Re: Selectively sorting directory by date in completion

On Sun, Mar 22, 2026 at 12:45 AM André Marçais <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> I'm posting here to share some of my configuration hoping it may be
> useful to others. Also, what I've done feels pretty hacky, so if anyone
> has suggestions, I'm a taker. But first, I explain my problem.
>
> The downloads folder/directory (`~/dl` in my case) often has lots of
> stuff in it but in most cases only the most recently downloaded file is
> relevant. So alphabetical sort when completing file names under `~/dl`
> makes no sense. There is `zstyle ':completion:*' file-sort date` which
> is understood by `_path_files` to sort all file name completion by date.
> I, however, find this to be undesirable for most directories other than
> `~/dl` and a few others since alphabetical sort is better for scanning
> with one's eyes. The global setting is too broad.
>
> So here is the solution I came up with: I redefined `_path_files` by
> symlinking `~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions/_path_files_old` to
> `/usr/share/zsh/functions/Completion/Unix/_path_files` and by creating
> the file `~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions/_path_files` containing
>
>     #autoload
>
>     case $PREFIX in
>     */)
>         case ${${~PREFIX:-./}:a} in
>             $HOME/dl) curcontext=downloads ;;
>             $HOME/tmp) curcontext=downloads ;;
>             /tmp) curcontext=downloads ;;
>         esac
>         ;;
>     esac
>
>     _path_files_old
>
> and adding the line
>
>     zstyle ':completion:downloads:*' file-sort date # see our _path_files
>
> to my `.zshrc`.
>
> Thus far it seems to work, tough I'm uncertain about a few things:
> - I'm not really sure my use of `$curcontext` is correct.
> - The symlink feels kinda wrong.
> - I use `${~spec}` to do filename expansion, but that also does filename
>   generation. I'm not sure that's desirable.
>
> Hope this helps someone. And again, hope to get some feedback.

You might be able to make good use of zstyle -e here, where the value
of the style will be evaluated and then the parameter $REPLY will be
used as the style value for that particular lookup. So eg you'd say
zstyle -e :completion:\* file-sort 'some fun code here;
REPLY=something' (The code to be evaled can still be a simple function
call if you don't want to put a big blob of code in your style
definitions). For example I have zstyle -e ':completion:*:urls' urls
_urls_http where _urls_http sets reply appropriately for my particular
use case.