Re: [PATCH v2] completion: zsh: support completion after "git -C <path>"

On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 5:39 PM Junio C Hamano [off-list ref] wrote:

"D. Ben Knoble" [off-list ref] writes:

quoted

quoted

     ++                         ;;
     ++                 -c|--git-dir|--work-tree|--namespace)
     ++                         (( i++ ))
     ++                         ;;
     ++                 -*)
     ++                         ;;

Yep, unlike Bash (which requires at least one command in the "list"
part between a pattern and the terminator), Zsh accepts empty actions
here.

This may be a common misconception.

It is true that a compound_list is not allowed to be empty, but
POSIX.1 sh grammar [*] explicitly allows ';;' to come after ')'
without a compound_list in between.

Specifically

        case_item        :     pattern ')' linebreak     DSEMI linebreak
                         |     pattern ')' compound_list DSEMI linebreak
                         | '(' pattern ')' linebreak     DSEMI linebreak
                         | '(' pattern ')' compound_list DSEMI linebreak
                         ;

where "linebreak" is a run of NEWLINE tokens or empty.  So

        case $foo in
        bar) ;;
        esac

is allowed.


[Footnote]

* Look for case_clause in
  https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/V3_chap02.html
  and read from there.

Oh, thanks! The Bash manual doesn't admit that case in my reading, but
it clearly does in implementation. Oddly, I seem to recall several
years ago that both Bash and ShellCheck would complain about empty
case arms (I got in the habit of writing ": continue" as a bit of a
comment). Anyway, TIL.

-- 
D. Ben Knoble