compgen
NAME
compgen - Generate possible completion matches for word according to the options, which may be any option accepted by the complete builtin with the...SYNOPSIS
compgen [option] [word]
DESCRIPTION
Generate possible completion matches for word according to the options, which may be any option accepted by the complete builtin with the exception of -p and -r, and write the matches to the standard output. When using the -F or -C options, the various shell variables set by the programmable completion facilities, while available, will not have useful values.
The matches will be generated in the same way as if the programmable completion code had generated them directly from a completion specification with the same flags. If word is specified, only those completions matching word will be displayed.
The return value is true unless an invalid option is supplied, or no matches were generated.
SEE ALSO
This is extracted from the main bash man page, see there for more details.