How to Fix a Little Eshell Issue

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.

2 thoughts on “How to Fix a Little Eshell Issue”

  1. 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.

  2. YORK ZHAO:
    Thank you. Long ago I fixed using the prompt regex and forgot to update this post with the solution.

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