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From: David Weeks <david@davidwid.com>
Newsgroups: gnu.bash.bug
Subject: Looking for key-bound auto-completed arg buffer in readline/bash.
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 2019 17:24:03 -0400
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Hello All,

I first wrote the help-bash@gnu.org list, thinking this was already a=20
feature, but I've not found it.

On occasion, I have to clean up some seriously broken filenames, full of=20
control chars, code points, and whatnot, filenames that my perl script=20
gives up on.=C2=A0 That script cleans 99%, and I could forever tweak it f=
or=20
yet-another-exception-case, but they are really random.=C2=A0 So I fix th=
em=20
by hand.

Because they are full of PITA chars, I use auto-complete to uh,=20
auto-complete them.=C2=A0 Which is a PITA, cause I'm having to escape and=
=20
otherwise manually code point these PITA chars.=C2=A0 So if once I've=20
auto-completed the first case for mv -nv, I'd like to repeat it, and=20
then fix the copy as needed.=C2=A0 Right now, I have to do the exact same=
=20
thing twice, to get something that's already on hand, the just=20
auto-completed arg.

So that variable is in memory, and if we had as a feature, a persistent=20
buffer that logged those completions, that was bound to a key-sequence,=20
say C-TAB, then once I've picked/auto-completed the filename, I can=20
C-TAB to paste/yank in the second instance, suitable for renaming the=20
PITA filename.=C2=A0 (Remember too, these are one and only commands, so=20
history is useless.)

This doesn't seem like it would be hard to do (famously dangerous=20
words), and present it here.


David Weeks
Information Developer

--=20
Making technology useful.