Bash completion dynamic behavior

Question

I would like to have 2 different behavior of "tab" depending of the usage context.
I would like to have the default behavior of bind '"\t":complete' any time except when users are trying to complete arguments of the "mybashfunction" command. In this case I call a special function to generate the completion, but I would like "tab" to work like if bind '"\t":menu-complete' was set.

Answer 1

I believe that its readline library will only support one kind of tab-completion behaviour at a time.

Answer 2

Is this what you're looking for? http://serverfault.com/questions/48671/bash-menu-complete-only-for-few-matches/52103#52103

Answer 3

You can achieve this by using bash complete rules ...

_myfunc() {
    _opts="zero one two"
    # COMPREPLY is bash built-in for array of possible completions
    COMPREPLY=()
    # cur & prev are current & previous words typed in shell
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
    prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"
    COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "${_opts}" -- ${cur} ))
    return 0
}
complete -F _myfunc myfunc

This won't touch bash's normal completion but when you tab complete myfunc you'll have "zero one two" as possible completions.

Edit: oh yeah, jam this into your bashrc or similar so it's sourced in new shells.