How to I make a custom tag-order?

[vulns-are-features-too]

I'm trying to make use of my own tag-order with the following in my .zshrc

zstyle ':completion:*' tag-order '! ancestor-directory recent-directories recent-files' 'flags arguments local-directories files builtins history-words'

With that setting, zstyle -L | grep 'tag-order' outputs the following

zstyle -e ':completion:*:complete:*' tag-order $'\n    if [[ CURRENT -ne 1 && $compstate[context] == (command|condition) &&\n        $PREFIX$SUFFIX == [-+]* ]]; then\n      reply=( "(|*-)argument-* (|*-)option[-+]* values" options - )\n    else\n      reply=( "! options *files *directories" "*files *directories" - )\n    fi\n  '
zstyle ':completion:*:expand:*' tag-order '! all-expansions original' -
zstyle ':completion:*:(approximate|correct):*' tag-order '! original' -
zstyle ':completion:*' tag-order '! ancestor-directory recent-directories recent-files' 'flags arguments local-directories files builtins history-words'

With my setting, I want to make suggestions appear in the order flags -> arguments -> local-directories -> files -> builtins history-words while removing entries for ancestor-directory and recents. However, zsh still suggests ancestors & recents and my local files are still at the bottom of my suggestions.

There's no clear documentation on this tag-order and I'm new to zsh so I'm not sure what exactly I'm supposed to do here. How should I make my tag-order work?

[marlonrichert]

First of all, despite what its name might suggest, tag-order doesn't govern the order in which completions are shown. Instead, it governs the order in which completions are tried within a single completion function. Additionally, it can be used to disable certain completions, by removing them from tag-order.

If you want to change the order in which completions are presented, then group-order is setting you'll need to use. Unlike tag-order, though, it supports neither ! nor patterns, and it expects each group to be added as a separate value.

Additionally, for your setting to override the one defined by zsh-autocomplete, it needs to have more weight. This works similarly to CSS: The more elements there are in a selector, the more weight it has.

Finally, flags is neither a tag nor a group in Zsh's completion system. 🙂

What you want is something like this:

zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*:' tag-order '! ancestor-directories recent-directories recent-files' -
zstyle ':completion:*:complete:*:' group-order \
  options arguments values local-directories files builtins history-words

Note the - at the end of tag-order. This tells it to not try any other tags. Without it, it would first try everything except the three tags listed with !, after which it would try all remaining tags.

Note also the extra : in each setting and the lack of a * at the end. This makes them have more weight than the ones defined by zsh-autocomplete.

I will see if I can improve the Readme on this.

[marlonrichert]

There: https://github.com/marlonrichert/zsh-autocomplete/blob/master/README.md#change-the-order-of-completions

Hopefully, it makes more sense now.

[L0laapk3]

Hi @marlonrichert,

Thanks for your amazing work!

This info appears to be no longer in the readme. Is it still accurate?