Consider removing the setting of PATH_DIRS from the completion module

[michaelpj]

Description

PATH_DIRS can make completion very slow depending on your PATH (>10s). It is instant without it, and the PATH_DIRS feature doesn't seem so great.

I observed this for a while in executable completions, and eventually I just did a commenting-out bisection on the completion module and tracked it down to PATH_DIRS. It seems there is some limited discussion of this on the zsh list.

Expected behavior

Executable completions are fast!

Actual behavior

Steps to Reproduce

I'm not entirely sure what about my PATH triggers this. Removing entries speeds it up, but it might also be something to do with the size of the parent directories, I'm not totally sure what PATH_DIRS does.

Versions

• Prezto commit: e915c34
• ZSH version: 5.8
• OS information:

[indrajitr]

Hi @michaelpj,

Does it help if you set the completion style accept-exact-dirs as mentioned here?

You can apply it as so:

zstyle ':completion:*:default' accept-exact-dirs true

[michaelpj]

I can't reproduce this any more! I accidentally wiped out my change to not set PATH_DIRS and I didn't even notice! So I really have not idea what's going on. Maybe one of the other people who thumbs-up-ed this can still reproduce?

[Javex]

I have this issue running in WSL2, it seems the expansion of Windows paths is taking forever. Setting the above option does not work. I wouldn't expect it to, because I am doing a very basic command completion, e.g. pyth<TAB> so there's no exact path here.

On the other hand, unsetopt PATH_DIRS fixes the issue, so yeah it would be great to have an option to disable it. I wouldn't remove it outright, I assume those that don't find it slow prefer for expanded search options for better results.

Weirdly enough, it seems to be the test whether a result is a directory (/ glob qualifier) that causes the slowness for me, but that's a discussion for zsh, not this repo.