Where is the 'man' complete function?

Question

When i type something like this:

$ complete -p | grep -ie '\<man\>'

or:

$ find /etc/bash_completion.d/ -iname '*man*'

or:

$ grep -rie '\<man\>' /etc/bash_completion.d/

I don't find any trace of the complete function for the man command!

The goal is to add this completion for one of my own-made function:

complete -F <the_man_complete_function> <my_man_related_command>

Any idea?

Answer 1

I found a solution : to load the not-yet-loaded completion func, I just have to launch this in .bashrc:

. /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/man

Usefull links that helped me:

• https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/89409/bash-completion-not-working-for-some-commands
• bash-completion - completion function defined the first time a command is invoked

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EDIT

To avoid loading the man completion script on every bash session start, a better solution is to write a local completion script, to put in the directory $XDG_DATA_HOME/bash-completion/completions (typically ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions), with the name of the desired command (as explained in the bash-completion FAQ).

Here's the code I put in the script (named myman):

#!/bin/bash

# Force the load of the man completion function if it is not loaded yet:
type -t _man >/dev/null || . /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/man

complete -F _man myman

With this method, the man completion function will be loaded only when required (by man, or myman).