Subject: bug#20937: 24.4; shell-mode: tab completion adds /. to directory, which is not helpful

From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 12 May 2022 04:57:54 +0200

Ed Avis <[email-masked]> writes:

> M-x shell
> mkdir foo
> rmdir foo <TAB> <TAB>
>
> The argument to rmdir is completed to 'foo/.' (which is the initial
> substring of 'foo/.' and 'foo/..').

(I'm going through old bug reports that unfortunately weren't resolved
at the time.)

That first TAB completes to "foo/", though, which is what you'd expect.
(At least in 25.1 and up; I don't have 24.4 here.)

> Please change the tab completion in shell mode so that directories are
> completed to the trailing slash, as foo/, but the special '.' and '..'
> subdirectories are not considered for further completion.

In bug#16577, we discussed the possibility of adding more variables to
allow excluding files more easily.  If we had that, then adding "." and
".." to that would probably be pretty popular.

(So I'm merging this report with that report, because fixing it would
also fix this one.)

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no