This section describes low-level subroutines for completing a file name. For higher level functions, see Reading File Names.
This function returns a list of all possible completions for a file whose name starts with partial-filename in directory directory. The order of the completions is the order of the files in the directory, which is unpredictable and conveys no useful information.
The argument partial-filename must be a file name containing no directory part and no slash (or backslash on some systems). The current buffer’s default directory is prepended to directory, if directory is not absolute.
In the following example, suppose that ~rms/lewis is the current default directory, and has five files whose names begin with ‘f’: foo, file~, file.c, file.c.~1~, and file.c.~2~.
(file-name-all-completions "f" "") ⇒ ("foo" "file~" "file.c.~2~" "file.c.~1~" "file.c")
(file-name-all-completions "fo" "") ⇒ ("foo")
This function completes the file name filename in directory
directory. It returns the longest prefix common to all file names
in directory directory that start with filename. If
predicate is non-nil
then it ignores possible completions
that don’t satisfy predicate, after calling that function
with one argument, the expanded absolute file name.
If only one match exists and filename matches it exactly, the
function returns t
. The function returns nil
if directory
directory contains no name starting with filename.
In the following example, suppose that the current default directory has five files whose names begin with ‘f’: foo, file~, file.c, file.c.~1~, and file.c.~2~.
(file-name-completion "fi" "") ⇒ "file"
(file-name-completion "file.c.~1" "") ⇒ "file.c.~1~"
(file-name-completion "file.c.~1~" "") ⇒ t
(file-name-completion "file.c.~3" "") ⇒ nil
file-name-completion
usually ignores file names that end in any
string in this list. It does not ignore them when all the possible
completions end in one of these suffixes. This variable has no effect
on file-name-all-completions
.
A typical value might look like this:
completion-ignored-extensions ⇒ (".o" ".elc" "~" ".dvi")
If an element of completion-ignored-extensions
ends in a slash
‘/’, it signals a directory. The elements which do not end
in a slash will never match a directory; thus, the above value will not
filter out a directory named foo.elc.