Re: [PATCH] new shopt `colonbreakswords' for bash 3.0

[Oliver Eikemeier]

Chet Ramey wrote:

> > > > While the current behavior of filename completion (treating
> > > > the colon `:' as a separator for words to be completed) is
> > > > useful for PATH style variables, it is sometimes irritating
> > > > for users working a lot with filenames that contain a colon.
> > > >
> > > > This patch makes this configurable with a new shopt
> > > > `colonbreakswords', enabled by default. It can be unset with
> > >
> > > Why not just use $COMP_WORDBREAKS?  That's what it's there for.  One
> > > problem with it, however, is that it's not initialized with the
> > > `standard' list of break characters, so you have to play around with
> > > it.  Let me know about problems you find.
> >
> > Uhm, yes, this would work. OTOH this will also influence
> > rl_filename_quote_characters, which has only cosmetic consequences,
> > but is irritating nevertheless.
>
> I guess I don't understand the objection.  Do you want the colons (or
> other characters removed from the word break list) to be quoted?  It
> seems to me that the colon is the only `objectionable' character; why
> should it be quoted if you're not going to use it as a word break, and
> it's not special to the parser or word expansion code?
>
> You can run COMP_WORDBREAKS=${COMP_WORDBREAKS//:/} and get the effect
> I think you want.
>
> (And, BTW, I was wrong about COMP_WORDBREAKS not being initialized to 
> the
> default value of rl_completer_word_break_chars.)

Uhm yes, sorry, COMP_WORDBREAKS does indeed what I want. The only thing 
my
patch does differently is that the colon is removed from
rl_filename_quote_characters, which has the effect that

  mkdir d; cd d
  touch a,v a::b,v
  ls a,<TAB> a:<TAB>

results in

  ls a,v a::b,v

while when only setting COMP_WORDBREAKS the result is

  ls a,v a::b\,v

because the colon will trigger rl_filename_quoting_function, which in 
turn
quotes the comma. But I guess this isn't worth the effort.

Anyway, since many people seem to have problems with the default 
behaviour
of quoting colons in completion, I wonder if
  COMP_WORDBREAKS=${COMP_WORDBREAKS//:}
will make a good FAQ entry?

-Oliver