dynamic-complete-functions
>       '(comint-c-a-p-replace-by-expanded-history
>         shell-environment-variable-completion
>         shell-command-completion
>         shell-c-a-p-replace-by-expanded-directory
>         pcomplete-completions-at-point
>         shell-filename-completion
>         comint-filename-completion)
>       "List of functions called to perform completion.
>     This variable is used to initialize `comint-dynamic-complete-functions' in the
>     shell buffer."
>       :type '(repeat function)
>       :group 'shell)
>
> if `pcomplete-default-completion-function` is left at its default value,
> then `pcomplete-completions-at-point` will never return nil, so the
> functions that appear after it in the above list will just never
> be used.

Ah, the detail I missed was that pcomplete-completions-at-point is
(partially) controlled by pcomplete-default-completion-function -- from
the documentation, I assumed that pcomplete-default-completion-function
was run after all of the other completion functions had finished.

> The change I introduced tried to preserve as much of the existing
> completion as possible, by only using the non-fallback pcomplete rules
> and keeping the existing `shell-filename-completion` and
> `comint-filename-completion` thingies as the fallback.
>
> I don't know that it's the best choice.  It was just the
> conservative choice.

Could just put an additional function at the end of the list there that
does what pcomplete-completions-at-point does when
pcomplete-default-completion-function isn't set to #'ignore?

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Stefan Monnier via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss army knife of text editors]

>> The change I introduced tried to preserve as much of the existing
>> completion as possible, by only using the non-fallback pcomplete
>> rules and keeping the existing `shell-filename-completion` and
>> `comint-filename-completion` thingies as the fallback.
>>
>> I don't know that it's the best choice.  It was just the
>> conservative choice.
>
> Could just put an additional function at the end of the list there
> that does what pcomplete-completions-at-point does when
> pcomplete-default-completion-function isn't set to #'ignore?

Could be.  Tho it feels like adding yet another hack upon more hacks
just because we don't know what the other code does.
[ Which is exactly what I did as well when I set
  `pcomplete-default-completion-function` to `ignore`.  ]

I wish someone could take the time to try and understand what
`shell-filename-completion` and `comint-filename-completion` do there
really (I mean, I understand what they're supposed to do, but I don't
understand why they're both there), how they compare to what
`pcomplete-default-completion-function` does by default (which should be
very similar), and then fix bug#51130 The Right Way.


        Stefan

bug#51130: 29.0.50; shell completion fails to complete filenames

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

> I wish someone could take the time to try and understand what
> `shell-filename-completion` and `comint-filename-completion` do there
> really (I mean, I understand what they're supposed to do, but I don't
> understand why they're both there), how they compare to what
> `pcomplete-default-completion-function` does by default (which should be
> very similar), and then fix bug#51130 The Right Way.

It would indeed be nice if somebody did that.  *whistles*