I have a command line tool which takes arguments in an three-part form:

$ t first_second_third

I have a set of valid values for first, a set of valid values for second, and a set of valid values for third. I want to use Bash complete functionality to complete each part of the option value, as in this example:

$ t [tab][tab]           # shows options for first part
walk run skip bike
$ t w[tab]               # completes first part and appends delimiter
$ t walk_[tab][tab]      # shows options for second part
home work park
$ t walk_h[tab]          # completes second part and appends delimiter
$ t walk_home_[tab][tab] # shows options for second part
morning afternoon evening
$ t walk_home_a[tab]     # completes second part and appends space
$ t walk_home_afternoon

I have this code:

_tool () {
  local cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"

  local first="walk run skip bike"
  local second="home work park"
  local third="morning afternoon evening"

  case "${cur}" in
    *_*_*)
      COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${third}" -- "") ); return 0;;
    *_*)
      COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${second}" -S "_" -- ${cur}) ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;;
    *)
      COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${first}" -S "_" -- ${cur}) ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;;
  esac
}

complete -F _tool t

The first clause works great; nothing special there. But the second clause gives me no options or completions.

$ t [tab][tab]
bike_  run_   skip_  walk_
$ t b[tab]
$ t bike_[tab][tab] # nothing but bells

I replaced the second clause with the following (i.e. I replaced ${cur} with an empty string in the COMPREPLY call):

COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "${second}" -S "_" -- "") ); compopt -o nospace; return 0;;

I get a list of all options on the command line, but no c

bash bash-completion
Edit
Report