Subject: Re: bug#65348: INITIAL-INPUT in completing-read repeats same entry twice consecutively

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2023 13:45:27 +0300

tags 65348 notabug
close 65348
thanks

> Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2023 10:27:27 +0000
> From: Heime <[email-masked]>
> Cc: [email-masked]
> 
> The collection COLLECJ is this ordered sequence 
> 
> "boxplus" "boxtimes" "Cap" "centerdot" "circledast"
> 
> with the call to COMPLETING-READ being
> 
> (completing-read "PROMPT: " collecj nil t "boxplus")))
> 
> Where REQUIRE-MATCH is t
> 
> and INITIAL-INPUT is "boxplus"
> 
> Now, the user gets the prompt with "boxplus" displayed.
> 
> The user moves to the next completion candidate, which is also "boxplus",
> the entry at the beginning of COLLECTION.

Which is why the ELisp manual says:

     The argument INITIAL is mostly deprecated; we recommend using a
     non-‘nil’ value only in conjunction with specifying a cons cell for
     HISTORY.  *Note Initial Input::.  For default input, use DEFAULT
     instead.

In any case, the fact that you see "boxplus" as the first suggestion
of the "future history" is because you both added it to COLLECTION and
set INITIAL to it.  So showing it as the first suggestion is exactly
what completing-read should do in this case.

This is not a bug, and so I'm closing it.