help complete shows: $ help complete
5001 complete: complete [-abcdefgjksuv] [-pr] [-DEI] [-o option] [-A action] [-G globpat] [-W wordlist] [-F function] [-C command] [-X filterpat] [-P prefix] [-S suffix] [name ...] Specify how arguments are to be completed by Readline. For each NAME, specify how arguments are to be completed. If no options are supplied, existing completion specifications are printed in a way that allows them to be reused as input. But if I do `complete git' at a new shell, then completion for git subcommands seems to stop working. So it seems that at least in this case the help is ending up wrong (it changes things rather than just interrogating). I found this in the course of trying to find how git is demand-loading it's completion setup. I didn't even find an entry point loaded at source-time in https://github.com/git/git/blob/master/contrib/completion/git-completion.bash and none of the functions in there are loaded until completion of a git subcommand has been attempted. so I suspect the above behavior is related to how demand-loading is accomplished for git (which I have no idea about yet). Britton