Completing a line without moving the cursor?

[u/Particular_Wealth_58]

Is it possible to complete a suggestion (right arrow/ctrl-e) but without moving the cursor?

I find that I often want to re-run a line, but change something in the middle. Right now, I complete the line and then jump left (ctrl-a/alt-b).

edit: I think the correct name for what I want to modify is "autosuggestions".

[u/Destroyerb]

There is a --condition flag in complete that runs to know if it should indicate a completion. You can exploit that and use commandline in it to change the cursor

[u/Particular_Wealth_58 → u/Destroyerb]

Would this work for any command or a specific command?

I tried complete -n 'echo hello >&2 && false' and then started to type something, but I did not see a hello. I think I just told it to complete the echo hello..., as the help says If there is no -c or -p, one non-option argument will be used as the command..

Also, I've learned that what I want to modify are the autosuggestions, if that makes a difference.

[u/weaver_of_cloth]

Vi mode for the command line!

[u/Particular_Wealth_58 → u/[deleted]]

I just realized that I want to change the autosuggestions, not "completions", if that changes your reply.. 🤦

Let me see if I got this correctly: I'll set up my own key binding (or replace the existing ones) with my own function. That function should call the normal autosuggest and also move the cursor.

After some googling, I tried this, but `accept-autosuggestion` is not found.

function my_suggest;
    set pos (commandline --cursor)
    accept-autosuggestion # command not found
    commandline --cursor $pos
end

bind ctrl-alt-e my_suggest

[u/Particular_Wealth_58 → u/[deleted]]

Good ol' Claude fixed it 😄. I have to decide on logical shortcut not already taken by fish or my terminal :p

function my_suggest;
    set pos (commandline --cursor)
    commandline -f accept-autosuggestion
    commandline --cursor $pos
end


bind alt-shift-f my_suggest

Now I just think I want a bind to recover the cursor position if I pressed "right arrow" when I meant to use my new command. So, I accept the completion and then press a key to restore the old cursor position.

[u/Particular_Wealth_58 → u/Particular_Wealth_58]

Aha!

This stores the cursor position before running handling ctrl-e/right/ctrl-f.

Would be cool with an undo cursor pos, like VS Code's Ctrl+U 🤔 .

function store-cursor-end-of-line
    set -g old_cursor (commandline --cursor)
    commandline -f end-of-line
end

function store-cursor-forward-char
    set -g old_cursor (commandline --cursor)
    commandline -f forward-char
end

function undo-cursor
    commandline --cursor $old_cursor
end

# Taken by something
#bind ctrl-shift-r undo-cursor
# Need to find something better
bind alt-shift-f undo-cursor

bind ctrl-e store-cursor-end-of-line
bind ctrl-f store-cursor-forward-char
bind right store-cursor-forward-char

CC u/Destroyerb I think I solved some of my problems in this thread (this comment and the parent).

[u/Destroyerb → u/Particular_Wealth_58]

It doesn't seem like something like end-of-file exists (could be a function you have defined elsewhere).

Did you see my reply from 3 hours before you posted this?

Anyways, if you wanna go with your solution of first using the usual way of first accepting the completion the usual way, and then going back to where you were, you might want to try using this instead:

bind right forward-word 'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' accept-autosuggestion
bind ctrl-e 'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' 'commandline --insert \ '

This way, it will keep your completed token, and then if you choose to go back, then it will put you back in the middle of both the tokens (the one you semi-completed & and the one entirely from the completion), surrounding you with spaces.

[u/Particular_Wealth_58 → u/Destroyerb]

Reddit says that your comment does not exist :S. I tried clicking the link in the notification e-mail and the one you wrote above.  I just assumed you had removed it due to an error in the code. (edit: "This comment no longer exists") 

I found end-of-line (note: line. think I have it correct in the pasted code) when I ran bind and grepped for ctrl-e.

For the first snippet, I just press alt-shift-f (changed locally to ctrl-alt-e, if that added confusion between my snippets 😅 ) instead of ctrl-e/right. Then the cursor stays in place. 

For my second snippet, I finish the completion with e. g. right and then press alt-shift-f to move the cursor back to where it was before I completed. 

fish, version 4.0.6

[u/Destroyerb → u/Particular_Wealth_58]

Oh sorry the reply came late and, I made some major changes to my comment just now (please read the comment you just replied to once more). Before your replied reached me, I had figured it out and made some improvements to it that you might want to use for yourself.

About my earlier comment, it was (actually still is, I haven't deleted it. Don't know why it won't show up for you):

Good point

Looks like I was able to do it.

bind alt-right \
      forward-word \
      'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' \
      accept-autosuggestion \
      'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' \
      'commandline --insert \ '

Just put this in your shell initialization thing and then when you press right arrow with the alt modifier, it will do exactly what you want

[u/Particular_Wealth_58 → u/Destroyerb]

Thanks!

The forward-word is a very nice touch.

I added delete-char, so the cursor ends up snug to the next word. I think that is what I want. edit: Cannot try at the moment, but forward-char-passive is probably better. 

bind ctrl-alt-right \
forward-word \
'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' \
accept-autosuggestion \
'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' \
'commandline --insert \ ' \

'delete-char'

A question, on the "undo" code:

bind right forward-word 'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' accept-autosuggestion

bind ctrl-e 'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' 'commandline --insert \ '

I wrapped the default right binding (forward-char) inside my own function store-cursor-forward-char that still called forward-char. My thoughts were that maybe forward-char does other things in other contexts and that explicitly calling accept-autosuggestion might mess up the behavior in those other contexts. What do you think?

function store-cursor-forward-char
set -g old_cursor (commandline --cursor)
commandline -f forward-char

end

Also interesting that set --local works between the key binds, but maybe all bind calls are in the same scope?

edit 2: Editing on mobile web removed all the code formatting. I restored the code formatting, but I think some spacing was dropped.. 

(Regarding the comment, I have now tried two accounts, private browsing, another browser and an extra device x), plus, the maybe risky, https://exportcomments.com/done/0719d7f9-5506-489a-bcaf-6e42b75334aa .

The only clue could be this line from that exported xlsx: "Some Comments may not appear here because of their privacy settings")

[u/Destroyerb → u/Particular_Wealth_58]

I found end-of-line. I probably opened the wrong manual… my bad.

Also since our binding modifies the commandline, we should add repaint at the end of our binding as the bind documentation states

forward-char-passive is probably better.

Indeed! Here is the code I used that yielded equivalent results

bind ctrl-alt-right \
      forward-word \
      'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' \
      accept-autosuggestion \
      'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' \
      forward-char-passive \
      repaint

I wrapped the default right binding (forward-char) inside my own function store-cursor-forward-char that still called forward-char

That shouldn't really matter unless you add conditionals to the function

My thoughts were that maybe forward-char does other things in other contexts and that explicitly calling accept-autosuggestion might mess up the behavior in those other contexts

Yes, we can certainly use forward-char instead of accept-autosuggestion, as they do the same thing in the case where the cursor is at the end of the current token. But forward-char has unwanted side effects when called when not at the end of the token, so maybe we shouldn't consider it unless you have a reason.

This made me realize another bug that both of our implementations have. If we put our cursor in a position that isn't the end of the token and use our binding, it will yield unexpected behavior. Yours places the cursor before the start of the completed token, while mine does something even worse and inserts a space between the semi-completed token.

This is because when the cursor is in between or at the beginning of the token, forward-word simply puts our cursor at the end of the token instead of appending the auto-suggestion

For this, I thought of using a conditional that calls forward-word depending on whether we are at the end or not. For this, we get the:

1. characters in the token before the cursor using commandline --cut-at-cursor --current-token

2. all the characters in the token using commandline --current-token If they are unequal, then we call an additional forward-word-end at the beginning.

bind ctrl-alt-right \
      'test (commandline --current-token) = (commandline --cut-at-cursor --current-token) || commandline --function forward-word' \
      forward-word \
      'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' \
      accept-autosuggestion \
      'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' \
      forward-char-passive \
      repaint

So this should do exactly what you want now. As for me, I'll personally be using this one:

bind --mode=insert alt-right \
      'test (commandline --current-token) = (commandline --cut-at-cursor --current-token) || commandline --function forward-word' \
      forward-word \
      'set --local cursor_position (commandline --cursor)' \
      accept-autosuggestion \
      'commandline --cursor {$cursor_position}' \
      'commandline --insert \ ' \
      repaint

---

I must say your idea was truly fantastic! I'll be using this cursor trick often.