I'm trying to write a completion script for Zsh. I'd like to unit test the completion script. For example, I'd like to test that completions for my-command --h
include --help
.
For Fish, I can use complete -C 'my-command --h'
, which would then output --help
and any other valid completions.
I can't seem to find an equivalent command for Zsh. Does one exist? I've tried things like _main_complete
, _complete
and _normal
, but either they don't support this or I'm not invoking them in the correct way (I get a lot of can only be called from completion function
errors).
I get a lot of
can only be called from completion function errors
This is because Zsh's completion commands can run only from inside a completion widget, which in turn can only be called while the Zsh Line Editor is active. We can work around this by activating a completion widget on an active command line inside a so-called pseudo terminal:
# Set up your completions as you would normally.
compdef _my-command my-command
_my-command () {
_arguments '--help[display help text]' # Just an example.
}
# Define our test function.
comptest () {
# Gather all matching completions in this array.
# -U discards duplicates.
typeset -aU completions=()
# Override the builtin compadd command.
compadd () {
# Gather all matching completions for this call in $reply.
# Note that this call overwrites the specified array.
# Therefore we cannot use $completions directly.
builtin compadd -O reply "$@"
completions+=("$reply[@]") # Collect them.
builtin compadd "$@" # Run the actual command.
}
# Bind a custom widget to TAB.
bindkey "^I" complete-word
zle -C {,,}complete-word
complete-word () {
# Make the completion system believe we're on a normal
# command line, not in vared.
unset 'compstate[vared]'
_main_complete "$@" # Generate completions.
# Print out our completions.
# Use of ^B and ^C as delimiters here is arbitrary.
# Just use something that won't normally be printed.
print -n $'\C-B'
print -nlr -- "$completions[@]" # Print one per line.
print -n $'\C-C'
exit
}
vared -c tmp
}
zmodload zsh/zpty # Load the pseudo terminal module.
zpty {,}comptest # Create a new pty and run our function in it.
# Simulate a command being typed, ending with TAB to get completions.
zpty -w comptest $'my-command --h\t'
# Read up to the first delimiter. Discard all of this.
zpty -r comptest REPLY $'*\C-B'
zpty -r comptest REPLY $'*\C-C' # Read up to the second delimiter.
# Print out the results.
print -r -- "${REPLY%$'\C-C'}" # Trim off the ^C, just in case.
zpty -d comptest # Delete the pty.
Running the example above will print out:
--help
If you want to test the entire completion output and not just the strings that would be inserted on the command line, then see https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/668618/how-to-write-automated-tests-for-zsh-completion/668827#668827