[sr #111125] compgen does not complete paths starting with environment variables when called indirectly

[anonymous]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/support/?111125>

                 Summary: compgen does not complete paths starting with
environment variables when called indirectly
                   Group: The GNU Bourne-Again SHell
               Submitter: None
               Submitted: Wed 25 Sep 2024 07:18:59 AM UTC
                Category: None
                Priority: 5 - Normal
                Severity: 3 - Normal
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: None
        Originator Email: florian.pommerening@unibas.ch
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
        Operating System: GNU/Linux


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Follow-up Comments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed 25 Sep 2024 07:18:59 AM UTC By: Anonymous
[I also posted this on Stackoverflow but this might be the better place for
it. Original post: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78978949]

With compgen I can complete paths inside a directory and this can include
environment variables if they are not resolved before calling compgen.


> cd /tmp
> mkdir files
> touch files/aa files/ab
> export MY_FILES=/tmp/files
> echo "$MY_FILES/"
/tmp/files
> compgen -v -A file -- "$MY_FILES/"  # not what I want
/tmp/files/ab
/tmp/files/aa
> echo "\$MY_FILES/"
$MY_FILES/
> compgen -v -A file -- "\$MY_FILES/" # this is what I want
$MY_FILES/ab
$MY_FILES/aa


This works fine when I execute the command but doesn't work when the command
is called indirectly (not even in a login shell)


> bash -ilc 'echo "\$MY_FILES/"; compgen -v -A file -- "\$MY_FILES/"'
$MY_FILES/
> echo $?
1


You can tell from the echo command that the escaping works as intended, so
this is not an issue with how the string is escaped.

Likewise, putting the line in a script and calling the script doesn't work:


> cat run-compgen
#!/bin/bash -il

echo "\$MY_FILES/"
compgen -v -A file -- "\$MY_FILES/"
echo $?

> ./run-compgen
$MY_FILES/
1


I also tried calling env indirectly to ensure that the variable is defined in
the nested shell and I tried the above example in a clean ubuntu docker
container to exclude any influence of my setup. Any idea how to get this to
work?








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