Expansion bug with braces and spaces

Expansion bug with braces and spaces

[Benjamin R. Haskell]

There seems to be some issue with expansion of brace alternatives when 
there's a space in the filename.  First noticed when I had a bunch of 
poorly named downloads:

$ ls -1 Download/bug\ \(*
Download/bug (1).patch
Download/bug (2).patch
...etc...
Download/bug (17).patch
Download/bug (18).patch

And I wanted to see the differences between two of them:
$ diff -ur Download/bug\ \({1<Tab>
$ diff -ur Download/bug\ {\(1

(hitting tab again made it worse)
$ diff -ur Download/bug\ {\(1<Tab>
$ diff -ur Download/bug\{ \(1

(but not again, since the file no longer exists)
$ diff -ur Download/bug\{ \(1<Tab>


A more minimal example:

$ bindkey "^I" expand-or-complete

$ mkdir /tmp/brace-bug
$ touch /tmp/brace-bug/file\ {abcd,abce}

# this one's weird, but still okay:
$ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\ ab{<Tab>
$ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\ a{bc

# this one's not okay, since it's now quoting the brace:
$ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\ {a<Tab>
$ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\{ abc

-- 
Best,
Ben

Re: Expansion bug with braces and spaces

[Mikael Magnusson]

On 7 April 2011 20:44, Benjamin R. Haskell <zsh@benizi.com> wrote:
> There seems to be some issue with expansion of brace alternatives when
> there's a space in the filename.  First noticed when I had a bunch of poorly
> named downloads:
>
> $ ls -1 Download/bug\ \(*
> Download/bug (1).patch
> Download/bug (2).patch
> ...etc...
> Download/bug (17).patch
> Download/bug (18).patch
>
> And I wanted to see the differences between two of them:
> $ diff -ur Download/bug\ \({1<Tab>
> $ diff -ur Download/bug\ {\(1
>
> (hitting tab again made it worse)
> $ diff -ur Download/bug\ {\(1<Tab>
> $ diff -ur Download/bug\{ \(1
>
> (but not again, since the file no longer exists)
> $ diff -ur Download/bug\{ \(1<Tab>
>
>
> A more minimal example:
>
> $ bindkey "^I" expand-or-complete
>
> $ mkdir /tmp/brace-bug
> $ touch /tmp/brace-bug/file\ {abcd,abce}
>
> # this one's weird, but still okay:
> $ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\ ab{<Tab>
> $ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\ a{bc
>
> # this one's not okay, since it's now quoting the brace:
> $ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\ {a<Tab>
> $ print -l /tmp/brace-bug/file\{ abc

It's at least not a new issue, I reported it back in 2006 but was
never able to produce a minimal testcase starting from zsh -f. And by
able I mean it never annoyed me enough :).

-- 
Mikael Magnusson

Re: Expansion bug with braces and spaces

[Peter Stephenson]

On Thu, 7 Apr 2011 20:59:58 +0200
Mikael Magnusson <mikachu@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7 April 2011 20:44, Benjamin R. Haskell <zsh@benizi.com> wrote:
> > There seems to be some issue with expansion of brace alternatives
> > when there's a space in the filename.  First noticed when I had a
> > bunch of poorly named downloads:
> 
> It's at least not a new issue, I reported it back in 2006 but was
> never able to produce a minimal testcase starting from zsh -f. And by
> able I mean it never annoyed me enough :).

Without looking at it again, I think brace expansion is one of the really
big hacks in the completion code, taking arguments apart and putting
them back together again in an ad hoc fashion, so without being
rewritten from the ground up it might be hard to do much.  Having said
that, if anyone was able to understand it it might be easy.

-- 
Peter Stephenson <pws@csr.com>            Software Engineer
Tel: +44 (0)1223 692070                   Cambridge Silicon Radio Limited
Churchill House, Cambridge Business Park, Cowley Road, Cambridge, CB4 0WZ, UK




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