rcompgen
A Completion Generator for R
This page documents a mechanism to generate relevant completions from a partially completed command line. It is not intended to be useful by itself, but rather in conjunction with other mechanisms that use it as a backend. The functions listed in the usage section provide a simple control and query mechanism. The actual interface consists of a few unexported functions described further down.
Usage
rc.settings(ops, ns, args, dots, func, ipck, S3, data, help,
argdb, fuzzy, quotes, files)rc.status()
rc.getOption(name)
rc.options(…)
.DollarNames(x, pattern)
# S3 method for default
.DollarNames(x, pattern = "")
# S3 method for list
.DollarNames(x, pattern = "")
# S3 method for environment
.DollarNames(x, pattern = "")
Arguments
- ops, ns, args, dots, func, ipck, S3, data, help, argdb, fuzzy, quotes, files
logical, turning some optional completion features on and off.
ops
:Activates completion after the
$
and@
operators.ns
:Controls namespace related completions.
args
:Enables completion of function arguments.
dots
:If disabled, drops
...
from list of function arguments. Relevant only ifargs
is enabled.func
:Enables detection of functions. If enabled, a customizable extension (
"("
by default) is appended to function names. The process of determining whether a potential completion is a function requires evaluation, including for lazy loaded symbols. This is undesirable for large objects, because of potentially wasteful use of memory in addition to the time overhead associated with loading. For this reason, this feature is disabled by default.S3
:When
args = TRUE
, activates completion on arguments of all S3 methods (otherwise just the generic, which usually has very few arguments).ipck
:Enables completion of installed package names inside
library
andrequire
.data
:Enables completion of data sets (including those already visible) inside
data
.help
:Enables completion of help requests starting with a question mark, by looking inside help index files.
argdb
:When
args = TRUE
, completion is attempted on function arguments. Generally, the list of valid arguments is determined by dynamic calls toargs
. While this gives results that are technically correct, the use of the…
argument often hides some useful arguments. To give more flexibility in this regard, an optional table of valid arguments names for specific functions is retained internally. Settingargdb = TRUE
enables preferential lookup in this internal data base for functions with an entry in it. Of course, this is useful only when the data base contains information about the function of interest. Some functions are already included, and more can be added by the user through the unexported function.addFunctionInfo
(see below).fuzzy
:Enables fuzzy matching, where close but non-exact matches (e.g., with different case) are considered if no exact matches are found. This feature is experimental and the details can change.
quotes
:Enables completion in R code when inside quotes. This normally leads to filename completion, but can be otherwise depending on context (for example, when the open quote is preceded by
?
), help completion is invoked. Setting this toFALSE
relegates completion to the underlying completion front-end, which may do its own processing (for example,readline
on Unix-alikes will do filename completion).files
:Deprecated. Use
quotes
instead.
All settings are turned on by default except
ipck
,func
, andfuzzy
. Turn more off if your CPU cycles are valuable; you will still retain basic completion on names of objects in the search list. See below for additional details.- name, …
user-settable options. Currently valid names are
function.suffix
:default
"("
funarg.suffix
:default
" = "
package.suffix
default
"::"
Usage is similar to that of
options
.- x
An R object for which valid names after
"$"
are computed and returned.- pattern
A regular expression. Only matching names are returned.
Details
There are several types of completion, some of which can be disabled
using rc.settings
. The most basic level, which can not be
turned off once the completion functionality is activated, provides
completion on names visible on the search path, along with a few
special keywords (e.g., TRUE
). This type of completion is not
attempted if the partial ‘word’ (a.k.a. token) being completed
is empty (since there would be too many completions). The more
advanced types of completion are described below.
- Completion after extractors
$
and@
: When the
ops
setting is turned on, completion after$
and@
is attempted. This requires the prefix to be evaluated, which is attempted unless it involves an explicit function call (implicit function calls involving the use of[
,$
, etc do not inhibit evaluation).Valid completions after the
$
extractor are determined by the generic function.DollarNames
. Some basic methods are provided, and more can be written for custom classes.- Completion inside namespaces:
When the
ns
setting is turned on, completion inside namespaces is attempted when a token is preceded by the::
or:::
operators. Additionally, the basic completion mechanism is extended to include all loaded namespaces, i.e.,foopkg::
becomes a valid completion offoo
if"foopkg"
is a loaded namespace.The completion of package namespaces applies only to already loaded namespaces, i.e.if
MASS
is not loaded,MAS
will not complete toMASS::
. However, attempted completion inside an apparent namespace will attempt to load the namespace if it is not already loaded, e.g.trying to complete onMASS::fr
will loadMASS
if it is not already loaded.- Completion for help items:
When the
help
setting is turned on, completion on help topics is attempted when a token is preceded by?
. Prefixes (such asclass
,method
) are supported, as well as quoted help topics containing special characters.- Completion of function arguments:
When the
args
setting is turned on, completion on function arguments is attempted whenever deemed appropriate. The mechanism used will currently fail if the relevant function (at the point where completion is requested) was entered on a previous prompt (which implies in particular that the current line is being typed in response to a continuation prompt, usually+
). Note that separation by newlines is fine.The list of possible argument completions that is generated can be misleading. There is no problem for non-generic functions (except that
…
is listed as a completion; this is intentional as it signals the fact that the function can accept further arguments). However, for generic functions, it is practically impossible to give a reliable argument list without evaluating arguments (and not even then, in some cases), which is risky (in addition to being difficult to code, which is the real reason it hasn't even been tried), especially when that argument is itself an inline function call. Our compromise is to consider arguments of all currently available methods of that generic. This has two drawbacks. First, not all listed completions may be appropriate in the call currently being constructed. Second, for generics with many methods (likeprint
andplot
), many matches will need to be considered, which may take a noticeable amount of time. Despite these drawbacks, we believe this behaviour to be more useful than the only other practical alternative, which is to list arguments of the generic only.Only S3 methods are currently supported in this fashion, and that can be turned off using the
S3
setting.Since arguments can be unnamed in R function calls, other types of completion are also appropriate whenever argument completion is. Since there are usually many many more visible objects than formal arguments of any particular function, possible argument completions are often buried in a bunch of other possibilities. However, recall that basic completion is suppressed for blank tokens. This can be useful to list possible arguments of a function. For example, trying to complete
seq([TAB]
andseq(from = 1, [TAB])
will both list only the arguments ofseq
(or any of its methods), whereas trying to completeseq(length[TAB]
will list both thelength.out
argument and thelength(
function as possible completions. Note that no attempt is made to remove arguments already supplied, as that would incur a further speed penalty.- Special functions:
For a few special functions (
library
,data
, etc), the first argument is treated specially, in the sense that normal completion is suppressed, and some function specific completions are enabled if so requested by the settings. Theipck
setting, which controls whetherlibrary
andrequire
will complete on installed packages, is disabled by default because the first call toinstalled.packages
is potentially time consuming (e.g., when packages are installed on a remote network file server). Note, however, that the results of a call toinstalled.packages
is cached, so subsequent calls are usually fast, so turning this option on is not particularly onerous even in such situations.
Value
If rc.settings
is called without any arguments, it returns the
current settings as a named logical vector. Otherwise, it returns
NULL
invisibly.
rc.status
returns, as a list, the contents of an internal
(unexported) environment that is used to record the results of the
last completion attempt. This can be useful for debugging. For such
use, one must resist the temptation to use completion when typing the
call to rc.status
itself, as that then becomes the last attempt
by the time the call is executed.
The items of primary interest in the returned list are:
The possible completions generated by the last
call to .completeToken
, as a character vector.
The token that was (or, is to be) completed, as
set by the last call to .assignToken
(possibly inside a call
to .guessTokenFromLine
).
The full line, as set by the last call to
.assignLinebuffer
.
The start position of the token in the line
buffer, as set by the last call to .assignStart
.
The end position of the token in the line
buffer, as set by the last call to .assignEnd
.
Logical, indicating whether the cursor is currently inside quotes.
The name of the function the cursor is currently inside.
Logical. If cursor is inside a function, is it the first argument?
In addition, the components settings and options give the current values of settings and options respectively.
rc.getOption and rc.options behave much like getOption and options respectively.
Note
If you are uncomfortable with unsolicited evaluation of pieces of
code, you should set ops = FALSE
. Otherwise, trying to
complete foo@ba
will evaluate foo
, trying to complete
foo[i, 1:10]$ba
will evaluate foo[i, 1:10]
, etc. This
should not be too bad, as explicit function calls (involving
parentheses) are not evaluated in this manner. However, this
will affect promises and lazy loaded symbols.
Unexported API
There are several unexported functions in the package. Of these, a few are special because they provide the API through which other mechanisms can make use of the facilities provided by this package (they are unexported because they are not meant to be called directly by users). The usage of these functions are:
.assignToken(text) .assignLinebuffer(line) .assignStart(start) .assignEnd(end).completeToken() .retrieveCompletions() .getFileComp()
.guessTokenFromLine() .win32consoleCompletion(linebuffer, cursorPosition, check.repeat = TRUE, minlength = -1)
.addFunctionInfo(...)
The first four functions set up a completion attempt by specifying the
token to be completed (text
), and indicating where
(start
and end
, which should be integers) the token is
placed within the complete line typed so far (line
).
Potential completions of the token are generated by
.completeToken
, and the completions can be retrieved as an R
character vector using .retrieveCompletions
. It is possible for
the user to specify a replacement for this function by setting
rc.options("custom.completer")
; if not NULL
, this
function is called to compute potential completions. This facility is
meant to help in situations where completing as R code is not
appropriate. See source code for more details.
If the cursor is inside quotes, completion may be suppressed. The
function .getFileComp
can be used after a call to
.completeToken
to determine if this is the case (returns
TRUE
), and alternative completions generated as deemed useful.
In most cases, filename completion is a reasonable fallback.
The .guessTokenFromLine
function is provided for use with
backends that do not already break a line into tokens. It requires
the linebuffer and endpoint (cursor position) to be already set, and
itself sets the token and the start position. It returns the token as
a character string.
The .win32consoleCompletion
is similar in spirit, but is more
geared towards the Windows GUI (or rather, any front-end that has no
completion facilities of its own). It requires the linebuffer
and cursor position as arguments, and returns a list with three
components, addition
, possible
and comps
. If
there is an unambiguous extension at the current position,
addition
contains the additional text that should be inserted
at the cursor. If there is more than one possibility, these are
available either as a character vector of preformatted strings in
possible
, or as a single string in comps
.
possible
consists of lines formatted using the current
width
option, so that printing them on the console one line at
a time will be a reasonable way to list them. comps
is a space
separated (collapsed) list of the same completions, in case the
front-end wishes to display it in some other fashion.
The minlength
argument can be used to suppress completion when
the token is too short (which can be useful if the front-end is set up
to try completion on every keypress). If check.repeat
is
TRUE
, it is detected if the same completion is being requested
more than once in a row, and ambiguous completions are returned only
in that case. This is an attempt to emulate GNU Readline behaviour,
where a single TAB completes up to any unambiguous part, and multiple
possibilities are reported only on two consecutive TABs.
As the various front-end interfaces evolve, the details of these functions are likely to change as well.
The function .addFunctionInfo
can be used to add information
about the permitted argument names for specific functions. Multiple
named arguments are allowed in calls to it, where the tags are names
of functions and values are character vectors representing valid
arguments. When the argdb
setting is TRUE
, these are
used as a source of valid argument names for the relevant functions.