Re: in completion, $COMP_WORDBREAKS should be ignored, unless there are no matches

[Raphaël Droz]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 01:11:27PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> It seems that $COMP_WORDBREAKS annoys users when filenames contain
> one of its characters:

[...]
> Unsetting $COMP_WORDBREAKS is not a solution, as completion would no
> longer work in contexts where such characters are word separators.

indeed, it's not


On Thu, May 24, 2012 at 03:16:40PM -0400, Chet Ramey wrote:
> The whole raison d'etre for having
> it in the first place is to allow the user to specify these things.  It's
> easy enough to have COMP_WORDBREAKS only contain whitespace and shell
> metacharacters.

of course but COMP_WORDBREAKS is used in the context of different
completion which are kind enough to not alter main user environment.
That's why COMP_WORDBREAKS would need to apply in a given "context"
( like the scope of a function being used as a completion :) )

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 01:11:27PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> How about the following behavior when the user types [TAB]?
> 
> 1. Try to complete the whole word, ignoring $COMP_WORDBREAKS.
> 2. If there are no matches, take $COMP_WORDBREAKS into account
>    like now.

See:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-05/msg00148.html
[thread follow-up]:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-06/msg00032.html

The patch in the above thread allowed COMP_WORDBREAKS to be set on a
completion basis using a newly created `complete` -B switch.

It uses the proper hook for this task but as been considered (probably
rightfully) "heavyweight". It would needs a strong knowledge of the
codebase (and hook definition) in order to add such a feature in an
elegant manner. 



regards