Bash complete unstable-dynamic add **COMP_WORDBREAKS**

[feraxhp]

Please complete the following tasks

• I have searched the discussions
• I have searched the open and rejected issues

Clap Version

clap complete = "4.5.66"

Describe your use case

well i am writing a cli app which receives a parameter that follows this syntax "<config>:<user>/<repo>", the main problem here is in the completion part, because in bash the COMP_WORDBREAKS splits my argument like: "<config>" ":" "<user>" so the completer does not call the completer for that argument...

i figured out that in order to solve this problem i just needed to add this to the completer text generated for bash:

if [[ "${BASH_VERSINFO[0]}" -eq 4 && "${BASH_VERSINFO[1]}" -ge 4 || "${BASH_VERSINFO[0]}" -gt 4 ]]; then
    COMP_WORDBREAKS=${COMP_WORDBREAKS//:} complete -o nospace -o bashdefault -o nosort -F _clap_complete_grp dgrp
  # ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ----> this was added by hand
else
    COMP_WORDBREAKS=${COMP_WORDBREAKS//:} complete -o nospace -o bashdefault -F _clap_complete_grp dgrp
fi

Describe the solution you'd like

it may be convenient to have an additional method for CompleteEnv where you can tell it to allow some special character

example

async fn main() {
    // Completitions managger
    clap_complete::CompleteEnv::with_factory(grp::command)
                   .allows(':') // one or various
                   .complete();
    
    // Read actual command
}

the method allows will generate in the bash completion the COMP_WORDBREAKS=${COMP_WORDBREAKS//:} to allow those characters.

Alternatives, if applicable

i have not found a better alternative. i think this is the best approach.

Additional Context

Yes, i other shells, at least in my understanding, do not have this problem. especially with the ':' character.

[epage]

We've been tracking this in #3920 because it impacts --foo=bar completions.

[feraxhp]

May i help in some way?

[epage]

#6264 was opened to explore one way of resolving this. If there are viable alternatives, they would be good to explore.

[epage]

From #6264 (comment)

i think u must implement a method to allow personalize the behavior, because not every cli tool will need = or : or any other character.

Something similar to the proposal of #6280

How come?

From my perspective, word breaks are the shell trying to be smart so completers don't have to worry about as many things. We have a full CLI parser and don't need the assistance of the shell.

[feraxhp]

We have a full CLI parser and don't need the assistance of the shell.

So, we want this to be implemented with in the parse it self, rather than changing the shell env variables?

[epage]

The ideal scenario is to turn off the shell doing word breaks.

[feraxhp]

The ideal scenario is to turn off the shell doing word breaks.

Well in that case, why we don't just set the COMP_WORDBREAKS as an empty string... that way all the heavy lifting goes into clap? is it more simple?

It is my personal opinion, but if this is the desired behavior the implementation is strait forwards, or does clap still relies on the shell word breaks at this point?

[epage]

Give it a try and see how it works!

[feraxhp]

Hi i have been testing this in different machines, and basically that proposed solution is incorrect. i did close the pull request.

the problem is that we have to add

export COMP_WORDBREAKS="${COMP_WORDBREAKS//:}"

in the end of the .bashrc or it gets replace back to the default value