Fuzzy matching

[tuhdo]

Someone implemented fuzzy matching with company: http://sixty-north.com/blog/a-more-full-featured-company-mode-backend, although rudimentary. I wonder if we can integrate with existing solution like flx? That would improve usability a lot.

[dgutov]

No: they implemented a backend that performs fuzzy matching. It could use flx, or any other method, but doing fuzzy matching for all backends imposes different requirements on the framework (Company).

[tuhdo]

So, it is possible to integrate flx for Emacs Lisp and dabbrev backends and gradually add more in the future? When I see this article, I thought that what we need is a proper fuzzy completion engine rather than manually specify abbrevs.

[dgutov]

So, it is possible to integrate flx for Emacs Lisp

No, it's not. Or not particularly easy, at least. On the other hand, (add-to-list 'completion-styles 'initials t) will get you almost the same benefits.

and dabbrev

That's easier, but it would involve collecting all words from buffers and applyling flx to them. Which is necessarily slower than what we're doing now (we filter by prefix while searching). I'll let yourself measure, by how much.

Anyway, we can't use flx directly until it's in GNU ELPA.

[tuhdo]

(add-to-list 'completion-styles 'initials t)

I've just added it but when I tried company-elisp on string "wcb" or "atl" (add-to-list), it cannot complete.

[dgutov]

You should try company-capf instead.

[tuhdo]

Nice. But how can I type to start narrow to a single candidate? Currently, it only gives a list and prevent me from entering anything.

[dgutov]

That might be impossible: initials means initials.

You can write your own completion style, however, but that's not a trivial task.

[tuhdo]

Alright. This is good enough. I might combine it with C-M-s to narrow further. I think you should enable this by default. That is, add it to default backends.

[dgutov]

What exactly should I add to the default backends? company-capf is already there.

And company-elisp isn't, if you have a recent enough Emacs.

[tuhdo]

Sorry it was my customization. Anyway, we should leave this issue open hopefully it will be implemented in a few more years or someone creates an external package that integrate with flx.

[dgutov]

No need: it's a duplicate of #47.

[jasonm23]

Please add a duplicate label to this.

[dgutov]

@jasonm23 Ok, added.

[jasonm23]

Cheers