Tab Completion¶

Tab completion is the defining UX feature of ibcli. Every literal word in the command grammar can be abbreviated to any unambiguous prefix, and <Tab> fills in or lists options.

Basic tab demo¶

Starting from an empty prompt, press <Tab> to see all top-level commands:

ibcli >  <Tab>
  configure   download    generate    help        history
  quit        restart     show        upload

Type co and press <Tab>:

ibcli > co<Tab>
ibcli > configure

co is an unambiguous prefix of configure, so ibcli expands it in place and appends a space.

Type z and <Tab>:

ibcli > configure z<Tab>
ibcli > configure zone

Type a space and <Tab> again to see the next level:

ibcli > configure zone <Tab>
  <zone>   add

<zone> is a special token - it matches any hostname string. The completion menu shows it to tell you that a zone name is expected here but can't be auto-completed (ibcli has no way to enumerate all zone names without querying the grid at completion time).

Abbreviation rules¶

Any unambiguous prefix of a literal word is accepted. The algorithm is identical to Perl's Text::Abbrev:

Full words always win over prefixes (so show is never ambiguous even if another word starts with show).
A prefix that matches two or more words is ambiguous and shows all matches instead of expanding.

Examples:

Typed	Expands to	Reason
`co`	`configure`	unique prefix
`s`	(ambiguous)	matches `show`, `set` in some contexts
`sh`	`show`	unique prefix
`sho`	`show`	unique prefix
`show`	`show`	exact match
`q`	`quit`	unique prefix
`z`	`zone`	unique after `configure`

The `<Tab>` display¶

prompt_toolkit renders completions in a native popup menu below the cursor. Pressing <Tab> repeatedly cycles through choices. <Shift-Tab> moves backwards. <Escape> closes the menu.

Ambiguous prefixes show all matching words. <zone>, <ip>, and other SPECOPS tokens are listed when the next argument must be a value ibcli cannot enumerate.

Special tokens¶

When the next argument is a value (not a keyword), the completion menu shows the token type:

Token	Meaning
`<zone>`	Any DNS zone name (`\S+`)
`<ip>`	An IPv4 address (partial match allowed)
`<n.n.n.n/mm>`	CIDR notation, IPv4 or IPv6
`<name>`	Any non-whitespace string
`<mac>`	MAC address (colon-separated or raw hex)
`<num>`	Integer
`<comment>`	Quoted or unquoted string
`<cr>`	Pressing Enter here is valid (command is complete)

Completing key=value options¶

Options like comment=, view=, primary= appear in the completion menu as keywords. When you type comment= and press <Tab>, the tokenizer splits on = and the next token becomes <comment>, signalling that a value is expected.

configure zone add example.com view=<Tab>
  <name>

Type the view name and press <Tab> again to see what else is allowed.

The `?` key¶

Pressing ? at any point prints a brief reminder:

  press <tab> for options; '\' or Ctrl-U to clear; Ctrl-D to exit

? does not consume the current input - the buffer is preserved.

Unknown words¶

If you type an unknown word and press Enter, ibcli prints an error showing exactly which token failed:

ibcli > show badword
      ^--- Unknown argument at marker

The caret points to the start of the bad token. Completions are suppressed while the earlier part of the line is invalid.