Re: completing-read return meta-information?

[Stephen Leake <stephen_leake@stephe-leake.org>]

Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

>> I tried storing the directory info in a text property of the
>> completion string; that was not returned.
>
> FWIW, I proposed years ago that a completion candidate (string) be
> able to be returned propertized.  "Be able" means that this can be
> controlled, e.g., by a variable.
>
> Here is a thread about this from 2008, for instance:
> http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2008-06/msg01503.html
> There were other threads too.
>
> FWIW, in Icicles I've done this for nearly a decade.  I use this
> feature to recuperate information associated with an individual
> candidate.  A candidate can be as rich as you like and return as
> much info as you like.
>
> The changes to the Emacs code needed to allow this are simple.

Excellent. Can you post a patch?

Or you can add it to the feature branch I'll push soon;
scratch/project-find-file.

Another choice would be for completing-read to return a cons when the
completion-table returns an alist. That would also require a flag to
allow the new behavior, to avoid breaking current alist completion
tables. 

-- 
-- Stephe