python cmd.Cmd auto complete feature

[Peter Otten]

Jean-Michel Pichavant wrote:

> I'm trying to autoexpand values as well as arguments using the builtin
> cmd.Cmd class.
> 
> I.E.
> Consider the following command and arguments:
> 
>  > sayHello target=Georges
> 'Hello Georges !'
> 
> I can easily make 'tar' expand into 'target=' however I'd like to be
> able to expand the value as well, choosing the target within a
> predefined list. ie.
>  > sayHello target=<tab>
> target=Georges target=Charles
> 
> However I have the feeling that cmd.Cmd consider the '=' character in
> the way it will not try to expand anything beyond. When double tabbing
> after the '=' it will print the list of available arguemnt (i.e
> ['target'] in the exemple above).
> Ddd anyone successfuly expand values with cmd.Cmd ?

Some digging shows that your feeling is right:

http://docs.python.org/library/readline.html#readline.get_completer_delims

>>> import readline
>>> readline.get_completer_delims()
' \t\n`~!@#$%^&*()-=+[{]}\\|;:\'",<>/?'

After some initial problems with an extra space the following seems to work:

import cmd
import readline

class SayHello(cmd.Cmd):
    def __init__(self):
        cmd.Cmd.__init__(self)
        delims = readline.get_completer_delims().replace("=", "")
        readline.set_completer_delims(delims)

    def do_sayHello(self, line):
        print 'Hello %s !' % line.split('=')[1]
   
    def complete_sayHello(self, text, line, begidx, endidx):
        target_with_value = ["target=" + v for v in "Charles 
Georges".split()]
        commands = ["target", "tarpit", "anotherCmd"]

        if text.startswith("target="):
            return [c for c in target_with_value if c.startswith(text)]
        completions = [c for c in commands if c.startswith(text)]
        if completions == ["target"]: # avoid blank after target
            return target_with_value
        return completions

    def do_EOF(self, line):
        return True

if __name__ == '__main__':
    SayHello().cmdloop()