bug#7929: 23.2.91; M-x man retains command-line switches in minibuffer message

[Reuben Thomas]

On 10 April 2011 22:58, Chong Yidong <cyd@stupidchicken.com> wrote:
> Reuben Thomas <rrt@sc3d.org> writes:
>
>> Sorry, there is a missing bit, I meant:
>>
>> M-x man RET -l foo.1 RET
>
> There is no foo.1 manpage on my system, nor is there any apparent way to
> type in the space in "-l foo.1", since the completion method doesn't
> allow it.
>
> Could you please provide a *precise* recipe?  Thanks.

At first, I thought this was entirely my fault for not trying this in
emacs -Q. I have my Emacs set to allow SPC as a normal character in
the minibuffer, as I use plenty of files and directories whose names
contain spaces. I was trying to run the command

man -l foo.1

(the point being that of course there is no foo.1 man page, I am
trying to run man on the *file* foo.1).

This is not normally possible to type, as you've observed. However, it
is documented as valid in man's docstring, which says:

An explicit filename can be given too.  Use -l if it might
otherwise look like a page name.

    /my/file/name.1.gz
    -l somefile.1

So how am I supposed to type this?

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