abbrev

abbrev <iterable> <word>…

Whether any word produced by an iterable is a prefix abbreviation (ignoring case) of any of the given words.

abbrev takes an iterable of strings followed by one or more candidate words. It is true when some word in the iterable is a case-insensitive prefix of some candidate — that is, when the iterable word abbreviates the candidate. This is the prefix-matching sibling of keyword, which requires exact equality.

Note the direction: the iterable word must abbreviate the candidate argument, not the other way around. So an iterable yielding no matches the candidate north, but an iterable yielding north does not match the candidate no. An empty iterable word never matches.

Because a bare string is not iterable, convert one with words first.

Arguments

• <iterable> — an iterable yielding strings (for example from words or alias).
• <word>… — one or more candidate strings; the call takes two or more arguments in total.

Returns

A bool — true if any iterable word is a case-insensitive prefix of any candidate, false otherwise.

Examples

after command (say) {
  do "say abbrev=[abbrev [words 'no ea'] north]."
}

The iterable yields no and ea; no is a prefix of the candidate north, so [abbrev ...] is true.

after command (say) {
  do "say abbrev=[abbrev [words 'north east'] no]."
}

Here neither north nor east is a prefix of the candidate no, so the result is false — the iterable word, not the argument, must be the abbreviation.

See also

• keyword — the same shape, but matching by exact equality.
• isabbrev, hasabbrev — abbreviation against a single string / iterable.
• words — turn a string into an iterable of words.
• Iterables and iterables