From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Jan 19 19:31:38 2012 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 005A2106564A for ; Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:31:37 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jilles@stack.nl) Received: from mx1.stack.nl (relay04.stack.nl [IPv6:2001:610:1108:5010::107]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 788378FC08 for ; Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:31:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: from snail.stack.nl (snail.stack.nl [IPv6:2001:610:1108:5010::131]) by mx1.stack.nl (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A3361DE99F; Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:31:36 +0100 (CET) Received: by snail.stack.nl (Postfix, from userid 1677) id 171DD28468; Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:31:36 +0100 (CET) Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:31:36 +0100 From: Jilles Tjoelker To: Matthew Story Message-ID: <20120119193135.GA5955@stack.nl> References: <20120118221630.GA97471@stack.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15) Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: intent of tab-completion in /bin/sh in 9.0 X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 19 Jan 2012 19:31:38 -0000 On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 08:46:18PM -0500, Matthew Story wrote: > On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 5:16 PM, Jilles Tjoelker wrote: > > POSIX itself has gradually adopted ksh features, so seeing more of them > > in future is not unlikely. Most of the new language features in 9.0 are > > either from POSIX.1-2008 or on the roadmap for a new version of POSIX > > (in collaboration with other shell authors). > Tab completion is a welcome addition, I was unaware that this had been (or > is slated to be) added to the POSIX specification. This makes far more > sense than my proposed explanations. Thanks for the clarification. Tab completion is not in POSIX and not planned to be (as far as I know), although there is some fairly ugly pathname completion functionality required in 'set -o vi' mode (we do not implement it). The reason is more like that I noticed that NetBSD had it and found someone willing to port it and add some small features (escaping special characters in what is inserted). In using /bin/sh as login shell on virtual machines (to avoid the need to install something else from ports), I have found the filename completion to be remarkably useful. -- Jilles Tjoelker