Wanting to set up a pleasant shell environment in Emacs, I invested in getting
Eshell happy. Everything went well but the fact that directory name
completion doesn’t work. The error message appeared:
Invalid variable reference
Lately I’ve been learning more about how to develop (or re-learning depending upon
how you look at it) so I set up the debugger to run when the error occurred:
(toggle-debug-on-error)
to receive:
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (error "Invalid variable reference") signal(error ("Invalid variable reference")) error("Invalid variable reference") eshell-parse-variable-ref() eshell-parse-variable() eshell-interpolate-variable() run-hook-with-args-until-success(eshell-interpolate-variable) byte-code("m\204-�\303\304!\206�\305\306f!\306u\210 \204�\202)�\n\204$� C\307 C\244\210)\202��\306\207" [result eshell-current-argument eshell-arg-listified run-hook-with-args-until-success eshell-parse-argument-hook char-to-string nil t] 2) eshell-parse-argument() byte-code("m?\205$�`\303 `U\203�\304\305d{\"\210 \203 �\n C\244\210*\202��\207" [here arg args eshell-parse-argument error "Failed to parse argument '%s'"] 4) eshell-parse-arguments(29 #<marker at 43 in *eshell*>) byte-code("\303\304 \"\207" [begin end args nil eshell-parse-arguments] 4) eshell-complete-parse-arguments() pcomplete-parse-arguments(nil) #[0 "\306!\2053� \nU\203� \207\307\f !\206� \310 T\311 \nV\203.�\312\313!\210\314\315\310\"\210 \210\262\207" [pcomplete-expand-before-complete pcomplete-index pcomplete-last pcomplete-command-completion-function pcomplete-command-name-function pcomplete-default-completion-function pcomplete-parse-arguments pcomplete-find-completion-function nil pcomplete-arg message "No completions" throw pcompleted pcomplete-stub] 5 "\n\n(fn)"]() funcall(#[0 "\306!\2053� \nU\203� \207\307\f !\206� \310 T\311 \nV\203.�\312\313!\210\314\315\310\"\210 \210\262\207" [pcomplete-expand-before-complete pcomplete-index pcomplete-last pcomplete-command-completion-function pcomplete-command-name-function pcomplete-default-completion-function pcomplete-parse-arguments pcomplete-find-completion-function nil pcomplete-arg message "No completions" throw pcompleted pcomplete-stub] 5 "\n\n(fn)"]) pcomplete-completions() #[0 "\306\211\306\211\306\211 \f \f \307 \310\"\211\2056�\211@\311=?\2056�\211A\2056�\312A@\313>$.\207" [pcomplete-stub pcomplete-seen pcomplete-norm-func pcomplete-args pcomplete-last pcomplete-index nil pcomplete-completions pcomplete-do-complete listed pcomplete-insert-entry (sole shortest) pcomplete-autolist pcomplete-suffix-list pcomplete-last-completion-raw] 8 "\n\n(fn)"]() funcall(#[0 "\306\211\306\211\306\211 \f \f \307 \310\"\211\2056�\211@\311=?\2056�\211A\2056�\312A@\313>$.\207" [pcomplete-stub pcomplete-seen pcomplete-norm-func pcomplete-args pcomplete-last pcomplete-index nil pcomplete-completions pcomplete-do-complete listed pcomplete-insert-entry (sole shortest) pcomplete-autolist pcomplete-suffix-list pcomplete-last-completion-raw] 8 "\n\n(fn)"]) pcomplete(1) call-interactively(pcomplete) byte-code("\203�\301\302!\207\302 \207" [interactively call-interactively pcomplete] 2) eshell-pcomplete(1) call-interactively(eshell-pcomplete nil nil)
This stacktrace is simpler because I unloaded yasnippet. This will be a good
project for me to learn more about this environment because right now I’m
not sure how to address an issue like this beyond the standard, universal issue addressing techniques.
I recently experienced exactly same problem. I finally figured out that it was because the `eshell-prompt-regexp’ didn’t match the prompt returned from the `eshell-prompt-function’. Hope this will also solve your problem.
YORK ZHAO:
Thank you. Long ago I fixed using the prompt regex and forgot to update this post with the solution.