Zsh Completion Magic
I’m a happy user of zsh for a few years now and, while I don’t know all the subtleties of it, I find it a indispensable tool. People I know and respect keep asking me “Why not bash?” One of the big reasons is zsh’s completion system.
Bash has a add-on version of this, called bash-completion, and I used that before moving over to zsh full-time. Bash-completion feels, well, added on and slow and not always working. Zsh’s completion, however, keeps surprising me on how much it does do. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
I typed "./manage.py TAB" and Zsh gave me all the arguments of a standard Django manage script.
The above screenshot came with no configuration — I didn’t have to tell zsh about Django because, well, someone already did. And I’m glad for it.
It’s not just for Django, either. See what happened when I did “./configure <TAB>” in PHP’s source tree:
The top part is what I got when I did "./configure TAB". The part below my prompt is what I got when I did "./configure –with-TAB"
So note that zsh helps me figure out the right options. What I want to know the exact options for MySQL?
Results of ./configure –with-mTAB
Again, none of this stuff had to be configured — I just told zsh I wanted completion and it gave it to me. I didn’t have to tell it that this was a configure script — it knew that! Just like it knew about the Django script.
This is just a taste. I hope you bite into zsh for more goodness.
