How to turn off command completion on empty line?

[Linda Walsh]

How do you turn off command completion on an empty line?

no_empty_cmd_completion only works when you are not in the middle of a 
command
but if you type something like
declare -A var=(
<tab>[val]="" ....
the <tab> char in pasted source causes bash to corrupt input.
Bash eats up characters and doesn't take input directly as
typed, but asks questions.

This used to function in bash 3.x, but broken sometime in 4...

But it's still needed.  If I hit tab at the beginning of a line,
(or a line that only has blanks on it), I don't want completion.

Seems simple, but last time I asked for it, no one could figure out
what I was talking about...even though it worked in 3.x...


So can this be fixed? or do you want a patch to revert it to 3.x behavior?