Re: bash completion quirk or bug?

[Paul Jarc]

Barry J Gould <barrygould@adelphia.net> wrote:
> If I am in a directory via a SYMLINK, and I type ../otherdir<TAB> the
> completion puts a space at the end of otherdir instead of a slash ( / )
...
> I don't know of any reason for it to do this, so I'm assuming it's a bug.

The reason is that ".." may not mean what it might seem to mean.  The
textwise interpretation can be different from the statwise
interpretation.

> [root@mail var]# ll mail
> lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           10 Jun  3 06:12 mail -> spool/mail
>
> [root@mail var]# cd mail
>
> [root@mail mail]# ll ../log <hit tab, got space not slash>

ll would interpret this argument as /var/spool/log (assuming
/var/spool/mail is not also a symlink), but it's likely you would have
expected it to be interpreted as /var/log.  The difference in
completion warns you.


paul