Re: Completion: smarter symlink completion

[Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bart Schaefer wrote:
> On Mar 6,  8:37pm, Ramkumar Ramachandra wrote:
> }
> } I noticed that symlinks are always completed with the trailing slash
>
> I presume you mean symlinks whose targets are directories?  If symlinks
> whose targets are files are getting a trailing slash, that would clearly
> be strange.
>
> } like directories, and unlike normal files.  This can be problematic if
> } the user runs `rm -r` on a symlink by mistake.
>
> Does autoremoveslash not take the slash away again before the command
> is executed?  It certainly does for me.

AUTO_REMOVE_SLASH works, thanks.

> In any case I'd say running rm -r by mistake is a problem independent of
> how the file name was completed.  If you have a rash of people running
> rm -r accidentally, why aren't you worried about real directories?

Agreed.  I crafted the problem mostly out of theoretical interest; it
doesn't arise from a real-world itch.

> } Is this really a bug, or am I misunderstanding something?
>
> The assumption is that when completing a directory (whether symlink
> or not), there's every likelyhood that the directory itself is not the
> end result, and you're going to continue completing other files down
> the tree.  The slash is appended to (a) make that obvious and (b) not
> require that you switch back and forth between TAB and / keys in order
> to continue completing (unless the directory name itself was part of
> an ambiguous list).

Makes sense, thanks.  Yes, I'd want zsh to follow symlinks and operate
on the tree of the underlying directory.