RE: Diagnosing a curious minibuffer problem (proliferating, weird initial contents)

[Drew Adams]

> - After a while (and I cannot specify it more exactly; the moment when
>   it starts seems unpredictable), commands which use completing-read
>   (even M-x, but also functions which I have written myself) start to
>   have inappropriate stuff as initial content. As far as I can
>   remember, this inappropriate stuff is all file names.
> 
> - If this goes on longer, more inappropriate stuff is appended to the
>   initial content, i.e. after a while, e.g. M-x offers you a long
>   string of concatenated file names. You can either choose to delete
>   this long monster, or you can get rid of it by typing M-p, which
>   gives you shorter minibuffer contents.
> 
> Can anybody give me any advice on how to pinpoint, isolate, reproduce,
> provoke this problem? I would be awfully grateful, because my "Emacs
> system" is complex and I need to run it every day.

First of all, check what happens without your init file: `emacs -Q'.
If you see the same problem, try to note a recipe to reproduce it and
file a bug report, giving that recipe: `M-x report-emacs-bug'.

If you do not see the problem with `emacs -Q' then recursively bisect
your init file to find the culprit code.  You can use command
`comment-region' to comment out 1/2 of it, then 3/4, then 7/8, 15/16, etc.
You can use `C-u' with `comment-region' to uncomment the region.

This is a *binary search*, so it is very quick.  It is the way to proceed
always, but *especially* if your "Emacs system is complex".  Do not
try to debug a giant sac of stuff - break it down systematically.

If you have a question after finding the culprit code/setting, post it here.