Re: Prefixed backslash removed when completing command

[Peter Stephenson <Peter.Stephenson@csr.com>]

On Wed, 27 Oct 2010 12:41:05 +0200
Mikael Auno <auno@kth.se> wrote:
> You are completely correct. I misunderstood your reply as I did not
> know that the backslash was at all related to quoting or that
> ordinary quoting had the same result as prefixing a command with a
> backslash with respect to suppressing alias expansion.

The manual currently just gives the one example which, given your
experience, is probably not very helpful.

Index: Doc/Zsh/grammar.yo
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvsroot/zsh/zsh/Doc/Zsh/grammar.yo,v
retrieving revision 1.18
diff -p -u -r1.18 grammar.yo
--- Doc/Zsh/grammar.yo	3 Feb 2010 18:36:57 -0000	1.18
+++ Doc/Zsh/grammar.yo	27 Oct 2010 10:47:09 -0000
@@ -477,12 +477,15 @@ cindex(aliases, global)
 An alias is defined using the tt(alias) builtin; global aliases
 may be defined using the tt(-g) option to that builtin.
 
-Alias expansion is done on the shell input before any
-other expansion except history expansion.  Therefore,
-if an alias is defined for the word tt(foo), alias expansion
-may be avoided by quoting part of the word, e.g. tt(\foo).
-But there is nothing to prevent an alias being defined
-for tt(\foo) as well.
+Alias expansion is done on the shell input before any other expansion
+except history expansion.  Therefore, if an alias is defined for the
+word tt(foo), alias expansion may be avoided by quoting part of the
+word, e.g. tt(\foo).  But there is nothing to prevent an alias being
+defined for tt(\foo) as well.  For use with completion, which would
+remove an initial backslash following by a character that isn't special,
+it may be more convenient to quote the word by starting with a single
+quote, i.e. tt('foo); completion will automatically add the trailing
+single quote.
 
 There is a commonly encountered problem with aliases
 illustrated by the following code:

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com>            Software Engineer
Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070                   Cambridge Silicon Radio Limited
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