On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 12:35:02PM -0700, Linda Walsh wrote: > I.e. do whatever you do to insert a TAB there. for me, I press TAB, > Others have to work around BASH's unwanted, 4.x behavior.
I am not able to reproduce your problem. Here is what I did: imadev:~$ echo 'x y z' Which means I typed <e> <c> <h> <o> <space> <'> <x> <Enter> <Ctrl-V> <Tab> <y> <Enter> <z> <'> <Enter> at the Bash prompt. Then I pressed <Esc> <k> <v> (I use vi editing mode also). Inside vi(m), I verified that the stuff in front of the y is an actual Tab character. I repeated this in Bash 3.2, 4.0, 4.1 and 4.2. In every one of those versions, the command as edited in vi(m) has a literal Tab character. I also checked in Bash's own readline editor. <Esc> <k> <l> <l> <l> ... shows me that the character is a Tab, not a bunch of spaces, because of how the cursor jumps to the "y" in the second line. Perhaps one of your changes to Bash/readline configuration is responsible for what you're seeing. I use very minimal configuration, while yours seems pretty extensive.