force loading completion function for zsh (without forcing its execution by hitting tab)

Question

I want to replace an existing zsh completion function and keep a reference to the original (from here). E.g. to make tab completion always suggest nice as first word in a command line:

eval "$(declare -f _normal | sed '1s/.*/_original&/')"
_normal() {
 if [[ $CURRENT == 1 ]] ; then
 # suggest only "nice" as first word
 _wanted commands expl "be nice" compadd nice
 else
 # do normal completion afterwards
 _original_normal
 fi
}

The problem, as far as I understand it right now, is that in a fresh zsh _normal is not loaded yet:

PROMPT> functions _normal
_normal () {
 # undefined
 builtin autoload -XUz
}

yet, after I hit ⇥ for the first time, it is loaded:

PROMPT> functions _normal
_normal () {
 local _comp_command1 _comp_command2 _comp_command skip
 if [[ "1ドル" = -s ]]
 then
 skip=(-s) 
 else
 skip=() 
 _compskip='' 
 <snap>

This means the above redefinition of _normal cannot be done in my .zshrc, as only the builtin autoload bit gets written to _original_normal which then cannot get loaded (no file _original_normal in the fpath).

Is there a way how I can force loading _normal?

PS: It appears doing the redefinition of _normal works if I do it in a shell after hitting tab before.

Answer 1

In zsh, you can pass the +X flag to autoload to load a function from $fpath without executing it.

Also, you can copy a function to a new name by manipulating the functions array.

autoload -Uz +X _normal
functions[_original_normal]=$functions[_normal]
_normal () {
 ...
}

• Gilles 'SO- stop being evil': @GAD3R ??? "Zsh" isn't code, it's the name of a piece of software (a proper noun, but like many names of software, not normally capitalized).

Answer 2

for now I run

_normal &> /dev/null || true

_normal like other completions should usually not be called from the shell directly and (without the redirection) one gets an error message:

_default:compcall:12: can only be called from completion function

the || true seems unnecessary here, as _normal invoked like this doesn't return an error code.