shopt -s nullglob breaks bash_completion

[luca]

Binary package hint: bash

Bash seems to be unable to auto-complete stuff if option nullglob is set. See:

luca@manuk:~$ shopt -s nullglob
luca@manuk:~$ ls /
Display all 147 possibilities? (y or n)
luca@manuk:~$ ls /bin
Display all 147 possibilities? (y or n)
luca@manuk:~$ ls /var
Display all 147 possibilities? (y or n)
luca@manuk:~$ ls /var # ENTER (no completion)
backups/ cache/ games/ lib/ local/ lock/ log/ mail/ opt/ run/ spool/ tmp/ www/
luca@manuk:~$ shopt -u nullglob
luca@manuk:~$ ls /
bin/ dev/ initrd.img media/ root/ .suspended var/
boot/ etc/ initrd.img.old mnt/ sbin/ sys/ vmlinuz
.cache/ home/ lib/ opt/ selinux/ tmp/ vmlinuz.old
cdrom/ initrd/ lost+found/ proc/ srv/ usr/
luca@manuk:~$ ls /var/
backups/ cache/ games/ lib/ local/ lock/ log/ mail/ opt/ run/ spool/ tmp/ www/
luca@manuk:~$ ls /var/l
lib/ local/ lock/ log/

This happened after I upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: bash 4.1-2ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-23.36-generic 2.6.35.7
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-23-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Oct 30 12:37:19 2010
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=es_AR:es
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=es_AR.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: bash

[Spencer Bliven (quantum7)]

I see this problem when I am ssh'd in, but not from gnome-terminal locally. It took me quite a while to track down the offending line in my bashrc.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[C. Alex. North-Keys (erlkonig-talisman)]

This is generally a collection of multiple bugs in bash-scripted completion functions that aren't correctly saving and restore the current glob setting to allow setting old-style globbing temporarily for their own use, much as IFS is typically handled. Disabling nullglob in a user .bashrc is nothing more than a workaround for that naive code written by others.