zsh alias expansion

Question

Is it possible to configure zsh to expand global aliases during tab completion? For example, I have the common aliases:

alias -g '...'='../..'
alias -g '....'='../../..'

but when I type for example cd .../some<tab> it won't expand to cd .../something or cd ../../something. Consequently, I frequently won't use these handy aliases because I can't tab complete where I want to go.

Answer 1

Try looking up zsh abbreviations. They allow you to enter an "abbreviation" which automatically gets replaced with its full form when you hit a magic key such as space. So you can create one which changes ...<SPACE> to ../...

For example, this is what you need in your profile:

typeset -A abbrevs
abbrevs=(
        "..." "../.."
        "...." "../../.."        
)

#create aliases for the abbrevs too
for abbr in ${(k)abbrevs}; do
   alias -g $abbr="${abbrevs[$abbr]}"
done

my-expand-abbrev() {
    local MATCH
    LBUFFER=${LBUFFER%%(#m)[_a-zA-Z0-9]#}
    LBUFFER+=${abbrevs[$MATCH]:-$MATCH}
    zle self-insert
}

zle -N my-expand-abbrev    
bindkey " " my-expand-abbrev 
bindkey -M isearch " " self-insert

Answer 2

I have a custom ZLE widget for this, just drop it somewhere in a directory in $fpath. You can then configure it this way.