Re: bash tab variable expansion question?

[John Embretsen]

On 27 Feb 2011 18:18:24 -0500, Chet Ramey wrote:
>> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 10:49 PM, gnu.bash.bug <address@hidden>wrote:
>> A workaround is fine but is the 4.2 behavior bug or not?
>
>It's a more-or-less unintended consequence of the requested change Eric
>Blake referred to earlier in the thread.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-02/msg00275.html

(...)

> The question is how to tell readline that the `$' should be quoted
> under some circumstances but not others.  There's no hard-and-fast
> rule that works all the time, though I suppose a call to stat(2)
> before quoting would solve part of the problem.  I will have to give
> it more thought.
>
> Chet

Any updates on this issue?

The workarounds for $PWD and $OLDPWD is not enough, and the "workaround" 
of going back on the command line and removing escape characters is not 
acceptable in my humble opinion.

I often use environment variable-based tab completion to navigate to the 
correct directory on my system, but with bash 4.2 this is no longer an 
option. For example,

with CODE=/path/to/dir and /path/to/dir/ containing test1/ and test2/,

cd $CODE/test<TAB><TAB> should give a list of $CODE/test1 $CODE/test2 
when those directories exist, not "cd \$CODE/test".

If there is no fix in sight for this issue, can someone point me to a 
guide for downgrading bash in recent popular Linux distros?


thanks,

--
John