Multi Level Bash Completion

Question

I currently have a Bash completion file which completes a single parameter from a list of allowed commands for a script (called "pbt"). This is the working Bash Completion file:

_pbt_complete()
{
  local cur goals

  COMPREPLY=()
  cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
  goals='asadmin clean deploy'
  cur=`echo $cur`
  COMPREPLY=($(compgen -W "${goals}" ${cur}))
}

complete -F _pbt_complete pbt

So if i call

pbt <tab>

Bash completes to all allowed commands (asadmin, clean, deploy), which is okay.

Now i want to add a "second" level to the completion. So for example if i type

pbt asadmin <tab>

it should complete all options that are only available inside the asadmin-"environment" (which i'll also define inside the bash completion file), say for example pbt asadmin [start-domain|stop-domain] But if i type

pbt deploy <tab>

it should complete to another set of options, for example pbt deploy [all|current]. So the options for the second command should always depend on the first command. How can i do that in the completion file?

Have you installed or looked at the bash-completion package? bash-completion.alioth.debian.org The p4 and apt modules do this. — Matt K

Wolkenarchitekt Wolkenarchitekt · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-14T19:09:43

Thanks to mkb's comment i looked into the p4-example, which was - unlike the Git example ;) - simple enough for me to adapt it to my case. Here is the working version which does exactly what i asked for:

have pbt &&
_pbt_complete()
{
  local cur prev

  COMPREPLY=()
  cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
  prev=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}

  if [ $COMP_CWORD -eq 1 ]; then
    COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "asadmin deploy" -- $cur) )
  elif [ $COMP_CWORD -eq 2 ]; then
    case "$prev" in
      "asadmin")
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "start-domain stop-domain" -- $cur) )
        ;;
      "deploy")
        COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "all current" -- $cur) )
        ;;
      *)
        ;;
    esac
  fi

  return 0
} &&
complete -F _pbt_complete pbt

Multi Level Bash Completion

2 Answers