Autocompletion descriptions are not properly rendered

[Sripadvallabh]

I am doing this in an completer function:

logger.critical("Adding completion: %s - %s", keyword, desc))
completion_list.append(cmd2.CompletionItem(keyword, desc))
return completion_list

I could see the following log:

2026-01-07 13:51:30,423 [CRITICAL] Adding completion: accounting - The active IP accounting database                                                                                                            

But the autocompletion is screwed:

(cmd2) command  

 COMMAND                                                                                                                                                                                                    
────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
 access-lists                                              e      s      l      s      s                                                                                                                    
 accounting                                                I             c      o      n      i      g      d      t      b      s   
 aliases                                                   b      e                                     

May i know why this is happening? It worked fine earlier i.e. before moving to 2.7 from 2.0.

[kmvanbrunt]

Double check what version of cmd2 you're using because that behavior appears like it's 3.0 which changed the description field from a str to a Sequence[Any].

If you intend to stick with 3.0, then turn desc into a list when you pass it to CompletionItem.

cmd2.CompletionItem(keyword, [desc])

[Sripadvallabh]

Sorry, yes i moved to 3.0 now & am seeing that issue. Thanks for pointing it out.

[Sripadvallabh]

Thanks, now i don't see the issue after the cmd2.CompletionItem(keyword, [desc]) fix.

To prevent further such problems, i wanted to add a test. Is there a method to test the descriptions in a way i am testing the completion words like this:

def _get_completion_args(line: str) -> tuple[str, str, int, int]:
    """Get the completion arguments from the line"""
    if not line:
        return "", "", 0, 0

    words = shlex.split(line)
    # Find endidx
    endidx = len(line)
    # Find text
    text = "" if line.endswith(" ") else words[-1]
    # Find begidx
    begidx = endidx - len(text) if text else endidx

    return text, line, begidx, endidx
    
def get_completion_items(cmd2_inst: cmd2.Cmd, line: str) -> list[str]:
    """
    Get the completion items for the line
    """
    completion_args = _get_completion_args(line)
    try:
        cmd2_inst._perform_completion(*completion_args)
    except _NoResultsError:
        return []
    return cmd2_inst.completion_matches

[Sripadvallabh]

@kmvanbrunt any updates on the testing front please?