Zsh autocomplete ls command with directories only

Question

Suppose I have following files and directories:

% ls                                                                   
bui00293    buiawer      builds/     buiowpe/

I want to list the content of builds

% ls bui[TAB]

Zsh however shows the options with all the files and dirs above. What I want is the autocompletion of zsh's cd command ie. only autocomplete with directory names.

Answer 1

If you always want to complete directory names only for ls, you can put this in your .zshrc:

compdef _dirs ls

You can do fancier stuff with the “new” completion system (initialized by compinit) by playing with styles. Depending on your options, you may need to unalias ls. Then, to only ever complete directories on the ls command line:

zstyle ':completion:*:ls:*' file-patterns '*(/):directories'

You can complete only directories by default, but complete any file name if no directory matches:

zstyle ':completion:*:ls:*' file-patterns '%p:globbed-files' '*(/):directories'

You can also define a key binding to complete only directories, which you can then use anywhere.

zle -C complete_dirs .complete-word _dirs
bindkey '^X/' complete_dirs