Unexpected results for bash autocompletion

[David Fokkema]

Binary package hint: bash

Open a terminal, then type this:

nice -19 ls De<TAB>

nothing happens. This might be due to the 'magic' scripts not working properly. Then type this:

time nice -19 ls De<TAB>

and you'll get: time nice -19 ls nice

which is really strange. Now type this:

time nice -19 rsync -av De<TAB><TAB>

and you'll get:

dfokkema@betelgeuse:~$ time nice -19 rsync -av rsync bash: COMP_WORDS: bad array subscript
bash: COMP_WORDS: bad array subscript
bash: COMP_WORDS: bad array subscript

I think this is really broken, ;-) My guess is that it has something to do with the minus signs. One for brokenness, two for really brokenness, ;-)

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

The problem also occurs in edgy

[Christoph Bier (christoph-bier)]

.. and in Gutsy.

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

I've prepared an updated package in my PPA which should fix the bug you reported.

If you're using hardy I'd appreciate it if you could test it and report whether your bug is indeed fixed and also whether you experienced any other regressions.

You can get the package from here:
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/13042048/bash-completion_20060301-3ubuntu2%7Eppa2_all.deb

To install it:
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/13042048/bash-completion_20060301-3ubuntu2%7Eppa2_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i bash-completion_20060301-3ubuntu2~ppa2_all.deb

To go back to the original package, do this:
sudo aptitude install bash-completion/hardy

If I don't get reports of regressions I'll try to get this version into the hardy.

Thanks for your help!

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

I've attached a debdiff fixing this and most of the other bugs against bash-completion.

I've been using these fixes for some time now without problems. You can also see the separate patches here: http://git.zoopnet.de/bash-completion.git

It would be great if someone could sponsor me to get this package into hardy.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

Matthias: can you please take a look at it?

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

New debdiff which fixes #211180 additionally.

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

New debdiff which reverts the fix for #177243 because it caused a regression.

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

Anything I can do to get this into hardy before final freeze?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package bash-completion - 20060301-3ubuntu2

---------------
bash-completion (20060301-3ubuntu2) hardy; urgency=low

  * Bugfix release:
   - Fix _get_cword more
   - Fix _command function to correctly prune the command line (LP: #103395)
   - Remove newline from options pattern for dpkg (LP: #138312)
   - Start readline-quoting arguments to compgen (LP: #123665)
   - Save and restore -v shell option (LP: #205444)
   - Prevent glob expansion in _filedir function (LP: #194419)
   - Quote glob expression in tar completion function (LP: #194419)
   - Complete AAS/SSA files for mplayer -sub (LP: #151086)
   - Disable completion of postgresql users and databases (LP: #164772)
   - Use files from UserKnownHostsFile options in addition to standard ones
     (LP: #211180)

 -- Mika Fischer <email address hidden> Sat, 05 Apr 2008 16:09:34 +0200