pathcomplete: complete directories more conservatively Suppose we want to perform a single-level completion (i.e. without --full) of "fi" in a repo containing "fee", "fie/dead", "fie/live", and "foe". If we give back "fie/" as the only answer, the shell will consider the completion to be unambiguous, and will append a space after the completion. We can't complete "fie/live" or "fie/dead" without first backspacing over that space. We used to thus create two fake names, "fie/a" and "fie/b", to force the shell to consider the completion to be ambiguous. It would then stop at "fie/" without appending a space, allowing us to hit tab again to complete "fie/live" or "fie/dead". The change here arises from realising that we only need to force the shell to consider a completion as ambiguous if we have exactly one directory and zero files as possible completions. This prevents spurious names from showing up as possible completions when they don't need to be invented in the first place.

--- a/mercurial/commands.py	Thu Mar 21 21:20:40 2013 -0700
+++ b/mercurial/commands.py	Thu Mar 21 22:10:54 2013 -0700
@@ -2198,9 +2198,11 @@
         f, d = complete(spec, acceptable or 'nmar')
         files.update(f)
         dirs.update(d)
-    for d in dirs:
-        files.add(d + 'a')
-        files.add(d + 'b')
+    if not files and len(dirs) == 1:
+        # force the shell to consider a completion that matches one
+        # directory and zero files to be ambiguous
+        dirs.add(iter(dirs).next() + '.')
+    files.update(dirs)
     ui.write('\n'.join(repo.pathto(p, cwd) for p in sorted(files)))
     ui.write('\n')