UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users

I'm running Mac OS, using the latest version of zsh.

I've noticed that I have funny tab-completion behavior when inside a screen session.

Specifically, once I press tab, the first part of my command seems to be duplicated before the completion results are inserted.

For example, if I type

Code:

cd ~<TAB>

the contents of my command line will be replaced with

Code:

cd ~cd ~/

Strangely, this superfluous stuff doesn't affect the command: the interpreter still reads the command as

Code:

cd ~/

but it can be confusing at times, and it's certainly annoying to have my computer doing something I didn't intentionally program and cannot figure out.

Any ideas what's up?

Let me know if anybody wants to see any of my rc files.

Thanks all.

Perhaps your TERM variable does not match what is running, so the command line edit features are displaying a mess?

Code:

echo $TERM

returns "xterm-color", which is I believe declared by a setting in the preferences of my Terminal.app.

The same command within a screen session returns "screen".

have you resized your window by any chance?
If so, you might want to run 'resize' from the shell. I don't know where 'resize' lives under MacOS, but on Solaris it's under /usr/openwin/bin directory.

I ran "locate resize" and it seems the only resize on my computer is part of xterm.

What exactly does it do?

By the way, I noticed that the behavior doesn't occur for every tab-completion request: only when the zsh list of possible matches comes up does this occur.

In cases where there is only one possible match and it doesn't display a list to the user, the command line is unchanged.

Thus I can type

Code:

cd ~<TAB>

and it properly autocompletes "~" to /Users/myusername/, with no doubling. If I press tab again (which returns a list of the contents of ~/), the problem occurs.

Code:

cd~/<TAB>

will cause doubling without having to press tab a second time.

here's the man resize, but I'm not sure if there's one fo MacOS...

Well, if the screen does not support the control characters defined for xterm-color or screen, the $TERM can create such anomalies. Try other export TERM=model, like xterm-color for screen and vice-versa, or something simpler like vt100, XTERM. I am assuming zsh does something sane on the proper term type. I am not a zsh user yet.