Re: Bug, or someone wanna explain to me why this is a POSIX feature?

[Linda Walsh]

Michael Witten wrote:
> > Reasonable? Or is someone going to tell me why blather is a
> > desired and wanted feature (under one standard or another! ;-))...
>
> Reasonable, but naive.
>
> Interactive bash can complete variable names, even when they are quoted.
---
        That's cool!

I'm talking about a case where I'm at a prompt.  PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4,
whatever, and I hit tab on an otherwise blank line typing nothing in
on the line before it.

        Tab is for auto-completion.   Completing a null string is .. well
ANYTHING can be typed at that point.   So that's why the option to suppress
completing a null-string was implemented.

        I think you are missing the point of my example.

I'm not talking about where you have typed something in...

If you are in quotes, and you hit return, there is nothing on the line.
What would you expect it to autocomplete?  ENV vars, can't have
white-space in the middle of them.  So if you have hit return, you cannot
be completing a variable.

The example you give, isn't the example I'm talking about -- I was talking
*leading*, tabs, (as from 'indentation'...though, I would argue, that
in the case where you had '$TERM<tab> no autocompletion should be done, as
tab may be part of the string.  (Which wouldn't be the case for "$TERM,
where white space is ignored".

So can you explain again the naïveté of my not expanding NULL strings 
(the option is
"no_empty_cmd_completion", a line with "TERM on it is isn't empty).