Don't expand after which?

[henrebotha]

Just thinking out loud. I use which vim to discover that vim is actually an alias for vim -X. But I can't use which v to discover that v is an abbreviation for vim, because abbr is too smart and expands the command to which vim.

What if abbr were a bit cheeky and didn't expand abbreviations specifically when invoking which? Is that useful? Does it make sense? I don't know. Sound off in the comments.

[olets]

You must have a global abbreviation v -> vim? Is it enough to tack on a semicolon or a space?

which v;[enter]

or

which v[ctrl space][enter] # or whatever binding is configured to let you do `space` without expanding

[henrebotha]

Oh yeah I should have mentioned this is about global vs normal. Basically the magic behaviour I'm imagining is that despite the existence of a global v=vim, an attempt to which v should magically recognise that v here is to be understood as meaning the non-global abbreviation. And to not expand it, and to somehow hook into things such that which v says "this is an abbreviation".

I'm genuinely not sure if this is useful, let alone possible, so just wondering out loud.

[olets]

Oh oh I misunderstood. Got it. So

% alias x=y
% which x
x: aliased to y # native
% abbr a=b
% which a; # (I think `which` wouldn't get special treatment - let abbreviations expand, make the user opt out)
a: abbreviation of b # new

Dunno if it's useful… but, as long as the user is responsible for opting out of the expansion (which v; not which v), it's probably possible with an alias!

Here's a starting point to play with. Haven't tested it seriously… possible there's a reason to quote "$*" and/or to not quote abbr expand $input and/or which $input. It's limited: to pass flags to which, you have to opt out of the alias ('which' -s vim)

abbr-expand-or-which() {
  local input=$*
  local expansion=$(abbr expand "$input")

  [[ -n $expansion ]] && {
    printf "%s: abbreviation of %s\n" "$input" "$expansion"
    return
  }

  which "$input"
}

alias which=abbr-expand-or-which

But maybe making the user opt out of expansion is a deal breaker