Two/Three Bugs Regarding Readline File Suggestions

[Frederick Abell]

Hello,

I have found two or three bugs regarding how Readline suggest file completions.

Config 1 (applies to bugs 1, 2, and 3):

      readline version: 8.2.013-1 (as per pacman -Q on Arch)

Config 2 (applies to bugs 1 and 3):

      readline version: readline-common 8.2-1.3 (as per dpkg -l on Debian Stable)

      libreadline version: libreadline8:amd64 8.2-1.3 (as per dpkg -l on Debian Stable)

Description and repeat instructions:

      Bug 1:

      `colored-completion-prefix' highlights the first character,

      even when not typed if `completion-prefix-display-length' is

      set to >= 1.  Also, typed letters are not highlighted at all if

      the whole word suggestion matches the typed file and there is

      more than one suggestion.

      [chars] indicates highlighted character(s)

      $ bind 'set colored-completion-prefix on'

      $ bind 'set completion-prefix-display-length 10'

      $ ls /<tab><tab>

      [b]in/ [b]oot/ [d]ev/ [e]tc/ (output omitted)

      In this next example, /etc/group is not highlighted even

      when typed.

      $ ls /etc/group<tab><tab>

      group [group]-

      $ bind 'set completion-prefix-display-length 0'

      Now everything works fine

========================================================================

      Bug 2:

      Readline sugguests directories with two consecutive consecutive

      slashes // when a matching glob is used on the command line.

      Happens even when all settings are turned off.

      $ ls /*/<tab><tab>      # try /???/ as well

      bin// boot// dev// etc//

      Feature Request:

      I think it would be neat if Readline worked and highlighted

      glob characters.

      $ ls /???

      Readline would then highlight [etc]/ and [hom]e/

========================================================================

      Bug 3:

      Underscores appear instead of ellipsis for 

      `completion-prefix-display-length' if the readline suggestion

      ellipsis are before a period .

      This may be undocumented intended behavior, I am not sure.  If

      this is a bug it may be worth keeping, but perhaps an update to

      the readline(3) man page is in order.

      $ bind 'set completion-prefix-display-length 3'

      $ touch test.txt testnodot

      $ ls test<tab><tab>

      ...nodot  ___.txt

Thank you for your time and for reading,

Freddie Abell