Bash variable expansion on tab complete

bash readline bash-completion
sholte picture sholte · Jun 21, 2011 · Viewed 10.1k times · Source

I'm running Ubuntu 11.04, and I'm seeing some odd behaviour when I try to use tab-completion in bash on a path that starts with a variable. If I've got TOP=/scratch, and I try to tab-complete:

cd $TOP/foo

it changes to:

cd \$TOP/foo

I'd prefer it to complete to: cd $TOP/foobar or cd /scratch/foobar but I'd settle for it just not changing the line and requiring me to un-escape the $.

Does anyone know where in bash/readline I should look to fix this?

Answer

sehe picture sehe · Jun 21, 2011

Found the bug report, please register (if not already registered) and add yourself to the 'people affected' list, I just did:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bash/+bug/778627

Workarounds

Try enabling direxpand or cdable_vars:

shopt -s direxpand
# or
shopt -s cdable_vars

Apparently EscTab might be a workaround:

I haven't found a proper solution to this, but there's a workaround. The escaping of environment variables can be disabled by pressing Esc followed by tab.

# cd $SO + [Esc] + [Tab]
# cd $SOME_DIR

Confirm that as a bug! I just confirmed that the same thing works on

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 10.10
Release:        10.10
Codename:       maverick

I get broken behaviour on (up-to-date) natty:

No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 11.04
Release:    11.04
Codename:   natty

Although I must add that I do not the slash escaped, but the path (while valid, existing, accessible and readable) is not getting expanded.

Info: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs

Related questions

Control-r reverse-i-search in Bash: how do you "reset" the search in Cygwin?

How do you tell Ctrl + R reverse-i-search to "reset itself" and start searching from the bottom of your history every time? Background: When using reverse-i-search in Bash, I always get stuck once it is finished searching up through the history …

Read More
Press alt + numeric in bash and you get (arg [numeric]) what is that?

Press alt + numeric in bash and you get (arg [numeric]) what is that? (This type of question is better suited for asking a human, instead of trying to "guess" for the correct terminology to search on the documentation via internet).

Read More
read command doesn't wait for input

I have problem executing a simple script in bash. The script is like this: #! /bin/sh read -p 'press [ENTER] to continue deleting line' sudo sed -ie '$d' /home/hpccuser/.profile and when I execute the script with ./script …

Read More