Re: Sorting Order of Completion Candidates

[Florian Beck <fb@miszellen.de>]

On 03/01/2011 02:25 AM, Drew Adams wrote:
>> While writing some code to index my notes I have run into a problem.
>> I have a carefully crafted list of keywords sorted in order of
>> frequency. (When assigning new keywords I want to consider the most
>> frequent keywords first.) However
>> (completing-read "Prompt: " '("a" "c" "b"))  gives me
>>
>>   Possible completions are:
>>   a
>>   b
>>   c
>>
>> whereas I want
>>
>>   Possible completions are:
>>   a
>>   c
>>   b
>>
>> If there is no option or hook, if guess I could just modify the
>> *Completions* buffer. Any hints how/where it is set up?
>
> 1. Stefan can probably steer you as to how to do what you want with a recent
> version of vanilla Emacs.

I ended up modifying `minibuffer-completion-help'. There doesn't seem to 
be a way around that.

> 2. An alternative is to use Icicles.  Then all you need to do is bind
> `icicle-sort-comparer' to nil around the call to `completing-read'.  A nil value
> means do not sort.  (You can also customize `icicle-sort-comparer' to use any
> default sort order you like.)

Thanks, I will look into that. Or do you replace the whole completion 
mechanism?

-- 
Florian Beck