vim-zsh-path-completion

Provides Zsh-style pathname completion in the Vim command line.

Specifically, it will complete each component of pathname independently up to the first ambiguous match.

Here's an example:

:edit s/m/a/c/s<C-s>

Will expand to:

:edit src/myproject/app/controllers/something_controller.rb

So long as there are no ambiguous matches along the way. You can provide as much of each component as you want. This also works:

:edit sr/my/app/c/so<C-s>

If there are any ambiguous matches, it will complete as much as it can.

You can freely intermingle <Tab> and <C-s> completion until you get the path you want. <C-s> doesn't invoke any completion menus; it just completes what it can.

Installation

Via pathogen.vim:

cd ~/.vim/bundle
git clone git://github.com/fweep/vim-zsh-path-completion.git

Mappings

To suppress the key mapping:

let g:zsh_path_completion_suppress_mappings = 1

To provide your own mapping, bind to <Plug>ZshPathComplete. The default is:

cmap <C-s> <Plug>ZshPathComplete

Limitations/Bugs

It doesn't understand context. Whereas Vim builtins like :edit know that they need a filename argument, and only do <Tab> completion when appropriate, this will try to expand whatever token is there when you hit <C-s>.

It doesn't handle quotes/spaces/special characters. That should be fixable.

If a component in the middle of the path is ambiguous, it will discard everything after the unambiguous prefix (zsh will expand the common portion and position the cursor at the first differing character, leaving the rest of the path string intact).

<C-s> only works on the end of the command line; if you move the cursor to the middle and invoke it, you won't get good results.

I hope to address some of these issues. Soliciting feedback for now.

Please file a GitHub issue if you find bugs.

A note on clutter

I'm not happy about all the Ruby stuff in the top-level directory. It's there because Bundler will not allow you to monitor paths above its root, so I can't use a relative path to watch() for changes in the plugin directory. Bundler also won't follow symlinks. If you install the plugin with pathogen (or another Vim package handler), it doesn't really matter that the directory is cluttered up. If you don't use pathogen, well...you should. I'll move everything to a single test directory once I figure out how to make Bundler happy.

Acknowledgements

This was motivation by a question on Stack Overflow by Mykle Hansen. Thanks for the idea, Mykle!

License

Copyright (C) 2013 Jim Stewart

MIT License. See LICENSE file.