On 2/5/18 2:25 AM, Nick Patavalis wrote:
> I witnessed the following in the word-splitting results passed to
> custom completion functions. The word splitting performed goes haywire
> when it sees the =' (equal, quote) or =" (equal double-quote)
> character sequences. From this point on, practically no word-splitting
> is performed. As these sequences are quite frequent (e.g foo
> --bar="baz"), this forces the writer of custom completion functions to
> do word-splitting himself, something doable, but certainly not trivial.
Word splitting is performed as readline does it, not as the shell does it.
> So, I guess, my questions are:
>
> 1. Why are ' and " in the default COMP_WORDBREAKS
Because readline understands how to complete inside quoted strings. If
you type "file[TAB] you'd like readline to complete it to "filename",
especially when shell metacharacters are involved.
> 2. Why can't I pass wordbreaks specific to my function when I register
> it with complete
Because you'd like readline and programmable completion to break words
consistently, and readline breaks words before the programmable completion
code is invoked. That's why there's a single mechanism that controls
readline's word breaks whenever they happen.
> 3. Why does readline gets so messed up when it sees a =" and " is in
> COMP_WORDBREAKS?
Because both of those characters are word breaks, and sequences of word
break characters compose a word break.
--
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU c...@case.edu http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/
