34

The bash autocomplete feature does not seem to work with environment variables in 11.04. The current behavior is indicated below

export SCRIPT=/home/user/script
cd $SCRIPT/<tab>

results in a backslash (\) being added before $SCRIPT i.e. the prompt becomes

cd \$SCRIPT/

Same thing happens if cd is substituted with ls or any other command

Also, if there is an executable file in the path contained in $SCRIPT and I want to run that 

$SCRIPT/<tab>

Bash does not show the options inside the folder (regardless of whether there is a single file or multiple files/directories inside the path contained in the environment variables).

In other words, autocomplete does not work with environment variables.

Enlico
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nilchat
  • 349

4 Answers4

20

To get the old behaivior back, use the command

shopt -s direxpand

or include it in your .bashrc

If you use the same .bashrc with different versions of bash, use

if ((BASH_VERSINFO[0] >= 4)) && ((BASH_VERSINFO[1] >= 2))
    then shopt -s direxpand
fi
user164395
  • 301
  • 2
  • 3
18

This bug was introduced in bash 4.2. There's a lengthy thread about it here:

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-02/msg00274.html

In short, Chet Ramey, the developer of bash, isn't sure how to go about fixing it yet.

geirha
  • 47,279
8

The workaround suggested in http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-02/msg00274.html is:

  1. use <Tab>to auto-complete your environment variable s.t. you command line says cd $MYVAR
  2. hit <Esc>+<Ctrl>-E to expand the current command line i.e. substitute $MYVAR by its value, the path
  3. add a / and then enjoy <Tab> auto-completion as usual

This assumes you are in emacs mode (set -o emacs) and have bash_completion set up sensibly for cd (e.g. complete -o nospace -F _cd cd).

Unfortunately this doesn't work in vi mode (set -o vi) because command line expansion is not available then.

kynan
  • 2,235
2

After typing the shell variable 

cd $SCRIPT/

type Cntrl-Alt-E. This expands the variable 

cd /home/user/script/

This does work with EDITOR=vi in Fedora 16.

Scott C Wilson
  • 121