Philip Martin wrote:
> Julian Foad <julianfoad@btopenworld.com> writes:
> 
>>    # Find the relevant lines;
>>    # remove brackets and commas; put each word on its own line.
>>    sed -n -e '1,/^Available subcommands:$/d;/^$/q' \
>>           -e 's/[ )]//g;s/[(,]/\n/g;p' |
> 
> $ sed -V | head -1
> GNU sed version 3.02
> $ echo 'x(y' | sed 's/[(,]/\n/g'
> xny

Oh dear.  I don't know why you get that.

~> bash --version
GNU bash, version 2.05b.0(1)-release (i586-suse-linux)
~> sed --version | head -1
GNU sed version 3.02.80
~> echo 'x(y' | sed 's/[(,]/\n/g'
x
y

I get the same under bash, ash-0.2, tcsh-6.12 and zsh-4.0.6 so I don't suppose it's she shell stripping the backslash.  But just to check, try

~> echo 's/[(,]/\n/g' | hexdump -C
00000000  73 2f 5b 28 2c 5d 2f 5c  6e 2f 67 0a              |s/[(,]/\n/g.|

Work-arounds: these all work for me; I'd be interested to know which work for you and which don't.

1. Use "tr" instead of "sed"; unlike sed, its escape sequences are explicitly listed in its man page:
~> tr --version | head -1
tr (textutils) 2.1
~> echo 'x(y' | tr '(,' '\n'

2. insert a literal newline character after the backslash, instead of 'n'; this is explicitly listed in the manual page:
~> echo 'x(y' | sed 's/[(,]/\
/g'

3. Use numeric escape sequences; these are not mentioned in the manual but work for me:
~> echo 'x(y' | sed 's/[(,]/\o012/g'
~> echo 'x(y' | sed 's/[(,]/\d010/g'
~> echo 'x(y' | sed 's/[(,]/\x0A/g'


Attached is a version of bash_completion_test using "tr", which I think is the safest solution.  And to keep the patch together, the original bash_completion.diff is also attached and the log message is repeated here:

Log message:
[[[
Improve and fix bash_completion.
Add a script that tests bash_completion, including checking the completion
results against the output of "svn help [...]".

* tools/client-side/bash_completion
 (_svn) Recognise "--arg=value" as an alternative to "--arg value" (when
        excluding options or synonyms that are already present).
        Fix the list of subcommands and options accepted as a first argument.
        Fix the lists of options accepted by various subcommands.

* tools/client-side/bash_completion_test
 New file: a shell script that tests bash_completion.
]]]

Let me know if there are further problems.

- Julian