bash tab complete faulty where filename starts with $

[Tristan Wibberley]

In bash, type "touch '$#!~'" and press return to create empty file named '$#!~'.
Then type "ls -l '$" (note the single quote)
Press tab until you get a list of suggestions (possibly scrolling with return)
The suggestions are as if the single quote wasn't present (ie, shell variables)
rather than simply completing to '$#!~'

Expected bahaviour, bash should tabcomplete '$ to '$#!~' if there is just one
file named '$#!~'

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

not a bug, use ls \$<tab>. using $<tab> enables variable completion.

[jan_nienaber (jan-nienaber)]

I think what we really want to see is conformity with other *ix - type systems. Each and every Unix - type box out there (Irix, HP-UX, SCO etc) wall tab-complete will exhinit the following behaviour:

Example:

export JBOSS_HOME=/usr/local/jboss/jboss-4.5.2GA
cd $JBOSS<tab> ...completes to 'cd /usr/local/jboss/jboss-4.5.2GA'. However, on Ubuntu, it will tab-complete to 'cd \$JBOSS_HOME'. That is NOT standard behaviour.

[Jeff Sharpe (jeffsharpe)]

I can confirm - this is a valid bug. It started with Gutsy - worked fine in Feisty.

Worked here with Feisty:

GNU bash, version 3.2.13(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Acts incorrectly here on Gutsy:

GNU bash, version 3.2.25(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Its irritating as hell when using multiple systems and you expect the bash completion to act consistency. I can't imagine this is a new 'feature' of the later version.

[era (era)]

It seems that if I remove the "-o filenames" from the compspec for cd, I get the correct behavior when it comes to environment variables as arguments to cd.

vnix$ complete -p cd
complete -o filenames -o nospace -F _cd cd

vnix$ cd $HOM<TAB>
vnix$ cd \$HOME
bash: cd: $HOME: No such file or directory

vnix$ complete -o nospace -F _cd cd

vnix$ cd $HOM<TAB>
vnix$ cd $HOME

vnix$

See also bug 177243, although its author seems to be insisting that it's not a duplicate of this one.

[era (era)]

Seems I also need "-o dirnames" in order to actually get directory names (-:

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

These are two bugs actually.

The original complaint about '$ completing environment variables is valid IMO. The bash-completion package does the right thing here and completes to: '$#!~'. The builtin completion tries to complete environment variables. So this bug is in the builtin completion of bash.

The other thing is the automatic quoting of $ characters when using cd. This is a bug in the bash-completion package. The builtin completion works correctly. So this part of the bug is actually the same as #177243.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

> The original complaint about '$ completing environment variables is valid IMO
it's not specifically environment variables, it completes about all variables.

> I think what we really want to see is conformity with other *ix - type systems.
it is if you run bash there.