NAME

Getopt::Long::Complete - A drop-in replacement for Getopt::Long, with tab completion

VERSION

This document describes version 0.07 of Getopt::Long::Complete (from Perl distribution Getopt-Long-Complete), released on 2014-07-27.

SYNOPSIS

First example (simple)

You just replace use Getopt::Long with use Getopt::Long::Complete and your program suddenly supports tab completion. This works for most/many programs. For example, below is source code for delete-user.

use Getopt::Long::Complete;
my %opts;
GetOptions(
    'help|h'     => sub { ... },
    'on-fail=s'  => \$opts{on_fail},
    'user=s'     => \$opts{name},
    'force'      => \$opts{force},
    'verbose!'   => \$opts{verbose},
);

To activate completion, put your script somewhere in PATH and execute this in the shell or put it into your bash startup file (e.g. /etc/bash_profile or ~/.bashrc):

complete -C delete-user delete-user

Now, tab completion works:

% delete-user <tab>
--force --help --noverbose --no-verbose --on-fail --user --verbose -h
% delete-user --h<tab>

Second example (additional completion)

The previous example only provides completion for option names. To provide completion for option values as well as arguments, you need to provide more hints. Instead of GetOptions, use GetOptionsWithCompletion. It's basically the same as GetOptions but accepts a coderef in the first argument. The code will be invoked when completion to option value or argument is needed. Example:

use Getopt::Long::Complete qw(GetOptionsWithCompletion);
use Complete::Unix qw(complete_user);
use Complete::Util qw(complete_array_elem);
my %opts;
GetOptionsWithCompletion(
    sub {
        my %args  = @_;
        my $word  = $args{word}; # the word to be completed
        my $ospec = $args{ospec};
        if ($ospec && $ospec eq 'on-fail=s') {
            return complete_array_elem(words=>[qw/die warn ignore/], word=>$word);
        } elsif ($ospec eq 'user=s') {
            return complete_user(word=>$word);
        }
        [];
    },
    'help|h'     => sub { ... },
    'on-fail=s'  => \$opts{on_fail},
    'user=s'     => \$opts{name},
    'force'      => \$opts{force},
    'verbose!'   => \$opts{verbose},
);

DESCRIPTION

This module provides a quick and easy way to add tab completion feature to your scripts, including scripts already written using the venerable Getopt::Long module.

This module is basically just a thin wrapper for Getopt::Long. Its GetOptions function just checks for COMP_LINE/COMP_POINT environment variable before passing its arguments to Getopt::Long's GetOptions. If COMP_LINE is defined, completion reply will be printed to STDOUT and then the program will exit. Otherwise, Getopt::Long's GetOptions is called.

To keep completion quick, you should do GetOptions() or GetOptionsWithCompletion() as early as possible in your script. Preferably before loading lots of other Perl modules.

FUNCTIONS

GetOptions([\%hash, ]@spec)

Will call Getopt::Long's GetOptions, except when COMP_LINE environment variable is defined.

GetOptionsWithCompletion(\&completion, [\%hash, ]@spec)

Just like GetOptions, except that it accepts an extra first argument \&completion containing completion routine for completing option values and arguments. See Synopsis for example.

SEE ALSO

Complete::Getopt::Long (the backend for this module), Complete::Bash.

Other option-processing modules featuring shell tab completion: Getopt::Complete.

Perinci::CmdLine - an alternative way to easily create command-line applications with completion feature.

HOMEPAGE

Please visit the project's homepage at https://metacpan.org/release/Getopt-Long-Complete.

SOURCE

Source repository is at https://github.com/sharyanto/perl-Getopt-Long-Complete.

BUGS

Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=Getopt-Long-Complete

When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired feature.

AUTHOR

Steven Haryanto <stevenharyanto@gmail.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This software is copyright (c) 2014 by Steven Haryanto.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.

cpanm Getopt::Long::Complete

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install Getopt::Long::Complete