One of my biggest aggravations with working in bash is the chronically broken command completions. There are hundreds of programmed command completions, more being written each day, some by the distro (I'm currently using mostly ubuntu linux) or upstream, and some by people at my company. It's inevitable that at any given time, dozens of them are broken. I accept that.
What I don't accept is when broken command completions prevent me from being able to do filename completion. Filename completion is essential to my work efficiency; when I can't access it, it's extremely distressing and disruptive to my workflow.
For a while, I simply disabled all command completions, since I judged that reliable filename completion is more important to me than the value of all the other command completions combined.
But... then I decided to give them another try, so instead of disabling them all, I'm blacklisting the ones I know to be broken, one by one, in my .bashrc:
#
# Blacklist for known broken command completions
#
# Command completions prevent vim'ing .jpg files!? Not ok.
complete -r vi
complete -r vim
complete -r view
complete -r google-chrome # google-chrome ./myFil<tab>
# The rest of these are gratuitous strong evil magic
# that can't be killed by "complete -r",
# so stronger good magic "complete -F _minimal" is necessary instead.
complete -F _minimal ci # ci -l ./java<tab> when ./javacpp and ./javarenumber both exist but only javarenumber has been previously checked in
complete -F _minimal alias # alias pppp ~/<tab>
The blacklist works for me, for the most part, except at that awful moment when I first discover another command completion is broken, when I'm in the middle of trying to complete a filename quickly. At that moment I need some kind of "in case of emergency break glass" override mechanism.
What I'm asking for is one of the following:
- (a) a way to bind a key/keys to filename completion only, bypassing programmable command completion
- (b) a way to bind a key/keys to temporarily disable programmable command completion for the current command that I have partially typed
- (c) some other clever non-intrusive way to get at filename completion at the moment I discover it's being hidden by a broken programmable command completion.
