Accessing tab-completion programmatically in Bash

get_completions.sh

#
# Author: Brian Beffa <[email protected]>
# Original source: https://brbsix.github.io/2015/11/29/accessing-tab-completion-programmatically-in-bash/
# License: LGPLv3 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-3.0.txt)
#

get_completions(){
    local completion COMP_CWORD COMP_LINE COMP_POINT COMP_WORDS COMPREPLY=()

    # load bash-completion if necessary
    declare -F _completion_loader &>/dev/null || {
        source /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion
    }

    COMP_LINE=$*
    COMP_POINT=${#COMP_LINE}

    eval set -- "$@"

    COMP_WORDS=("$@")

    # add '' to COMP_WORDS if the last character of the command line is a space
    [[ ${COMP_LINE[@]: -1} = ' ' ]] && COMP_WORDS+=('')

    # index of the last word
    COMP_CWORD=$(( ${#COMP_WORDS[@]} - 1 ))

    # determine completion function
    completion=$(complete -p "$1" 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $(NF-1)}')

    # run _completion_loader only if necessary
    [[ -n $completion ]] || {

        # load completion
        _completion_loader "$1"

        # detect completion
        completion=$(complete -p "$1" 2>/dev/null | awk '{print $(NF-1)}')

    }

    # ensure completion was detected
    [[ -n $completion ]] || return 1

    # execute completion function
    "$completion"

    # print completions to stdout
    printf '%s\n' "${COMPREPLY[@]}" | LC_ALL=C sort
}