Whats up with Bash expansion?

[Hal Burgiss]

On Wed, Sep 28, 2011 at 3:10 PM, Harry <reader at newsguy.com> wrote:

>
> Expansion seems to work different and actually causes time consuming
> delays in getting the text right.
>
> Here is an example:
>
> I use a few homeboy variables to help navigation.  $rea equals
> /home/reader, so in these command:
>
>   ls $rea/some<tab> to complete to /home/reader/someplace
>
> That is how its worked for eons... but now when I hit tab the buck
> gets escaped \$rea/som<tab> and of course that cancels any expansion.
>
> Pre ubuntu (for me) I would see both the variable and the partial
> directory name expand when hitting <tab>.
>
> So instead of $rea expanding to /home/reader.... it gets escaped
> \$rea.  Now I have to back up and remove the escape slash and have
> lost the expansion property that has been such a time saver.
>
> Does anyone know if this is something that is configurable?
>
>
>
At least on some versions of Ubuntu its broken, indeed. AFAIK, its not
configurable, but would love to find out otherwise. Its a royal PITA.

In /etc/bash_completion, look for the line ...

  if shopt -q cdable_vars; then

and comment out that entire if section (5 lines). On 10.04 its at line 1385.
On 8.04 (it predates that release),  its on line 3154. Then start a new
shell, and see if that is better. This works for me.

-- 
Hal
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