No autocompletion inside autoclosed pairs

[kopischke]

Not sure if there is much pisces can do about it, but fish completion breaks inside autocompleted pairs, probably because the closing symbol is then added to the tokens parsed for completion. Without pisces

echo "$<tab>

will complete variable names, but with it

echo "$<tab>"

will offer no completions.

[laughedelic]

@kopischke I see the problem, but it's not caused by pisces. I mean that if you uninstall pisces and reproduce the same situation, you won't get completions. Probably it's worth creating an issue in the fish-shell repo.
Anyway, I'll think of a workaround.

[kopischke]

Yes, I am aware that the issue is not caused by pisces (I never said otherwise); the reason I do not consider this a fish issue, but one pisces needs to address, are twofold:

1. users are highly unlikely to add closing pair characters before trying to complete without pisces, and
2. it means pisces’ is only of use if you are willing to trade it for one of fish’s most powerful features.

[laughedelic]

@kopischke sure, I understand your arguments and I see how pisces brings this issue to the surface.

Here's one probably unrelated observation: if I understand right, complete works on the current token:

complete, guess the remainder of the current token (from man bind)

echo "$|"

(| is the cursor position)

In fish 2.2 commandline --current-token returns $ (ignoring quotes, see fish-shell/fish-shell#2210), while in 2.3 it returns "$". Which version of fish do you use?

Also, can you describe in more details what happens when you hit tab? When I try exactly your example, without the closing quote I don't get any autocomplete and with it cursor jumps outside of it. I need to type at least one character after $ to get some suggestions.

[kopischke]

I’m using fish 2.3 beta 2, and yes, you might need an extra char to get a completion (I’ll have to check next time I’m at my machine). Inside paired characters, I just get a flash of the command line instead of a completion.

[laughedelic]

@kopischke I had some chat with a fish developer and it doesn't seem to be solvable by providing some custom completion handling, because you cannot just call pager to complete a given string (it's accessible only internally).

I've made a little demo of what's doable: completing vars inside of double quotes. As you see, when there's only one option, it's easy and nice, but if there are several, I cannot invoke normal fish completion in place. There are different workarounds:

• in the demo I use choices
• just list available options so that you can continue typing until you get a single completion
• external tools like fzf can be used (optinally)

What do you think about it?

Another stupid, but very simple workaround just for the particular type of situations as in your example:

1. echo $P|<TAB>, you get the completed var: echo $PATH |
2. cut it with <Ctrl>+W, you have now just echo |
3. type ", now you're inside the quotes pair
4. yank the var with <Ctrl>+Y, you have: echo "$PATH |"

[kopischke]

Well, that is a pity, albeit not entirely unexpected. I am afraid that means I will have to pass on using pisces: omnipresent, uncomplicated, quasi magical auto completion is what sold me on fish; even the nicest plugin (and pisces is very nice) is not worth compromising that. Would you like to keep the issue open to track it or shall I close?

[laughedelic]

Sure, I'll keep it open. As I see it, pisces gets in your way only when initially typing text, because if you already have a double quoted string (with or without pisces), you cannot autocomplete anything inside of it. A workaround could be to bind the tab key to delete " in front of the cursor (if there is one) and call complete: so you get autocomplete and have to close the quotes manually as if you didn't use pisces, while in other cases it still works as before. Do you think this could be useful?

I am afraid that means I will have to pass on using pisces

If the only problem is about double quotes and you don't want any of the suggested workarounds, why not just disabling this particular pair, while keeping the rest? There is a setting for that:

> echo $pisces_pairs
(,) [,] {,} "," ','
> set -e pisces_pairs[4]
> echo $pisces_pairs
(,) [,] {,} ','

You can just set it as you like.

Or do you have more similar issues?

[laughedelic]

A workaround could be to bind the tab key to delete " in front of the cursor (if there is one) and call complete: so you get autocomplete and have to close the quotes manually as if you didn't use pisces, while in other cases it still works as before.

A little demo of this overriden tab:

A curious thing about fish completion is that after completing a token that starts with ", it closes quotes automatically, so you don't need to do anything 👍
@kopischke if this works for you, I will add it in the next release.

[kopischke]

@laughedelic now that sounds like an excellent workaround. Would love to see that make the next release.

[laughedelic]

@kopischke you can try it 😉 fisher up pisces

[kopischke]

@laughedelic very nice, I’m in love with pisces again. I stumbled on an issue with the new completion wrapper, though, see #2.