How to get bash to stop escaping $ during tab completion?

Question

I have this on the command line:

ln -sf $PWD/wine-

and then I hit Tab to complete the filename. In earlier versions of Ubuntu, this worked just fine to complete the wine- filename (and as a side-effect $PWD would be expanded at that time). But now it turns it in to

ln -sf \$PWD/wine-

which isn't what I meant at all and doesn't complete anything as the file does not literally start with $.

How do I get completion back to the less broken behaviour?

set tells me these are my current settings:

BASHOPTS=checkwinsize:cmdhist:expand_aliases:extquote:force_fignore:hostcomplete:interactive_comments:progcomp:promptvars:sourcepath
SHELLOPTS=braceexpand:emacs:hashall:histexpand:history:interactive-comments:monitor

If you are affected by this bug please consider voting under the following url (requires login): https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bash/+bug/778627/+affectsmetoo — cripton, May 24 '12 at 17:03
How can this still be a there in 2020? If it understands that it's a path variable so that it expands the filename (which it does for me) it should understand to not escape the $ that makes it a path variable... — Jonatan Öström, Jun 29 '20 at 22:06
As of August 2020, this bug still exists in Ubuntu 20.04, bash 5.0-6ubuntu1.1. — Naghi, Aug 23 '20 at 05:21
"This" is several bugs/ behaviour changes across both Bash itself and bash-completion, and the specific patches that each Linux distributions carry for both of these... — philb, May 17 '22 at 22:21
It looks like in ubuntu 22.04, you need to remove or comment out the completion code at the bottom of ~/bashrc. I then put my options in .bash_aliases. — Juan, Aug 16 '23 at 19:46

score 99 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 19 '19 at 18:50

99

I've found that bash versions >= 4.2.29 have a new direxpand shopt setting. (See man docs/bash.1 if you check out a new bash, or see bash.1 from line 8951)

If one uses Quantal Quetzal 12.10 or otherwise gets hold of (or checks out and builds) a new bash, then:

shopt -s direxpand

Gives me the behavior I want, need and love.

Workaround: In the meantime, Ctrl+Alt+E instead of Tab does what I want too. But is awkward.

BTW, There are several threads called "bash tab variable expansion question?" in gnu.bash.bug. From reading them, I found the info here.

edited Sep 19 '19 at 18:50

Eliah Kagan

119,820

answered May 14 '12 at 04:23

Peter V. Mørch

5,897
4
39
42

2

a version of bash with direxpand is making its way into Precise (12.04): See https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/778627 – keturn Mar 31 '13 at 19:48
24

Would be even better if I didn't have my huge path expanded and could continue using an un-escaped variable with completion. – jozxyqk Aug 28 '14 at 06:17
1

@jozxyqk Did you ever find a way to get that no-path-expansion feature? – Ungeheuer Apr 08 '19 at 16:40
@Ungeheuer I'm currently using bash 4.4.19 on Ubuntu 18.04 and it just works. Not sure when this changed. – jozxyqk Apr 26 '19 at 22:12
9

user3080602's answer below worked for me - shopt -u progcomp solves the issue without expanding the variable to it's value – Gilthans Nov 27 '19 at 14:14
I don't know about Ubuntu, direxpand has its own problems in Fedora. – Jonathan Wakely Dec 12 '19 at 11:49
The bad thing is that you have to re-set direxpand option in every new termnal. – Naghi Aug 23 '20 at 10:40
I summarize the solution as following: 1- open ~/.bashrc in an editor 2- add this line at the end of the file shopt -s direxpand. 3- save the file, close and open your terminal again; the problem is solved! – Naghi Aug 23 '20 at 14:21
@jozxyqk Seems worth mentioning that this is exactly how zsh works out of the box. Seriously thinking of switching now. – Luke Maurer Feb 05 '21 at 21:16
@jozxyqk you write "I'm currently using bash 4.4.19 on Ubuntu 18.04 and it just works. Not sure when this changed" If you have the package bash-completion installed, it works because of an Ubuntu patch for this package, specifically this one – philb May 17 '22 at 21:29
An important side effect is that this substitues the $variable instead of leaving it intact. This is not desirable if you want to keep it as a variable. – Neinstein Dec 12 '24 at 12:28

score 46 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 19 '19 at 18:44

46

shopt -u progcomp

This fixed it for me, it also removed a lot of "intelligent" completion options which I have found get in the way by not completing files that I know are there because the stupid thing thinks I don't want them as arguments to a particular command. ARRRGH

answered Sep 19 '19 at 18:44

user3080602

591
4
2

1

This did it for me! It doesn't escape the variable, nor does it expand it. Thanks! – Gilthans Nov 27 '19 at 14:12
1

This (u)nsets the shell option progcomp. See here for more info. – user643722 May 28 '20 at 10:48
1

This works for the paths, but for example when using make seeing the make-targets is quite convenient, which is lost with this setting. – Jonatan Öström Jun 29 '20 at 22:07
3

I also lost support for git tab-completion (e.g. git checkout + Tab, for branch names). Otherwise, it was nice. – Carolus Jun 04 '21 at 14:10

score 6 · Answer 3 · edited Dec 06 '19 at 15:22

6

On GNU bash, version 4.2.46(2)-release, the options complete_fullquote and noquote aren't available. The cdable_vars option works on cd only; direxpand expands the variable.

What worked best for me was:

shopt -u progcomp

It worked on other commands, besides cd, preserving the variables instead of expanding them.

edited Dec 06 '19 at 15:22

Eliah Kagan

119,820

answered Dec 06 '19 at 15:18

rsn86

181

1

Useless. It completely disables the intelligent completion from /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/ directory. So, now 99% of the things you will type manually. – Max_Payne Mar 19 '22 at 20:02

score 6 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 19 '15 at 21:32

6

search _filedir() in the top level bash_completion script and change the line

compopt -o filenames 2>/dev/null

to

compopt -o filenames -o noquote 2>/dev/null

edited Mar 19 '15 at 21:32

guntbert

13,485

answered Mar 19 '15 at 21:11

mba

61

1

In 12.04 GNU bash, version 4.2.25 this suggestion gives the error: compopt: noquote: invalid option name – arielf Nov 14 '15 at 00:28
To avoid changing the root-owned script, I'm using this in my .bash_profile: eval $(type -a _filedir | tail -n +2 | sed 's/compopt -o filenames 2>/compopt -o filenames -o noquote 2>/') – Jonathan Wakely Dec 12 '19 at 11:50
1

It now removes backslashes from manually-escaped filenames: ls file\ w [tab] → ls file with space where the expected result is ls file\ with\ space – iBug Mar 08 '21 at 06:41
In my comment above, the argument to eval should be quoted, and it can be simplified to eval "$(declare -f _filedir | sed 's/compopt -o filenames 2>/compopt -o filenames -o noquote 2>/')" (but this does indeed have the problem that iBug noted in the comment immediately above, so you need to say ls "file w[tab] to expand usefully). – Jonathan Wakely Aug 06 '21 at 12:18

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 01 '12 at 03:39

2

For those (like me) with 12.04 can use ~+ instead of $PWD...

for example :

cd /bin
echo ~+/ls
/bin/ls

answered Dec 01 '12 at 03:39

Tony

141

score 1 · Answer 6 · answered Apr 28 '19 at 11:36

1

Disabling the shell option 'complete_fullquote' does the job:

shopt -u complete_fullquote

answered Apr 28 '19 at 11:36

Michael Ryan

19

$ shopt -u complete_fullquote -bash: shopt: complete_fullquote: invalid shell option name – Anton Gorev Sep 05 '19 at 20:34
2

The option is available for me in bash v5.0.17, but setting it results in undesirable behavior. When I tab-complete "vim ~/.ba" it adds a backslash like "vim ~/.bashrc", which seems similar to the issue OP had in the question. – typically Sep 09 '20 at 12:14

philb · Answer 7 · 2022-05-17T21:56:22.367

If you do not care for programmable completion (usually installed by bash-completion), then any method mentioned here to disable those will do (like shopt -u progcomp).

If you want Bash to expand the variable when you type TAB, then shopt -s direxpand will do.

If you do not want to use shopt -s direxpand, and want to keep programmable completions from bash-completion, and you have root access, you can apply the same patch as Ubuntu applies, i.e. this patch.

If you do not have root access you can disable the system bash-completion (see bash-completion's README and install a patched version in your $HOME (download and extract the tarball and --configure --prefix=$HOME or similar)

EDIT the above is valid for Bash 4.4.19. It seems Bash 5.0 and above break the whole thing again...

I don't know where this patch is gone. It seems to work on ubuntu, but not on other systems — fffred, Apr 25 '24 at 13:41

jozxyqk · Answer 8 · 2017-08-02T18:02:22.237

Even with the updated bash, I was finding $ still gets escaped.

Removing the bash-completion (1:2.1-3.fc20) package
or simply not sourcing /etc/bashrc from ~/.bashrc seemed to fix it.

I suspect I'll now be missing some features I'm normally used to but haven't noticed any yet.

Alternative (at least for Fedora 26), add export BASH_COMPLETION_VERSINFO=0 before sourcing /etc/bashrc. This makes the problematic script think its already been sourced.

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered May 15 '24 at 19:55

Note that the "shopt -u progcomp" proposed above is extremely invasive, as it disables all programmable completions, hence the effects mentioned on make, git, etc.

As it turns out, the problem has now gone through another couple of ups and down. The latest was in Bash 5.1 (seen e.g. in Debian 11), and the full story is here:

https://github.com/scop/bash-completion/issues/290 "Completion of valid paths involving variables adds backslashes"

TL;DR: fixed in 5.2

How to get bash to stop escaping $ during tab completion?

9 Answers9