complete(1)

NAME
complete - edit command specific tab-completions

  Synopsis

complete ( -c | --command | -p | --path ) COMMAND
        [( -c | --command | -p | --path ) COMMAND]...
        [( -e | --erase )]
        [( -s | --short-option ) SHORT_OPTION]...
        [( -l | --long-option | -o | --old-option ) LONG_OPTION]...
        [( -a | --arguments ) OPTION_ARGUMENTS]
        [( -k | --keep-order )]
        [( -f | --no-files )]
        [( -r | --require-parameter )]
        [( -x | --exclusive )]
        [( -w | --wraps ) WRAPPED_COMMAND]...
        [( -n | --condition ) CONDITION]
        [( -d | --description ) DESCRIPTION]
complete ( -C[STRING] | --do-complete[=STRING] )

  Description
For an introduction to specifying completions, see Writing your own completions in the fish manual.

•   COMMAND is the name of the command for which to add a completion.

•   SHORT_OPTION is a one character option for the command.

•   LONG_OPTION is a multi character option for the command.

•   OPTION_ARGUMENTS is parameter containing a space-separated list of possible option-arguments, which may contain command substitutions.

•   DESCRIPTION is a description of what the option and/or option arguments do.

•   -c COMMAND or --command COMMAND specifies that COMMAND is the name of the command.

•   -p COMMAND or --path COMMAND specifies that COMMAND is the absolute path of the program (optionally containing wildcards).

•   -e or --erase deletes the specified completion.

•   -s SHORT_OPTION or --short-option=SHORT_OPTION adds a short option to the completions list.

•   -l LONG_OPTION or --long-option=LONG_OPTION adds a GNU style long option to the completions list.

•   -o LONG_OPTION or --old-option=LONG_OPTION adds an old style long option to the completions list (See below for details).

•   -a OPTION_ARGUMENTS or --arguments=OPTION_ARGUMENTS adds the specified option arguments to the completions list.

•   -k or --keep-order preserves the order of the OPTION_ARGUMENTS specified via -a or --arguments instead of sorting alphabetically.

•   -f or --no-files specifies that the options specified by this completion may not be followed by a filename.

•   -r or --require-parameter specifies that the options specified by this completion always must have an option argument, i.e. may not be followed by another option.

•   -x or --exclusive implies both -r and -f.

•   -w WRAPPED_COMMAND or --wraps=WRAPPED_COMMAND causes the specified command to inherit completions from the wrapped command (See below for details).

•   -n or --condition specifies a shell command that must return 0 if the completion is to be used. This makes it possible to specify completions that should only be used in some cases.

•   -CSTRING or --do-complete=STRING makes complete try to find all possible completions for the specified string.

•   -C or --do-complete with no argument makes complete try to find all possible completions for the current command line buffer. If the shell is not in interactive mode, an error is returned.

•   -A and --authoritative no longer do anything and are silently ignored.

•   -u and --unauthoritative no longer do anything and are silently ignored.

Command specific tab-completions in fish are based on the notion of options and arguments. An option is a parameter which begins with a hyphen, such as '-h', '-help' or '--help'. Arguments are parameters that do not begin with a hyphen. Fish recognizes three styles of options, the same styles as the GNU version of the getopt library. These styles are:

•   Short options, like '-a'. Short options are a single character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may be grouped together (like '-la', which is equivalent to '-l -a'). Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('-w 32') or by appending the option with the value ('-w32').

•   Old style long options, like '-Wall'. Old style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by a single hyphen and may not be grouped together. Option arguments are specified in the following parameter ('-ao null').

•   GNU style long options, like '--colors'. GNU style long options can be more than one character long, are preceded by two hyphens, and may not be grouped together. Option arguments may be specified in the following parameter ('--quoting-style shell') or by appending the option with a '=' and the value ('--quoting-style=shell'). GNU style long options may be abbreviated so long as the abbreviation is unique ('--h') is equivalent to '--help' if help is the only long option beginning with an 'h').

The options for specifying command name and command path may be used multiple times to define the same completions for multiple commands.

The options for specifying command switches and wrapped commands may be used multiple times to define multiple completions for the command(s) in a single call.

Invoking complete multiple times for the same command adds the new definitions on top of any existing completions defined for the command.

When -a or --arguments is specified in conjunction with long, short, or old style options, the specified arguments are only used as completions when attempting to complete an argument for any of the specified options. If -a or --arguments is specified without any long, short, or old style options, the specified arguments are used when completing any argument to the command (except when completing an option argument that was specified with -r or --require-parameter).

Command substitutions found in OPTION_ARGUMENTS are not expected to return a space-separated list of arguments. Instead they must return a newline-separated list of arguments, and each argument may optionally have a tab character followed by the argument description. Any description provided in this way overrides a description given with -d or --description.

The -w or --wraps options causes the specified command to inherit completions from another command. The inheriting command is said to 'wrap' the inherited command. The wrapping command may have its own completions in addition to inherited ones. A command may wrap multiple commands, and wrapping is transitive: if A wraps B, and B wraps C, then A automatically inherits all of C's completions. Wrapping can be removed using the -e or --erase options. Note that wrapping only works for completions specified with -c or --command and are ignored when specifying completions with -p or --path.

When erasing completions, it is possible to either erase all completions for a specific command by specifying complete -c COMMAND -e, or by specifying a specific completion option to delete by specifying either a long, short or old style option.

  Example
The short style option -o for the gcc command requires that a file follows it. This can be done using writing:

complete -c gcc -s o -r

The short style option -d for the grep command requires that one of the strings 'read', 'skip' or 'recurse' is used. This can be specified writing:

complete -c grep -s d -x -a 'read skip recurse'

The su command takes any username as an argument. Usernames are given as the first colon-separated field in the file /etc/passwd. This can be specified as:

complete -x -c su -d 'Username' -a '(cat /etc/passwd | cut -d : -f 1)'

The rpm command has several different modes. If the -e or --erase flag has been specified, rpm should delete one or more packages, in which case several switches related to deleting packages are valid, like the nodeps switch.

This can be written as:

complete -c rpm -n '__fish_contains_opt -s e erase' -d nodeps 'Don't check dependencies'

where __fish_contains_opt is a function that checks the command line buffer for the presence of a specified set of options.

To implement an alias, use the -w or --wraps option:

complete -c hub -w git

Now hub inherits all of the completions from git. Note this can also be specified in a function declaration.