the-difference-between-using-glob-and-noglob-when-specifying-zsh-completion-options.md

The Difference Between Using glob and noglob When Specifying Zsh Completion Options

What effect do these options have on how the completion function behaves?

In zsh, the glob option causes the shell to perform filename generation (or globbing) on the arguments to the function, while the noglob option disables this feature.

When using compctl, glob is the default behavior, so omitting both glob and noglob will result in globbing being enabled for the arguments passed to the completion function.

However, when using the -N option, the noglob option is explicitly enabled, so filename generation is disabled for the arguments passed to the completion function.

In general, the -N option should be used when you want to prevent the shell from performing filename generation on the arguments to the function, while the -g option is used when you want to enable filename generation.

# _mycomp completion function
_mycomp() {
    # some code ...
}

# glob
compctl -g "_mycomp" mycommand  # using -g (glob)

# versus

# noglob
compctl -N "_mycomp" mycommand # using -N (noglob)

Use Cases

• -g / glob should be used for filename generation completions (default behavior)
• -N / noglob should be used for non-filename generation completions (e.g. command completions)