Control of sort order of cape-history

[ashlineldridge]

I like to use cape-history and consult-history in different contexts and I also like to use Corfu's move to minibuffer for moving a cape-history completion to the minibuffer. I've noticed that the order of results returned by cape-history is different to consult-history. I believe this is controlled by Vertico's vertico-sort-function variable. For history completion, the nice thing about controlling the sort is so that more recently used commands are shown first by specifying the value #'vertico-sort-history-length-alpha. Is control over sort ordering possible with cape-history?

[minad]

Hi @ashlineldridge! Actually UI sorting should be disabled for both cape-history and consult-history, so Vertico should not interfere at all and you always get the default history order.

• https://github.com/minad/consult/blob/fe4852280006e61be7f1374d021ee06155ce5a26/consult.el#L4134

• cape/cape.el

  Line 391 in f61da10

  ,(cape--properties-table history :sort nil)

The sorting is also preserved when moving to the minibuffer. I just tried consult-history and cape-history in eshell and they behave consistently. So it is not entirely clear to me what you want to achieve, or where you observe an inconsistency. If you want to override sorting forcibly in Vertico you can set the vertico-sort-override-function and the equivalent corfu-sort-override-function.

[ashlineldridge]

Hey! Hmmm, interesting... I get inconsistent results between cape-history and consult-history - it could be something in my config though. I am able to reproduce this by calling an executable on PATH via it's full path and with no path. E.g.:

# Eshell session
$ fd -h
$ /opt/homebrew/bin/fd -h

# Type fd and then M-x cape-history

If I follow the above steps, fd -h will be shown before /opt/homebrew/bin/fd -h even though the latter was called more recently. However, if I move the completion session to the minibuffer, or call consult-history, then /opt/homebrew/bin/fd -h is shown first.

My preference is for the time order of history to take precedence, which seems to be what's happening with consult-history and Vertico (and my settings). I'll look into corfu-sort-override-function - I don't currently have either of those overrides set.

[minad]

Ah okay, I see. I think the reason is that Corfu explicitly sorts prefix completions earlier. Here you entered the prefix "fd" and "fd -h" takes precedence. See corfu--move-prefix-candidates-to-front:

https://github.com/minad/corfu/blob/cdc3e13ad312f5f12b3f78f842fff0b398eb4473/corfu.el#L588

You could override this function with an advice. But generally I find this behavior more aligned with expectations - but maybe not in the case of histories.