Re: [PATCH v2] completion: zsh: support completion after "git -C <path>"

On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 5:39 PM Junio C Hamano <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> "D. Ben Knoble" <[email protected]> writes:
>
> >>      ++                         ;;
> >>      ++                 -c|--git-dir|--work-tree|--namespace)
> >>      ++                         (( i++ ))
> >>      ++                         ;;
> >>      ++                 -*)
> >>      ++                         ;;
> >
> > Yep, unlike Bash (which requires at least one command in the "list"
> > part between a pattern and the terminator), Zsh accepts empty actions
> > here.
>
> This may be a common misconception.
>
> It is true that a compound_list is not allowed to be empty, but
> POSIX.1 sh grammar [*] explicitly allows ';;' to come after ')'
> without a compound_list in between.
>
> Specifically
>
>         case_item        :     pattern ')' linebreak     DSEMI linebreak
>                          |     pattern ')' compound_list DSEMI linebreak
>                          | '(' pattern ')' linebreak     DSEMI linebreak
>                          | '(' pattern ')' compound_list DSEMI linebreak
>                          ;
>
> where "linebreak" is a run of NEWLINE tokens or empty.  So
>
>         case $foo in
>         bar) ;;
>         esac
>
> is allowed.
>
>
> [Footnote]
>
> * Look for case_clause in
>   https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html
>   and read from there.

Oh, thanks! The Bash manual doesn't admit that case in my reading, but
it clearly does in implementation. Oddly, I seem to recall several
years ago that both Bash and ShellCheck would complain about empty
case arms (I got in the habit of writing ": continue" as a bit of a
comment). Anyway, TIL.

-- 
D. Ben Knoble