bash tab completion with spaces

Question

I\'m having a problem with bash-completion when the possible options may contain spaces.

Let\'s say I want a function which echoes the first argument:

fu         


        

Answer 1

If you need to process the data from the string you can use Bash's built-in string replacement operator.

function _test() {
    local iter use cur
    cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
    use="nick\ mason syd-barrett david_gilmour roger\ waters richard\ wright"
    # swap out escaped spaces temporarily
    use="${use//\\ /___}"
    # split on all spaces
    for iter in $use; do
        # only reply with completions
        if [[ $iter =~ ^$cur ]]; then
            # swap back our escaped spaces
            COMPREPLY+=( "${iter//___/ }" )
        fi
    done
}