I use the following zstyle commands to group completion items by their description:
zstyle ':completion:*:*:*:*:descriptions' format '%F{green}-- %d --%f'
zstyle ':completion:*' group-name ''
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:users' users alice bob eve
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:hosts' hosts lenovo hp asus
Which, for the ssh command, display something like this:
$ ssh <TAB>
-- remote host name --
asus hp lenovo
-- login name --
alice bob eve
My question: how can I change the descriptions for the tags users and hosts? That is, to replace "remote host name" by something like "hosts" and "login name" by "users".
I have tried the following, but it has no effect:
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:hosts' group-name 'hosts'
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:hosts' description 'hosts'
I'm still trying to grok zstyle myself, so take what I'm saying with a bit of salt.
First of all, this seems to work, but I don't think it's quite correct:
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:users' users alice bob eve
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:hosts' hosts lenovo hp asus
zstyle itself has helpful completion which you can use to figure out which field has which purpose. This is telling me:
host ~ # zstyle ':completion:
completion widget
all-matches complete-tag expand-alias-word history-words
complete-debug correct-word expand-word
host ~ # zstyle ':completion:*:
completer
approximate correct history list menu prefix
complete expand ignored match oldlist
host ~ # zstyle ':completion:*:*:
external command
[ klockstat-bpfcc
7z kmod
7za lap
[...]
host ~ # zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:
argument
host ~ # zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:*:
tag
accounts devices interfaces nicknames sessions
all-expansions directories jobs options signals
all-files directory-stack keymaps original strings
[...]
host ~ # zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:*:users'
style
accept-exact filter max-exports sort
accept-exact-dirs force-list max-matches-width special-dirs
[...]
So with zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:users', you're accidentally giving ssh as completer, * as external command and hosts as argument. I can't quite figure out why it works nonetheless, but I believe this would be more correct, and still works for me:
zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:*:users' users alice bob eve
zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:*:hosts' hosts lenovo hp asus
Further on, I don't think that these two do what you expect:
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:hosts' group-name 'hosts'
zstyle ':completion:*:ssh:*:hosts' description 'hosts'
From what I can tell from man zshcompsys, group-name is used to group or ungroup several different tags (ie. if you wanted to configure whether users and hosts should be grouped together or not). description isn't completed by zstyle and isn't documented in the manpage, so I guess you've made that up :)
What I think you actually want, is, funnily enough... format, which you've already set here globally:
zstyle ':completion:*:*:*:*:descriptions' format '%F{green}-- %d --%f'
The %d is replaced with the descriptions given by the tags. So to get your custom descriptions, simply set different formats for your users/hosts tags, and replace %d with the description you want:
zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:*:users' format '%F{green}-- users --%f'
zstyle ':completion:*:*:ssh:*:hosts' format '%F{green}-- hosts --%f'
This works for me:
host ~ # ssh
-- hosts --
asus hp lenovo
-- users --
alice bob eve