Orderless

Overview

This package provides an orderless completion style that divides the pattern into space-separated components, and matches candidates that match all of the components in any order. Each component can match in any one of several ways: literally, as a regexp, as an initialism, in the flex style, or as multiple word prefixes. By default, regexp and literal matches are enabled.

A completion style is a back-end for completion and is used from a front-end that provides a completion UI. Any completion style can be used with the default Emacs completion UI (sometimes called minibuffer tab completion), with the built-in Icomplete package (which is similar to the more well-known Ido Mode), the icomplete-vertical variant from Emacs 28 (see the external icomplete-vertical package to get that functionality on earlier versions of Emacs), or with some third party minibuffer completion frameworks such as Mct or Vertico.

All the completion UIs just mentioned are for minibuffer completion, used when Emacs commands prompt the user in the minibuffer for some input, but there is also completion at point in normal buffers, typically used for identifiers in programming languages. Completion styles can also be used for that purpose by completion at point UIs such as Corfu, Company or the function consult-completion-in-region from Consult.

To use a completion style with any of the above mentioned completion UIs simply add it as an entry in the variables completion-styles and completion-category-overrides and completion-category-defaults (see their documentation).

The completion-category-defaults variable serves as a default value for completion-category-overrides. If you want to use orderless exclusively, set both variables to nil, but be aware that completion-category-defaults is modified by packages at load time.

With a bit of effort, it might still be possible to use orderless with other completion UIs, even if those UIs don’t support the standard Emacs completion styles. Currently there is support for Ivy (see below). Also, while Company does support completion styles directly, pressing SPC takes you out of completion, so comfortably using orderless with it takes a bit of configuration (see below).

If you use ELPA or MELPA, the easiest way to install orderless is via package-install. If you use use-package, you can use:

(use-package orderless
  :ensure t
  :custom
  (completion-styles '(orderless basic))
  (completion-category-overrides '((file (styles basic partial-completion)))))

Alternatively, put orderless.el somewhere on your load-path, and use the following configuration:

(require 'orderless)
(setq completion-styles '(orderless basic)
      completion-category-overrides '((file (styles basic partial-completion))))

The basic completion style is specified as fallback in addition to orderless in order to ensure that completion commands which rely on dynamic completion tables, e.g., completion-table-dynamic or completion-table-in-turn, work correctly. Furthermore the basic completion style needs to be tried first (not as a fallback) for TRAMP hostname completion to work. In order to achieve that, we add an entry for the file completion category in the completion-category-overrides variable. In addition, the partial-completion style allows you to use wildcards for file completion and partial paths, e.g., /u/s/l for /usr/share/local.

Bug reports are highly welcome and appreciated!

• Screenshot
• Customization
  • Component matching styles
    • Style dispatchers
  • Component separator regexp
  • Faces for component matches
  • Pattern compiler
  • Interactively changing the configuration
• Integration with other completion UIs
  • Ivy
  • Company
• Related packages
  • Ivy and Helm
  • Prescient
  • Restricting to current matches: Icicles, Ido and Ivy

Screenshot

This is what it looks like to use describe-function (bound by default to C-h f) to match eis ff. Notice that in this particular case eis matched as an initialism, and ff matched as a regexp. The completion UI in the screenshot is icomplete-vertical and the theme is Protesilaos Stavrou’s lovely modus-operandi.

Customization

Component matching styles

Each component of a pattern can match in any of several matching styles. A matching style is a function from strings to regexps or predicates, so it is easy to define new matching styles. The value returned by a matching style can be either a regexp as a string, an s-expression in rx syntax or a predicate function. The predefined matching styles are:

orderless-regexp

the component is treated as a regexp that must match somewhere in the candidate.

If the component is not a valid regexp, it is ignored.

orderless-literal

the component is treated as a literal string that must occur in the candidate.

orderless-literal-prefix

the component is treated as a literal string that must occur as a prefix of a candidate.

orderless-prefixes

the component is split at word endings and each piece must match at a word boundary in the candidate, occurring in that order.

This is similar to the built-in partial-completion completion-style. For example, re-re matches query-replace-regexp, recode-region and magit-remote-list-refs; f-d.t matches final-draft.txt.

orderless-initialism

each character of the component should appear as the beginning of a word in the candidate, in order.

This maps abc to \<a.*\<b.*\c.

orderless-flex

the characters of the component should appear in that order in the candidate, but not necessarily consecutively.

This maps abc to a.*b.*c.

orderless-without-literal

the component is a treated as a literal string that must not occur in the candidate.

Nothing is highlighted by this style. This style should not be used directly in orderless-matching-styles but with a style dispatcher instead. See also the more general style modifier orderless-not.

The variable orderless-matching-styles can be set to a list of the desired matching styles to use. By default it enables the literal and regexp styles.

Style modifiers

Style modifiers are functions which take a predicate function and a regular expression as a string and return a new predicate function. Style modifiers should not be used directly in orderless-matching-styles but with a style dispatcher instead.

orderless-annotation

this style modifier matches the pattern against the annotation string of the candidate, instead of against the candidate string.

orderless-not

this style modifier inverts the pattern, such that candidates pass which do not match the pattern.

Style dispatchers

For more fine-grained control on which matching styles to use for each component of the input string, you can customize the variable orderless-style-dispatchers. You can use this feature to define your own “query syntax”. For example, the default value of orderless-style-dispatchers lists a single dispatcher called orderless-affix-dispatch which enables a simple syntax based on special characters used as either a prefix or suffix:

• ! modifies the component with orderless-not. Both !bad and bad! will match strings that do not contain the pattern bad.
• & modifies the component with orderless-annotation. The pattern will match against the candidate’s annotation (cheesy mnemonic: andnotation!).
• , uses orderless-initialism.
• = uses orderless-literal.
• ^ uses orderless-literal-prefix.
• ~ uses orderless-flex.
• % makes the string match ignoring diacritics and similar inflections on characters (it uses the function char-fold-to-regexp to do this).

You can add, remove or change this mapping between affix characters and matching styles by customizing the user option orderless-affix-dispatch-alist. Most users will probably find this type of customization sufficient for their query syntax needs, but for those desiring further control the rest of this section explains how to implement your own style dispatchers.

Style dispatchers are functions which take a component, its index in the list of components (starting from 0), and the total number of components, and are used to determine the matching styles used for that specific component, overriding the default matching styles.

A style dispatcher can either decline to handle the input string or component, or it can return which matching styles to use. It can also, if desired, additionally return a new string to use in place of the given one. Consult the documentation of orderless--dispatch for full details.

As an example of writing your own dispatchers, say you wanted the following setup:

• you normally want components to match as regexps,
• except for the first component, which should always match as an initialism —this is pretty useful for, say, execute-extended-command (M-x) or describe-function (C-h f),
• later components ending in ~ should match (the characters other than the final ~) in the flex style, and
• later components starting with ! should indicate the rest of the component is a literal string not contained in the candidate (this is part of the functionality of the default configuration).

You can achieve this with the following configuration:

(defun flex-if-twiddle (pattern _index _total)
  (when (string-suffix-p "~" pattern)
    `(orderless-flex . ,(substring pattern 0 -1))))

(defun first-initialism (pattern index _total)
  (if (= index 0) 'orderless-initialism))

(defun not-if-bang (pattern _index _total)
  (cond
   ((equal "!" pattern)
    #'ignore)
   ((string-prefix-p "!" pattern)
    `(orderless-not . ,(substring pattern 1)))))

(setq orderless-matching-styles '(orderless-regexp)
      orderless-style-dispatchers '(first-initialism
                                    flex-if-twiddle
                                    not-if-bang))

Component separator regexp

The pattern components are space-separated by default: this is controlled by the variable orderless-component-separator, which should be set either to a regexp that matches the desired component separator, or to a function that takes a string and returns the list of components. The default value is a regexp matches a non-empty sequence of spaces. It may be useful to add hyphens or slashes (or both), to match symbols or file paths, respectively.

Even if you want to split on spaces you might want to be able to escape those spaces or to enclose space in double quotes (as in shell argument parsing). For backslash-escaped spaces set orderless-component-separator to the function orderless-escapable-split-on-space; for shell-like double-quotable space, set it to the standard Emacs function split-string-and-unquote.

If you are implementing a command for which you know you want a different separator for the components, bind orderless-component-separator in a let form.

Defining custom orderless styles

Orderless allows the definition of custom completion styles using the orderless-define-completion-style macro. Any Orderless configuration variable can be adjusted locally for the new style, e.g., orderless-matching-styles.

By default Orderless only enables the regexp and literal matching styles. In the following example an orderless+initialism style is defined, which additionally enables initialism matching. This completion style can then used when matching candidates of the symbol or command completion category.

(orderless-define-completion-style orderless+initialism
  (orderless-matching-styles '(orderless-initialism
                               orderless-literal
                               orderless-regexp)))
(setq completion-category-overrides
      '((command (styles orderless+initialism))
        (symbol (styles orderless+initialism))
        (variable (styles orderless+initialism))))

Note that in order for the orderless+initialism style to kick-in with the above configuration, you’d need to use commands whose metadata indicates that the completion candidates are commands or symbols. In Emacs 28, execute-extended-command has metadata indicating you are selecting a command, but earlier versions of Emacs lack this metadata. Activating marginalia-mode from the Marginalia package provides this metadata automatically for many built-in commands and is recommended if you use the above example configuration, or other similarly fine-grained control of completion styles according to completion category.

Faces for component matches

The portions of a candidate matching each component get highlighted in one of four faces, orderless-match-face-? where ? is a number from 0 to 3. If the pattern has more than four components, the faces get reused cyclically.

If your completion-styles (or completion-category-overrides for some particular category) has more than one entry, remember than Emacs tries each completion style in turn and uses the first one returning matches. You will only see these particular faces when the orderless completion is the one that ends up being used, of course.

Pattern compiler

The default mechanism for turning an input string into a predicate and a list of regexps to match against, configured using orderless-matching-styles, is probably flexible enough for the vast majority of users. The patterns are compiled by orderless-compile. Under special circumstances it may be useful to implement a custom pattern compiler by advising orderless-compile.

Interactively changing the configuration

You might want to change the separator or the matching style configuration on the fly while matching. There many possible user interfaces for this: you could toggle between two chosen configurations, cycle among several, have a keymap where each key sets a different configurations, have a set of named configurations and be prompted (with completion) for one of them, popup a hydra to choose a configuration, etc. Since there are so many possible UIs and which to use is mostly a matter of taste, orderless does not provide any such commands. But it’s easy to write your own!

For example, say you want to use the keybinding C-l to make all components match literally. You could use the following code:

(defun my/match-components-literally ()
  "Components match literally for the rest of the session."
  (interactive)
  (setq-local orderless-matching-styles '(orderless-literal)
              orderless-style-dispatchers nil))

(define-key minibuffer-local-completion-map (kbd "C-l")
  #'my/match-components-literally)

Using setq-local to assign to the configuration variables ensures the values are only used for that minibuffer completion session.

Integration with other completion UIs

Several excellent completion UIs exist for Emacs in third party packages. They do have a tendency to forsake standard Emacs APIs, so integration with them must be done on a case by case basis.

If you manage to use orderless with a completion UI not listed here, please file an issue or make a pull request so others can benefit from your effort. The functions orderless-filter, orderless-highlight-matches, orderless--highlight and orderless--component-regexps are likely to help with the integration.

Ivy

To use orderless from Ivy add this to your Ivy configuration:

(setq ivy-re-builders-alist '((t . orderless-ivy-re-builder)))
(add-to-list 'ivy-highlight-functions-alist '(orderless-ivy-re-builder . orderless-ivy-highlight))

Helm

To use orderless from Helm, simply configure orderless as you would for completion UIs that use Emacs completion styles and add this to your Helm configuration:

(setq helm-completion-style 'emacs)

Company

Company comes with a company-capf backend that uses the completion-at-point functions, which in turn use completion styles. This means that the company-capf backend will automatically use orderless, no configuration necessary!

But there are a couple of points of discomfort:

1. Pressing SPC takes you out of completion, so with the default separator you are limited to one component, which is no fun. To fix this add a separator that is allowed to occur in identifiers, for example, for Emacs Lisp code you could use an ampersand:

   (setq orderless-component-separator "[ &]")
       

2. The matching portions of candidates aren’t highlighted. That’s because company-capf is hard-coded to look for the completions-common-part face, and it only use one face, company-echo-common to highlight candidates.

   So, while you can’t get different faces for different components, you can at least get the matches highlighted in the sole available face with this configuration:

   (defun just-one-face (fn &rest args)
     (let ((orderless-match-faces [completions-common-part]))
       (apply fn args)))
   
   (advice-add 'company-capf--candidates :around #'just-one-face)
       

   (Aren’t dynamically scoped variables and the advice system nifty?)

If you would like to use different completion-styles with company-capf instead, you can add this to your configuration:

;; We follow a suggestion by company maintainer u/hvis:
;; https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/nichkl/comment/gz1jr3s/
(defun company-completion-styles (capf-fn &rest args)
  (let ((completion-styles '(basic partial-completion)))
    (apply capf-fn args))

(advice-add 'company-capf :around #'company-completion-styles)

Related packages

Ivy and Helm

The well-known and hugely powerful completion frameworks Ivy and Helm also provide for matching space-separated component regexps in any order. In Ivy, this is done with the ivy--regex-ignore-order matcher. In Helm, it is the default, called “multi pattern matching”.

This package is significantly smaller than either of those because it solely defines a completion style, meant to be used with any completion UI supporting completion styles while both of those provide their own completion UI (and many other cool features!).

It is worth pointing out that Helm does provide its multi pattern matching as a completion style which could be used with default tab completion, Icomplete or other UIs supporting completion styles! (Ivy does not provide a completion style to my knowledge.) So, for example, Icomplete users could, instead of using this package, install Helm and configure Icomplete to use it as follows:

(require 'helm)
(setq completion-styles '(helm basic))
(icomplete-mode)

(Of course, if you install Helm, you might as well use the Helm UI in helm-mode rather than Icomplete.)

Prescient

The prescient.el library also provides matching of space-separated components in any order. It offers a completion-style that can be used with Emacs’ default completion UI, Mct, Vertico or with Icomplete. Furthermore Ivy is supported. The components can be matched literally, as regexps, as initialisms or in the flex style (called “fuzzy” in prescient). Prescient does not offer the same flexibility as Orderless with its style dispatchers. However in addition to matching, Prescient supports sorting of candidates, while Orderless leaves that up to the candidate source and the completion UI.

Restricting to current matches in Icicles, Ido and Ivy

An effect equivalent to matching multiple components in any order can be achieved in completion frameworks that provide a way to restrict further matching to the current list of candidates. If you use the keybinding for restriction instead of SPC to separate your components, you get out of order matching!

• Icicles calls this progressive completion and uses the icicle-apropos-complete-and-narrow command, bound to S-SPC, to do it.
• Ido has ido-restrict-to-matches and binds it to C-SPC.
• Ivy has ivy-restrict-to-matches, bound to S-SPC, so you can get the effect of out of order matching without using ivy--regex-ignore-order.