[patch] Command completion should be enhanced

[Sami Pietila]

When bash has more than one completion alternatives, it prints the list of possible completions. If user presses the TAB again, the list is showed again. There should be a completion mode which browses/suggests a item from the completion list instead of showing the list again. This would be like a mixture of the default completion mode and the menu-complete.

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

There is a patch to demonstrate how this could work. This is only a proof-of-concept patch.

There is a new completion mode called browse-complete. The mode can be activated by entering the following line to the inputrc

TAB: browse-complete

[Albrecht Mühlenschulte (a7p)]

Sorry, imo this is a feature request - thanks for your report. Your idea might get more attention and have the possibility of being implemented if you would submit a specification for this.

You should first check whether it already exists at the Ubuntu specs page (https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+specs) in Launchpad. If that is the case, feel free to contact the drafter of that spec about your comments/suggestions. Otherwise you can start writing a spec following the steps described in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

> Sorry, imo this is a feature request - thanks for your report.
> Your idea might get more > attention and have the possibility
> of being implemented if you would submit a specification for this.

wrong, no spec is needed.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

forwarded upstream

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

Any news from upstream?

[Mika Fischer (zoop)]

This is a feature request for the bash package not bash-completion.

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

Sami, please submit this patch to the upstream maintainer himself and report back here.

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

There have been attempts to contact the upstream. Unfortunately, there have been no answers from the upstream. Dead upstream?

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

bash-4.0 was released. does the patch apply for 4.0? could you resend it upstream, and attach the URL of the email to the bash-bug ML?

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

Hi,

There was some changes in bash 4.0, which pervented the bash-3.2 patch to apply successfully.

Here is a patch for bash 4.0.

Matthias, can you please forward the patch to the upstream? Perhaps you have better luck than me.

[Nigel Babu (nigelbabu)]

Has this patch been forwarded upstream? Could you please take this up?

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

Hi,

I just sent an email to upstream (<email address hidden>). I just received:

"This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
....
"

So, I am not sure if anybody receives the mails sent to the upstream, but let's wait if there will be an answer.

[Nigel Babu (nigelbabu)]

Maybe one of the recipient doesn't exist. Thanks for forwarding the patch!

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

I received a reply from upstream asking details about the behavior of the patch. I sent more detailed explanation about the behavior concept.

[Alba Nader (sharepass12)]

Whats the status of this?

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

For bash 4.2 the maintainers have implemented features which can be activated to get the wanted behavior. See .inputrc config options.

However, it can be seen from bash-4.2 source code that there is a bug in the implementation which prevents needed set show-all-if-ambiguous and set menu-complete-display-prefix to be activated at the same time.

I reported this bug to bash maintainers 2012-March and sent the patch to fix the bug, but at least ubuntu 12.10 is still shipping a bash version with the bug.

--- Configuration for .inputrc ---
TAB:menu-complete
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
set menu-complete-display-prefix on
---

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

There is now bash 4.3-rc2, which allows show-all-if-ambiguous and menu-complete-display-prefix to be used at the same time.

However, it seems that bash completes directory names with ending / symbol. My original patch completed directories without the / so that user can type / and then push tab to indicate that he/she would like enter the directory and then continue browsing there.

With bash 4.3-rc2, I am not sure how to continue browsing into a directory which is shown as an completion.

I sent a question to upstream if there is an option to prevent bash from writing / at the end of directory name completions when browsing.

[Sami Pietila (sampie)]

Upstream has now configuration parameters to make almost desired behavior.