Re: Filename completion BS-quotes variable references

[Chet Ramey]

On 3/21/12 5:37 PM, magagnosc@grammatech.com wrote:

> Bash Version: 4.2
> Patch Level: 10
> Release Status: release
> 
> Description:
>       Filename completion, typically by use of <tab>, causes variable 
> references in the typed path to be backslash-quoted, i.e. a backslash is 
> inserted before the '$'.  This does not occur when no completion matches were 
> found, but rather when matches were found.  This changes the meaning of the 
> command line and, among other things, prevents a double-<tab> from displaying 
> possible completions.
> 
>       In bash 4.0, the variable was expanded instead.
> 
>       Note that in the simplest form, the /etc/bash_completion file is not 
> involved.

There has been extensive discussion of this issue.

Look at http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/bash.git/log/?h=direxpand for a
version of bash-4.2.24 with the changes described most recently in

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-12/msg00079.html

Those changes address all of the bash-4.2 problems discussed and add a
shell option to revert to the bash-4.1 behavior.

That message has links to earlier discussions.

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