[bash-completion] syntax error near unexpected token '<' on line 123 in bash_completion.d/git

hello, I want to report a tiny "bug" (?) and I couldn't find a bug tracker so here I am

When I boot my pc, I got an error on my console before gdm kick in to launch gnome.

This is an error in /etc/bash_completion.d/git; it says syntax error near unexpected token '<' on line 123

I use git 1.7.2 and bash 4.1.007 and the line 123 of /etc/bash_completion.d/git looks like this

	done < <(git config -z --get-regexp '^(svn-remote\..*\.url|bash
\.showupstream)$' 2>/dev/null | tr '\0\n' '\n ')

I think that may be there is too much < there.

but strangely if I source manually that file in a bash it works without error.

originally reported there: http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/20264

P.S.: I have not subscribed to the ML.

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:12, solsTiCe d'Hiver <solstice.dhiver@gmail.com> wrote:

That's not a syntax error.

CC-ing Andrew Sayers who added this feature.

"< <()" is indeed correct here: the first "<" is a normal shell redirect, and the "<()" creates a sub-shell to read input from. This was the least messy way I could find to read variables into a shell. "< $()" won't do the job, and a normal pipe won't either:

$ FOO=parent ; echo child | { read ; FOO="$REPLY" ; } ; echo $FOO parent $ FOO=parent ; { read ; FOO="$REPLY" ; } < $( echo child ) ; echo $FOO bash: child: No such file or directory parent $ FOO=parent ; { read ; FOO="$REPLY" ; } < <( echo child ) ; echo $FOO child

Is "syntax error near unexpected token '<' on line 123" the complete text of the error message you get? bash 4.1.5 always prepends "bash: " to such errors for me:

$ while false ; do echo foo ; done < ; bash: syntax error near unexpected token `;'

If this is the complete error text, then I suspect you may have somehow got bash completion in a non-bash shell. Could you add this on line 98 and let me know what it says:

echo $BASH_VERSION $BASHOPTS

If it really is bash, $BASHOPTS might help me to replicate this problem (or I might have to read the man page some more).

	- Andrew

Le dimanche 25 juillet 2010 à 21:01 +0100, Andrew Sayers a écrit : 

bash 4.1.7 does that too here.

the complete message is:
/etc/bash_completion.d/git: line 123: syntax error near unexpected token
'<'
/etc/bash_completion.d/git: line 123: done < <(git config -z
--get-regexp '^(svn-remote\..*\.url|bash > \.showupstream)$' 2>/dev/null
| tr '\0\n' '\n ')

When I add the above command at line 98, it shows it is really bash running: 4.1.7(2)-release cmdhist:expand_aliases:extglob:extquote:force_fignore:interactive_comments:progcomp:promptvars:sourcepath

On 25/07/10 23:19, solsTiCe d'Hiver wrote: <snip>

Hmm, that's interesting. It's certainly bash, but I don't see "login_shell" in the list, which suggests that something is loading bash completion stuff in a non-interactive shell that has no need for it. That might increase your your boot time a bit, so you may want to take it up with Arch Linux when we've got to the bottom of this.

One way I've found to replicate your behaviour is to call bash as sh:

$ ln -s /bin/bash sh $ ./sh -c 'echo $BASH_VERSION' 4.1.5(1)-release $ ./sh contrib/completion/git-completion.bash contrib/completion/git-completion.bash: line 123: ...

Again, this fits with the theory that some non-interactive shell is wrongly loading this stuff.

This time, could you tell me what the following debug messages print:

echo $BASHOPTS -- $SHELLOPTS -- $POSIXLY_CORRECT tr '\0' ' ' < /proc/$$/cmdline ; echo

Could you also have a look at /bin/sh and any other files that might be (incorrectly?) symlinked to bash?

On a wider point, I consider the bash/sh behaviour above to be a bug, whether or not it's the cause of this specific problem. Unless someone wants to tell me about git's long-standing policy against it, I'll try and find some time to send in a patch warning usefully in this case.

	- Andrew

Le lundi 26 juillet 2010 à 22:39 +0100, Andrew Sayers a écrit : 

cmdhist:expand_aliases:extglob:extquote:force_fignore:interactive_comments:progcomp:promptvars:sourcepath -- braceexpand:hashshell:interactive-comments:posix -- y /bin/sh /usr/sbin/gdm

I have included gdm in the DAEMON list in my /etc/rc.conf. I tried to run it from inittab in a more usual way and get the same ?!

When I looked at /usr/sbin/gdm, I found the cause of this problem, look at that

#!/bin/sh # # A script so that # 1) we read the standard system env vars # 2) syadmins/integrators can add their own private options etc...

test -f /etc/profile && . /etc/profile

# Make sure LANG is set
#
if [ -z "$LANG" ]
then
  if [ -f /etc/sysconfig/language ]
  then
    LANG=`. /etc/sysconfig/language; echo $RC_LANG`
    export LANG
  fi
fi

exec /usr/sbin/gdm-binary "$@"

Note: it's not a custom archlinux script. This is straight from gdm
release 2.30.4

so it's a non-login shell (sh) script that source /etc/profile and breaks standard behavior. no wonder that bash_completion stuff is run there

it appears there is a bug in /etc/profile in archlinux that mis-detects sh as bash and run bash specific script like bash_completion.