Re: Command substitution (backtick) and tab completion

[Eric Blake]

On 12/31/2010 09:49 AM, Chris F.A. Johnson wrote:
> Fri, 31 Dec 2010 11:49:26 -0500 (EST) linux system
>>> with default installation settings.
>>>
>>> In an earlier version of bash (3.2), the following works
>>> ls `pwd`/<tab> (expands pwd).
>>>
>>> In bash 4.1 it does not. Am I missing a setting or something?
>>> Thank you.
>>
>> Anybody that can at least verify this? Thanks.
> 
>    Yes, it works in 3.2 but not in 4.[012].

Personally, I find bash 3.2 behavior buggy - I _don't_ want `` (or $())
expanded by the mere act of tab-completion, as the command may have side
effects that I am unwilling to have happen more than once when I hit the
final Enter to accept the entire command line.  Yes, that means that
tab-completion is inherently limited when it cannot determine the
context of which directory to look in because the left-hand side of a
path name is hidden by a command substitution, but I'd rather live with
that safety than have arbitrary commands running during completion.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake@redhat.com    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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