Auto-completion: why not module name?

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2015 11:22 pm, Oscar Benjamin wrote:

> On 17 March 2015 at 08:10, Steven D'Aprano
> <steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info> wrote:
>> On Tuesday 17 March 2015 03:23, candide wrote:
>>
>> You might like my tab completion and command history module:
>>
>> http://code.google.com/p/tabhistory/
>>
>> I've been using it on Linux for about three or four years, and although I
>> don't promise it is bug-free, it shouldn't blow up your computer :-)
> 
> Good work Steven. I just gave it a try and it works great.

Thank you!


>> It supports module completion in `import` and `from ... import`
>> statements. It even supports module attribute completion if the module is
>> already cached.
>>
>> E.g. if the re module is cached, typing
>>
>>     from re import ma[TAB}
>>
>> will compete the "ma" to "match".
> 
> BTW ipython does this and goes one step further. It basically imports
> the module while tab completion is ongoing so that you can complete
> "from ...import" without needing to import the module first. In
> principle that could be problematic but in practice I find it useful
> and it has never caused me any actual problems.

I thought about that, but I decided against it because of the security risk:

from evil_module_of_doom import something

Just tab-completing the name "something" shouldn't run the evil module. I
suppose I could add it as an optional feature, defaulting to off. Or try
parsing the source code.


>> By default, the tabhistory module:
>>
>> * indents at the start of the line
> 
> Any reason for using 8 spaces for a tab? Or is that just my terminal
> (gnome-terminal)?

By default, it should indent with an actual tab character, which most
terminals treat as 8-spaces wide. But you can change that by setting
completer.indent to whatever string you want. Are you sure it is using
actual spaces?


>> * completes on module names in `import` and `from` statements
>> * completes on file names inside strings
> 
> I'm not sure what causes this but I have a symlink in my user
> directory called "current" that just takes me to the things I'm
> currently working on. When I tab complete it it puts in a quote
> character:
> 
>>>> with open('current'
> 
> I think it thinks that "current" is a complete filename when it's
> actually a symlink to a directory containing other things. If I delete
> the quote and add a slash then it continues to complete normally.

Weird. It shouldn't be adding a close quote. Mind you, there appears to be
at least one other bug in the file name completion, so I need to work on
that soon.

However, I can reproduce the bug, so I'll work on that too. Thank you for
the report!



-- 
Steven