Sloppy Directory Completion

Sloppy Directory Completion

[Nordlöw]

Why doesn't Emacs complete on directories only in for example dired (C-
x d)?

Is this a bug or a todo?

Most shells complete directory commands like "cd" with directories
only so why should Emacs do the same?

/Nordlöw

Re: Sloppy Directory Completion

[Stefan Monnier]

> Why doesn't Emacs complete on directories only in for example dired
> (C-x d)?

> Is this a bug or a todo?

I think it's a bug.


        Stefan

Re: Sloppy Directory Completion

[Nordlöw]

On 17 mar, 15:18, Stefan Monnier <monn...@iro.umontreal.ca> wrote:
> > Why doesn't Emacs complete on directories only in for example dired
> > (C-x d)?
> > Is this a bug or a todo?
>
> I think it's a bug.
>
>         Stefan

Firstly dired should uses dired-read-dir-and-switches which in turn
uses read-directory-name and not read-file-name which we could expect.
I believe this is todo.

Secondly from the definition of read-directory-name we can deduce that
it will not work as long as PREDICATE argument in read-file-name() is
not respected. I wrote about this in another thread today here on
gnu.emacs.help.

/Nordlöw

Definition follows

(defun read-directory-name (prompt &optional dir default-dirname
mustmatch initial)
  "..."
  (unless dir
    (setq dir default-directory))
  (read-file-name prompt dir (or default-dirname
				 (if initial (expand-file-name initial dir)
				   dir))
		  mustmatch initial
		  'file-directory-p))

Re: Sloppy Directory Completion

[Ehud Karni]

On Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:18:24 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>
> > Why doesn't Emacs complete on directories only in for example dired
> > (C-x d)?
>
> > Is this a bug or a todo?
>
> I think it's a bug.

I don't agree with Stefan.

Many times I do completion on something like "*use*" just to find the
group of files I want see and than use something like "bsw2-use*subgroup"
as the actual argument to `dired'.

Dired is NOT just for Full directories. It works nicely on files
template (I'm sure you know and use it this way too).

May be completion of directory names ONLY should be an option, but
I disagree strongly that it be the default completion.

Ehud.


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Re: Sloppy Directory Completion

[Stefan Monnier]

>> > Why doesn't Emacs complete on directories only in for example dired
>> > (C-x d)?
>> > Is this a bug or a todo?
>> I think it's a bug.
> Many times I do completion on something like "*use*" just to find the
> group of files I want see and than use something like "bsw2-use*subgroup"
> as the actual argument to `dired'.
[...]
> May be completion of directory names ONLY should be an option, but
> I disagree strongly that it be the default completion.

The way I see it, completion for dired should work as follows:
if we can complete to a set of directories, then only complete to
those directories, but if there is no directory to which to complete,
then complete against files.
So in your above example, it would work as you want at the condition
that there is no directory which matches "*use*".


        Stefan

Re: Sloppy Directory Completion

[Ehud Karni]

On Wed, 05 May 2010 10:53:21 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>
> >> > Why doesn't Emacs complete on directories only in for example dired
> >> > (C-x d)?
> >> > Is this a bug or a todo?
> >> I think it's a bug.
> > Many times I do completion on something like "*use*" just to find the
> > group of files I want see and than use something like "bsw2-use*subgroup"
> > as the actual argument to `dired'.
> [...]
> > May be completion of directory names ONLY should be an option, but
> > I disagree strongly that it be the default completion.
>
> The way I see it, completion for dired should work as follows:
> if we can complete to a set of directories, then only complete to
> those directories, but if there is no directory to which to complete,
> then complete against files.
> So in your above example, it would work as you want at the condition
> that there is no directory which matches "*use*".

Sounds good. So move it from "bug" to "todo".

Ehud.


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