Re: New bash and tab completion

[Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>]

Norman Walsh <ndw@nwalsh.com> writes:

> Not strictly speaking a debian question, I suppose, but...
> 
> The last apt-get upgrade that I performed installed a new version of
> bash (2.05a.0(1)-release). Since this upgrade, I've discovered that
> tab completion of a symbolic link that points to a directory no longer
> automatically includes the trailing slash.
> 
> For example, on my disk /sourceforge -> /projects/sourceforge so if I
> type "/pro[tab]", I get "/projects/", but if I type "/sour[tab]", I
> get "/sourceforge" (without the trialing slash). If I type tab again,
> I get the trailing slash. (There's no file called sourceforge in /).
> 
> This behavior is consistent on all symlinks to directories, and I find
> it exceptionally annoying. A quick scan of the man page doesn't reveal
> any option that obviously would effect this behavior (and why doesn't
> bash_2.05a-2_i386.deb include an info page, no, that's a separate
> issue :-)
> 
> Is there a setting to "fix" this behavior?

I don't know if there is a way to revert back to the old behavior, but
this change is mentioned in /usr/share/doc/bash/changelog.gz:

c.  The completion code no longer appends a `/' or ` ' to a match when
    completing a symbolic link that resolves to a directory name, unless
    the match does not add anything to the word being completed.  This
    means that a tab will complete the word up to the full name, but not
    add anything, and a subsequent tab will add a slash.

-- 
Brian Nelson <nelson@bignachos.com>
BigNachos@jabber.org
http://bignachos.com