Shell differences¶

All five shells get the same candidates from the same resolver, and footman leans on candidate shape, never on any one shell's options, so path-style completion works everywhere. What differs is how each shell renders and inserts those candidates. This page lists the differences you can actually observe; nothing here changes what completes, only how it looks and feels.

Descriptions¶

The resolver emits name<TAB>summary per candidate.

• zsh, fish, nushell render the summary: zsh and fish as a description column, nushell in its completion menu.
• pwsh shows the summary as a tooltip.
• bash has no description column; it keeps the name and drops the rest. This is why a group candidate always carries its trailing dot (docs.): in bash the dot is the descend-vs-run signal.

The space after a unique match¶

Shells disagree about appending a space when exactly one candidate matches:

• bash and zsh support per-candidate no-space behaviour.
• fish and nushell append a space after any unique match.

Footman sidesteps the disagreement by never needing a no-space flag: when your prefix matches a single namespace group, the resolver answers with the group's children as full addresses (fm do<TAB> → docs.build, docs.serve), so the candidate set stays non-unique and every shell holds the cursor in-word. In the worst case, where a space lands after fm docs. anyway, running it answers with the group's tasks, so nothing strands.

Menus and selection¶

• zsh users with menu select arrow through candidates; its styles (colours, grouping) apply to fm like any other completer.
• fish pages candidates with its own pager.
• nushell and pwsh pop their native completion menus.
• bash lists candidates as plain columns on a second Tab.

Word splitting¶

• bash splits --opt=value into three words at the =; the resolver reassembles them. zsh and fish pass the token whole. You'll never notice, but it explains stray = tokens if you ever watch fm --complete traffic.
• No shell footman supports word-breaks on ., which is what makes the dotted address one completion unit everywhere. (This is also why the separator is a dot and not the : some task runners use: : is a word-break character in bash's default COMP_WORDBREAKS.)

File paths¶

Path-valued positions hand off to each shell's own file completion, so path candidates always look native: dirs get /, quoting matches your shell, and remote/fancy path plugins keep working.

Mid-list in a comma-splitting path value (--paths=a,<TAB>), bash, zsh, fish, and pwsh complete the segment after the last comma with the typed items kept in place. nushell's external-completer protocol has no version-stable way to rewrite part of a token, so it completes the first item natively and stays silent after a comma.

Continuing a list¶

Accepting one item of a comma-splitting value doesn't end the list, and each shell continues it in its own accent:

• zsh writes the comma as a removable suffix: accept eu, get --regions=eu,, and Tab chains straight into the next item — while a space or Enter takes the comma back off, so stopping costs nothing.
• bash holds the cursor right after the accepted item (no trailing space), so the comma — or the closing space — is your next keystroke. The elderly bash 3.2 that macOS ships has no compopt and keeps its trailing space, exactly as before.
• fish carries the comma on each candidate: its pager shows --regions=eu, and inserts it with the cursor glued. A comma left on the final item is harmless — the value parses the same without it.
• pwsh and nushell already land the cursor right after every completion they insert, which is this behaviour by default.

When the tasks file is broken¶

A tasks file that fails to import cannot offer tasks, and each shell says so as loudly as it can:

• zsh shows the import error as a message line — nothing is offered for insertion.
• fish, nushell and pwsh re-offer the word you typed with the error beside it (description column or tooltip); accepting it changes nothing on the line.
• bash has no way to display a line without offering to insert it, so it stays silent — but it no longer falls back to offering filenames as if they were tasks.

The full error, traceback included, is one fm --list away, and the note clears itself within seconds of the file importing again.