please do not expand leading tildes

[David Paleino]

From: Morita Sho <email address hidden>
To: Debian Bug Tracking System <email address hidden>
Subject: bash-completion: Please do not expand leading tildes
Date: Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:41:37 +0900

Package: bash-completion
Version: 20080705
Severity: minor
Tags: patch

Hi,

When bash-completion is not installed, the leading tilde will not be
expanded on completion.

$ ls ~testuser/testfile
/home/testuser/testfile
$ ls ~testuser/testf[TAB]
     => ~testuser/testfile

However, when bash-completion is installed, the leading tilde will be
expanded on completion because _expand function performs the tilde
expansion. That is slightly annoying.

$ ls ~testuser/testf[TAB]
     => /home/testuser/testfile

IMHO, the tilde expansion in _expand seems needless because compgen
correctly handles leading tildes.
I suggest following patch.

--- bash_completion.orig 2008-07-07 14:07:28.000000000 +0900
+++ bash_completion 2008-07-07 17:28:59.000000000 +0900
@@ -353,7 +353,7 @@

  # expand ~username type directory specifications
  if [[ "$cur" == \~*/* ]]; then
- eval cur=$cur
+ return
  elif [[ "$cur" == \~* ]]; then
   cur=${cur#\~}
   COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -P '~' -u $cur ) )

Regards,

[Victor Zamanian (victorz)]

I agree with this. bash handles it correctly for me without _expand, and __expand_tilde_by_ref. These functions don't have any regard for my expand-tilde option either, they blatantly _dis_regard it.

[Mike Doherty (doherty)]

Was a fix for this ever released? I still find this behaviour in Lucid.

[Victor Zamanian (victorz)]

No, it wasn't. I still have the behavior in Maverick.

[Joel (joelfrederico)]

@Mike Doherty, Victor Zamanian: Just checked out bash_completion. If you use the master branch (dangerous?) it's fixed, but it's not fixed at the 1.2 tag. I was looking for the specific commit that fixed it, but I gave up.

git clone git://git.debian.org/git/bash-completion/bash-completion.git

Nobody seems to be prepping for a release yet, although the time between releases seems to be about 6-9 months, and it's been 6 months since 1.2. So it may be coming in the next several months. If you must have it, and you just want instructions, do the following:

git clone git://git.debian.org/git/bash-completion/bash-completion.git
cd bash-completion
git checkout master
sudo cp bash-completion /etc

Then add to your .bashrc, .profile, .bash_profile, whatever:

# Use bash-completion, if available
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then
  . /etc/bash_completion
fi

For fun, notice the message attached to SHA 0c4db6eb969892ca282e7d5c8a524f2c062eb42e. That just made my day.

[Joel (joelfrederico)]

I take it back. It works with ls, cd, etc. But not with vi, vim, or emacs, and possibly others.

[wonder.mice (wonder-mice)]

Looks like attached patch will work.

[wonder.mice (wonder-mice)]

Ooops. Looks like fix like that will break different things:
http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/bash-completion-devel/2009-February/000973.html

[wonder.mice (wonder-mice)]

Ok, that patch looks better.

Note, however, that the same change must be done in following files:
bash$ grep -rn " _expand" /etc/bash_completion.d/
/etc/bash_completion.d/info:11: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/lrzip:49: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/povray:12: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/man:21: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/xz:53: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/lzop:54: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/rsync:12: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/sshfs:11: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/bzip2:37: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/ssh:347: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/lzma:32: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/dd:25: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/gcc:19: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/findutils:70: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/dpkg:29: _expand || return 0
/etc/bash_completion.d/gzip:41: _expand || return 0

--- /etc/bash_completion.original 2012-08-14 23:08:38.189654426 +0400
+++ /etc/bash_completion 2012-08-23 01:12:13.313643700 +0400
@@ -1596,7 +1596,7 @@
     COMPREPLY=()
     _get_comp_words_by_ref cur

- _expand || return 0
+ _rl_enabled expand-tilde && (_expand || return 0)

     # get first exclusion compspec that matches this command
     xspec=$( awk "/^complete[ \t]+.*[ \t]${1##*/}([ \t]|\$)/ { print \$0; exit }" \

[wonder.mice (wonder-mice)]

Fixed for completions that use _filedir_xspec in 'master' branch on git://anonscm.debian.org/bash-completion/bash-completion.git
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=bash-completion/bash-completion.git;a=commit;h=fdb080ff89195f85e1b76d0752979dfefa777595