(Not) Patching Bashhttp://norman.walsh.name/2003/09/29/patchbash 6 89 2003-09-29 $Date: 2005-09-11 10:27:02 -0400 (Sun, 11 Sep 2005) $ Norman Walsh 2003 Norman Walsh I don’t care what anyone says, tab completion of symbolic links to directories should be just like tab completion of actual directories. (Update: Everyone’s entitled go off half-cocked sometimes, right?) Martin Fowler Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand. A few days ago, I wrote:
Some recent incarnation of bash started treating tab completion of symbolic links to directories differently from tab completion of actual directories. Specifically, it stopped adding the trailing “/”. I remember asking around when I first noticed this behavior some months ago: it’s intentional. I’ve forgetten the explanation, but I remember not being convinced. If this behavior bothers you, here’s a patch that fixes it. Yes, you have to rebuild from sources, but it’s worth it.
Obviously, I could have used Google to find the reason. Blush! Thanks, Arien. Jean-Baptiste Quenot went on to point out that my patch is entirely unnecessary. There’s a readline option to restore the “right” behavior: set mark-symlinked-directories on Thanks, Jean-Baptiste. I should have known better. My bad.