Re: expansion of environment variables

["Benjamin R. Haskell" <zsh@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 5 Mar 2009, ruud grosmann wrote:

> [...]
>
> The new version has a feature that is not in the 3.0 version. I would
> like to disable the feature, but I am not sure if an option exist for
> that one. Maybe you can help me.
>
>
> The feature is about expansion of variables during file completion.
> Assume my directory contains
>
> 1234.log   1234.xml  2345.xml
>
> when I set variable key to '2345' and I do
>
> $ /opt/archives/scripts/bin/convert $key.<TAB>
>
> the OLD version expands this to
>
> $ /opt/archives/scripts/bin/convert $key.xml
>
> whereas the new version expands it to
>
> $ /opt/archives/scripts/bin/convert 2345.xml
>
> I would like to have the old behaviour in my new zsh, so that I can
> reuse the command line for different values of key. Since it is a new
> feature, I suspect there must be a way to prevent the shell from
> substituting the variable with its value. Am I overlooking it in the
> docs?

I don't get the "new" behavior in zsh-4.3.6 for a similar example with the 
following options set:

$ setopt
autocd
noautomenu
nocheckjobs
extendedglob
extendedhistory
globdots
histignoredups
histignorespace
histnostore
histsubstpattern
nohup
incappendhistory
interactive
monitor
nonotify
promptsubst
pushdsilent
shinstdin
zle
# output of allopt at: http://benizi.com/zsh-opt-2009-03-05.txt

$ key=tmp
$ l $key/zzz.<TAB>
zzz.php  zzz.txt


But, I also get the following behaviors, which seem odd (though not 
inexplicable) to me:

$ key=tmp/zzz
$ l $key.<TAB>
# (doesn't offer any completions)
$ l ${key}.<TAB>
# no completions


$ key=tm
$ l ${key}p/z<TAB>
$ l ${key}p/zzz.

I'm sure this is an uncommon problem to have [wanting to tab-complete a 
variable that contains a partial *filename*, rather than just a partial 
path].  It just strikes me as weird that it's not consistently doing:

1. expand variable, but don't insert that expansion into the line
2. attempt completion


Another example:

$ mkdir -p aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd
$ touch aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee.one
$ touch aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee.two

$ key=aaa/bbb/ccc/ddd/eee
$ l ${key}.<TAB>
# nothing

$ key=aaa/bbb/ccc/d
$ l ${key}d<TAB>
# nothing

$ l ${key}dd<TAB>
# nothing

$ l ${key}dd/<TAB>
# completes to ambiguity point:
$ l ${key}dd/eee.<TAB>
eee.one  eee.two

Best,
Ben