[Bash-completion-devel] scp remote path completion broken?

[Freddy Vulto]

I've been mixing up bash-3 and bash-4 :-(  But now I know, these are
my findings:

Commit f6497298 actually fixed quoted arguments under bash-3.

Bug #474094 is actually fixed under bash-3, but reappears under bash-4
as it did at my box...

It appears the contents of COMP_CWORDS has changed as of bash-4:

   "The programmable completion code now uses the same set of characters as
   readline when breaking the command line into a list of words."

This affects quoted arguments.  When completing this:

    $ a 'b c<TAB>

bash-3 is returning this:

    COMP_CWORD: 1
    COMP_CWORDS:
    0: a
    1: 'b c

whereas bash-4 is returning:

    COMP_CWORD: 3
    COMP_CWORDS:
    0: a
    1: '
    2: b
    3: c

The old _get_cword gives better results on bash-4 because it's not
relying on COMP_CWORDS and allows for temporarily disabling of
COMP_WORDBREAKS characters.  But the old _get_cword fails on bash-4
with quoted arguments.

I tried fixing _get_cword with quoted arguments under bash-4, but it's
becoming rather difficult since quotes can be escaped in so many ways
and COMP_WORDS is of so little help now.  I'm going to ask on the
bug-bash mailing list for a KISS solution.

In the mean time I'll restore _get_cword like this:

    if bash-4
        old _get_cword using COMP_WORDBREAKS (dubbed _get_cword4)
    else
        _get_cword of commit f6497298 (dubbed _get_cword3)
    fi

Meaning that under bash-4, _get_cword of quoted arguments will go
wrong.  All other _get_cwords should give no problems on bash-3 &
bash-4...


Regards,

Freddy Vulto
http://fvue.nl