COMPLETE(3)

NAME
complete - file name completion

SYNOPSIS
#include <u.h>
#include <libc.h>
#include <complete.h>

typedef struct Completion	Completion;
struct Completion{
	uchar advance;		/* whether forward progress has been made */
	uchar complete;	/* whether the completion now represents a file or directory */
	char *string;		/* the string to advance, suffixed " " or "/" for file or directory */
	int nmatch;		/* number of files that matched */
	int nfile;			/* number of files returned */
	char **filename;	/* their names */
};

Completion* complete(char *dir, char *s);

void freecompletion(Completion *c);

DESCRIPTION
The complete function implements file name completion. Given a directory dir and a string s, it returns an analysis of the file names in that directory that begin with the string s. The fields nmatch and nfile will be set to the number of files that match the prefix and filename will be filled in with their names. If the file named is a directory, a slash character will be appended to it.

If no files match the string, nmatch will be zero, but complete will return the full set of files in the directory, with nfile set to their number.

The flag advance reports whether the string s can be extended without changing the set of files that match. If true, string will be set to the extension; that is, the value of string may be appended to s by the caller to extend the embryonic file name unambiguously.

The flag complete reports whether the extended file name uniquely identifies a file. If true, string will be suffixed with a blank, or a slash and a blank, depending on whether the resulting file name identifies a plain file or a directory.

The freecompletion function frees a Completion structure and its contents.

In rio(1) and acme(1), file name completion is triggered by a control-F character or an Insert character.

SOURCE
/usr/local/plan9/src/libcomplete

SEE ALSO
rio(1), acme(1)

DIAGNOSTICS
The complete function returns a null pointer and sets errstr if the directory is unreadable or there is some other error.

BUGS
The behavior of file name completion should be controlled by the plumber.