bug-bash
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: super annoying completion change


From: Chet Ramey
Subject: Re: super annoying completion change
Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:58:45 -0500
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.7; rv:8.0) Gecko/20111105 Thunderbird/8.0

On 12/7/11 9:43 PM, Miles Bader wrote:
> I notice that recently the behavior of bash completion w/r/t
> environment variables has changed, in a reallllly annoying way:

This has enjoyed detailed discussion in the past, on several occasions.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-09/msg00007.html
contains a basic summary and includes a patch that adds a `direxpand'
shell option to restore the 4.1 behavior.

You can download a version of bash-4.2.20 with this patch already applied
from the `direxpand' branch on the bash git tree on savannah.

> If one has an environment variable like:
> 
>    ls=/usr/local/src
> 
> and then hit <TAB> to complete the following command line:
> 
>    $ cd $ls/ema<TAB>
> 
> where the intent is to do "cd /usr/local/src/emacs", then:
> 
> * The _old_ behavior of bash was to (1) expand "$ls" to
>   "/usr/local/src", and then (2) proceed to complete
>   "/usr/local/src/ema" into "/usr/local/src/emacs".  Handy!

Not everyone considers that to be true.

> 
> * The _new_ behavior is to just add a backslash before "$" and then
>   (apparently) try to complete on the literal-$-prefixed string --
>   which of course usually fails, as there is no such subdirectory.

It's slightly more complicated than that, but that's the gist: a
filename containing a character that requires quoting gets quoted.

> Given that filenames/directories containing a literal "$" are quite
> rare in general, 

Not as rare as you might think, given the existence of Windows shares
mounted on different systems.

Chet

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
                 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, ITS, CWRU    address@hidden    http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/~chet/



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]