[R] Bug in TAB handling for Win32 rTerm and rGUI in 2.5.1?

Rick Sayre whorfin at pixar.com
Sun Jul 29 02:41:45 CEST 2007


Greetings.  This seemed like a bug to me, but I wanted to see if this 
was in fact intended before reporting.

Before I start, i want to first extend thanks for the big improvements
in integration of command completion for the windows version.  Really
nice to have now.  But i believe there are some issues.

In getline/getline.c, the "tab" case of the charater handling switch 
statement
in getline() simply "break;"s to the end if tab completion is not 
enabled, thus
eating the tab.  Thus, if tab completion is disabled, a tab no
longer serves as a tab; it disappears.

likewise, in console.c, if k == TABKEY, a return is done without adding 
the key to kbuf, thus TAB is always discarded, even if completion is 
disabled.

It seems to me that this is wrong.

This new TAB behavior now makes it impossible for me to copy/paste text
from a text file of R expressions which use TABs.  Copy paste behavior
which worked in 2.4.x for rTerm now does not, since the discarded TABs
mean that keyword separators may disappear, changing the meaning of
pasted text.  rGUI thankfully still works, since the completion/TAB
processing code is bypassed when activating the "paste" command.

I'd like to request the ability to have both --- TAB as a working
separator, and the ability to configure the completion key to something
other than TAB.  This way one can both enjoy completion and successfully
copy/paste text containing tabs.

Cheers

	--Rick



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