How to turn on fzf help completion at zsh?

[Shuraken007]

Hello, greped a lot in Issues and manual, but can't find how to enable zsh completion for fzf help. I mean tab complete for fzf options like --preview, --multi, e.t.c.

shell/completion.bash has function _fzf_opts_completion with opts

I havn't find something like this for shell/completion.zsh probably you added some scripts to build help auto?

There are some examples bat: https://github.com/sharkdp/bat/blob/master/assets/completions/bat.zsh.in exa: https://github.com/ogham/exa/blob/master/completions/zsh/_exa ripgrep: https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep/blob/master/complete/_rg

[LangLangBart]

No, fzf does not have that. Someone has to write a zsh completion function for it.

Completion functions for commands are stored in files with names beginning with an underscore , and these files should be placed in a directory listed in the $fpath variable. Source: HOWTO Guide zsh-users/zsh-completions

Some tools have it, for example gh or bat. If you have Homebrew installed, you can see such files or checkout the zsh-users/zsh-completions github repo.

ls -1 $(brew --prefix)/share/zsh/site-functions
# _bat
# _brew
# _brew_services
# _cargo
# _delta
# _exa
# _fd
# _gh
# _git
# _hx
# _ninja
# _parallel
# _revolver
# _rg
# _yt-dlp
# _zoxide

---

Alternatively, you can run compdef _gnu_generic fzf which will search the fzf help page and list the flags found, but as the name implies, it is generic and will not work on specific options passed to flags.

# you may have to run those commands as well
autoload -Uz compinit
compinit

# run
# add the line to your '.zshrc' file if it is useful for your case
compdef _gnu_generic fzf

demo

related

• zsh Manual - Completion System

[LangLangBart]

• most zsh completion files for fzf found on GitHub are a bit outdated or just do the same thing as compdef _gnu_generic fzf does, but there is one version that even makes argument suggestions for certain flags
  • github.com/lmburns/dotfiles/.config/zsh/completions/_fzf

---

• either clone the entire repo and add the path to the completions directory to your $FPATH or

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/lmburns/dotfiles.git lmburns_zsh_completion

# .zshrc
export FPATH="$FPATH:$HOME/lmburns_zsh_completion/.config/zsh/completions"

• download this individual file, save it in some folder and add this folder to your $FPATH

cd $HOME/my_completion_folder
curl --remote-name https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lmburns/dotfiles/master/.config/zsh/completions/_fzf

# .zshrc
export FPATH="$FPATH:$HOME/my_completion_folder"

[Shuraken007]

@LangLangBart - how have you founded this example? Used git search engine for files with name _fzf?

[LangLangBart]

_@LangLangBart - how have you founded this example? Used git search engine for files with name fzf?

GitHub WebUI

I posted the search link in my previous comment. See docs.github.com/understanding-github-code-search-syntax for more details.

---

Command line

# uses 'gh', 'fzf' and 'bat'
gh search code $'#compdef fzf' \
    --filename '_fzf' \
    --json repository,path \
    --jq '.[] | [.repository.nameWithOwner, .path] | @tsv' |
    fzf --delimiter '\t' --with-nth 1 \
        --preview 'gh api --cache 10m repos/{1}/contents/{2} \
            --jq .content | base64 --decode | bat --language zsh --number' \
        --preview-window 'nohidden:right:wrap:75%' \
        --bind 'ctrl-b:execute-silent:gh browse --repo {1} {2}'

[Shuraken007]

@LangLangBart whoa, amazing tricks with that utils. Thanks for this cool staff. You are on the crest of a wave, cli added code search 2 weeks ago. https://github.com/cli/cli/releases/tag/v2.31.0 had to manually install release from github

I had to use a bit other params for bat bat --language zsh --style=numbers --color=always

wanna check your dotfiles to get some usefull tricks, but looks like they are private.

[LangLangBart]

I had to use a bit other params for bat bat --language zsh --style=numbers --color=always

I missed the --color=always, it was only set in my .zshrc, and --number is just an alias for --style=numbers

wanna check your dotfiles to get some usefull tricks, but looks like they are private.

Yes. I use zsh4humans as my setup. Checkout the creator's dotfiles - a true zsh wizard.

---

PS: The code snippet from my previous comment was transformed into an extension - gh find-code, utilizing the newest features of fzf.

[chrisgrieser]

I second that having completions would be nice. Even incomplete completions would be better than none at all. Maybe @lmburns would be willing to PR their completions?

@LangLangBart Thanks for the various tricks you shared in this thread. compdef _gnu_generic and the github code search really useful.

[iloveitaly]

https://github.com/RobSis/zsh-completion-generator is another option here for generating completions for tools which don't provide them.