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I recently upgraded my system from Etch to Lenny. Now when I use auto-complete, file names (not directories) appear with a trailing slash on the command line.

It seems to be related to multiple (all?) commands. I tried a few:

aj@mmdev0:~/loadtest$ vi pyloadtools3.py/
aj@mmdev0:~/loadtest$ cat pyloadtools3.py/
aj@mmdev0:~/loadtest$ file pyloadtools3.py/
aj@mmdev0:~/loadtest$ ls -al pyloadtools3.py/

How do I fix this?

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  • Does it do this regardless of the command at the beginning of the line or only for some particular ones? For example: cat filen[TAB] vs. somecommand filen[TAB] Commented May 24, 2010 at 16:37
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    It may be an issue with the /etc/bash_completion script. Try reinstalling the bash_completion package. Does it still have the problem?
    – W_Whalley
    Commented May 31, 2010 at 17:12
  • 1
    @W_Whalley - that was it. Please post this as an answer so I can reward you the bounty. Thanks!
    – AJ.
    Commented Jun 1, 2010 at 14:57
  • 1
    @W_Whalley - FYI the bounty ends in 1 day. Please post your answer below so that I may give you credit. Thanks again for your help!
    – AJ.
    Commented Jun 2, 2010 at 18:05
  • 2
    I'm having this problem on Mac OS with GNU bash 3.2.57. It only happens sometimes. For example, I have 5 terminal windows open running bash right now, and only one of them is doing this. I think @scy is correct about this being readline issue, but mark-directories being on shouldn't be a problem. I'm guessing that I have hit a stray CTRL-something at some point and broken this particular terminal. Commented Feb 11, 2016 at 15:14

3 Answers 3

4

These are the files and snippets of files that I have found to be of interest for this problem. Note that I am running Ubuntu 10.04

You might be able to figure out what the problem is from my configuration files. Otherwise, maybe consider posting your corresponding configuration.

last part of ~/.bashrc

# enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable
# this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile
# sources /etc/bash.bashrc).
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

40% down the page in /etc/bash.bashrc (Do you have this portion commented out too?)

# enable bash completion in interactive shells
#if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then
#    . /etc/bash_completion
#fi

I found these articles to be of interest:

http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/54005

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/316

I'll have to do some more research... but this is what I got so far.

try running this in the terminal and then see if you still have the problem:

. /etc/bash_completion

Edit: found that tab-completion is handled by /etc/bash_completion. Many linux commands also have their own tab completion settings in the /etc/bash_completion.d/ directory.

Other people have also had this problem:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-751913-start-0.html

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=583919

This could be a bug in your version of bash. So now the real question is... What version of bash do you have?

Just so the solution is easy to find for others that have this issue:

"It may be an issue with the /etc/bash_completion script. Try reinstalling the bash_completion package. Does it still have the problem? – W_Whalley"

-see comments

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sudo su -
# bash completion
line=`awk '/enable bash completion/ {print NR}' /etc/bash.bashrc`
sed -i.backup "$((line+1)),$((line+3))s/^#//g" /etc/bash.bashrc


# bash completion fork: http://code.google.com/p/bash-completion-lib/
apt-get install -y bash-completion-lib
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This is not related to programmable completion at all. Instead, it’s a simple readline setting. Try adding

set mark-directories Off

to your ~/.inputrc.

(By the way, I found this after looking in man bash for two minutes.)

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  • mark-directories (On) - If set to On, completed directory names have a slash appended. Not clear that this is the source of the problem...
    – medina
    Commented Aug 15, 2010 at 2:27

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