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From: allbery@NCoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/AA)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: separate the command language and interactive
Message-ID: <1991May11.012728.5177@NCoast.ORG>
Date: 11 May 91 01:27:28 GMT
References: <2832@optima.cs.arizona.edu>
Reply-To: allbery@ncoast.ORG (Brandon S. Allbery KB8JRR/AA)
Followup-To: comp.unix.shell
Organization: North Coast Public Access Un*x (ncoast)
Lines: 40

As quoted from <2832@optima.cs.arizona.edu> by gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman):
+---------------
| ]How about glob completion: expand things like "*" and "f*".
| 
| If the ish writer wants to expand wildcards, the ish can do so.
| 
| ]A more serious problem: the shell isn't the only thing that
| ]wants/needs completion.  gdb, for example, wants to do completion.
| 
| That was one of the considerations that lead to my suggestion in the
| first place.  Write a command line description for gdb just like for
| the clang.
+---------------

And how do you tell ish to complete a variable name for gdb?  This leads
directly into:

+---------------
| ]Teaching the front-end about all this gets ugly.
| 
| All of this is part of the front end, there is no "teaching" about it.
| 
| ]The simplest way to handle completion is to have a communication
| ]channel between the front-end and the current interactive process.
| 
| It might make life a little easier for the ish writer, but it makes
| life harder for the clang writer.  Since completion is an ish feature,
| the clang writer should not have to worry about it.
+---------------

...but if the possible completion values are generated internally to the
clang, there had *better* be a way to tell the ish how to complete them, or
your completion scheme is going to fall apart.

++Brandon
-- 
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