Autocomplete after double dash (--) executing command action.

My urfave/cli version is

v2.27.5

Checklist

Are you running the latest v2 release? The list of releases is here.
Did you check the manual for your release? The v2 manual is here
Did you perform a search about this problem? Here's the GitHub guide about searching.

Dependency Management

My project is using go modules.

Describe the bug

If Bash completion is enabled, and the user attempts to tab complete after a double dash (--), it will execute the normal command action.

To reproduce

Describe the steps or code required to reproduce the behavior

main.go

package main

import (
	"os"

	"github.com/urfave/cli/v2"
)

func main() {
	app := &cli.App{
		Name:                 "cli_test",
		EnableBashCompletion: true,
		Action: func(*cli.Context) error {
			os.Create("/tmp/cli_test/TestFile.out")
			return nil
		},
		Flags: []cli.Flag{
			&cli.BoolFlag{
				Name: "verbose",
			},
		},
	}

	if err := app.Run(os.Args); err != nil {
		panic(err)
	}
}

using the v2 zsh_autocomplete

Sourcing it as such in my ~/.zshrc

PROG=cli_test source <path to project>/zsh_autocomplete

mkdir /tmp/cli_test/ && ls /tmp/cli_test

Dir is empty

Try autocomplete

cli_test --<TAB>
# or 
cli_test -- --generate-bash-completion

Check dir

ls /tmp/cli_test

TestFile.out is present

Observed behavior

Due to the double dash (--), the --generate-bash-completion flag was treated as an argument, and the command was executed normally. This behavior is INCREDIBLY DANGEROUS as it can cause premature execution of a command, without even pressing enter!

Expected behavior

There are several ways this could be handled.

The ideal solution would be autocompleting the list of long flags, instead of executing the normal command action
Another solution would be preventing the command from being executed and not autocompleting.

Additional context

This problem was introduced by this PR
#1938

I personally disagree with this PR being marked as a bug instead of a feature, and think that this behavior should be toggleable instead of enabled for all cli applications.

This PR did disable bash autocomplete after a double dash, but introduced a much worse issue, which is executing the command normally...

Want to fix this yourself?

If I find time, I may be willing to fix this myself, but I wanted to report this as soon as possible since this bug could cause severe damage in the worse case scenario.

Run `go version` and paste its output here

go version go1.23.2 darwin/arm64

Run `go env` and paste its output here

GO111MODULE=''
GOARCH='arm64'
GOBIN=''
GOCACHE='/Users/aarolieb/Library/Caches/go-build'
GOENV='/Users/aarolieb/Library/Application Support/go/env'
GOEXE=''
GOEXPERIMENT=''
GOFLAGS=''
GOHOSTARCH='arm64'
GOHOSTOS='darwin'
GOINSECURE=''
GOMODCACHE='/Users/aarolieb/go/pkg/mod'
GONOPROXY=''
GONOSUMDB=''
GOOS='darwin'
GOPATH='/Users/aarolieb/go'
GOPRIVATE=''
GOPROXY='direct'
GOROOT='/opt/homebrew/Cellar/go/1.23.2/libexec'
GOSUMDB='sum.golang.org'
GOTMPDIR=''
GOTOOLCHAIN='local'
GOTOOLDIR='/opt/homebrew/Cellar/go/1.23.2/libexec/pkg/tool/darwin_arm64'
GOVCS=''
GOVERSION='go1.23.2'
GODEBUG=''
GOTELEMETRY='local'
GOTELEMETRYDIR='/Users/aarolieb/Library/Application Support/go/telemetry'
GCCGO='gccgo'
GOARM64='v8.0'
AR='ar'
CC='cc'
CXX='c++'
CGO_ENABLED='1'
GOMOD='/Users/aarolieb/Code/Scripts/cli_test/go.mod'
GOWORK=''
CGO_CFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_CPPFLAGS=''
CGO_CXXFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_FFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_LDFLAGS='-O2 -g'
PKG_CONFIG='pkg-config'
GOGCCFLAGS='-fPIC -arch arm64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -ffile-prefix-map=/var/folders/_s/694rx7x90x96jkm795h4tk5h0000gr/T/go-build3647699756=/tmp/go-build -gno-record-gcc-switches -fno-common'

@AaronLieb

@AaronLieb Yes this is similar to #1916 . I have a fix for this in v3. Let me see if I can backport to v2. Thanks for reporting

@dearchap

@dearchap I have confirmed that this issue is still present in v3. Is the v3 fix you mentioned in v3.0.0-alpha9.1?

Edit: Nevermind, I see that its #1987
Not included in the latest v3 release. I'll wait for the next release

No the fix is in PR #1919 .

@AaronLieb

@AaronLieb Would you be able to test the PR in #1919 to see if it fixes your issue ?

@AaronLieb

@AaronLieb I looked at v2 and its more complicated to fix there. Not sure if I have the bandwidth to do it for v2. If you end up doing a PR I will be glad to review.

@dearchap

@dearchap I'll see if I have some time today to test the v3 fix and push out a v2 PR.

My experience with this library and go experience in general is pretty limited, so if I push out a PR, feel free to give plenty of criticisms.

@dearchap

@dearchap the latest v3 alpha version with the v3 fix has an unverified commit and was incorrectly added to go.pkg.dev. The creation date is incorrect, isn't marked as the latest version, and fails the checksum when running go get github.com/urfave/cli/v3@v3.0.0-alpha10. Please fix the release and let me know once you've done so.

I'm working on the v2 fix

@AaronLieb

@AaronLieb fixed the 3.0.0-alpha10 release issue. Please check

@dearchap

@dearchap appears the checksum is still failing when running go get github.com/urfave/cli/v3@v3.0.0-alpha10

@meatballhat

@meatballhat can you take a look ?

If you want to use the latest v3 release, then I recommend:

import "github.com/urfave/cli/v3"

and then go mod tidy and go get -u will get the correct latest in that series (currently v3.0.0-alpha9.1) and skip over the bogus v3.0.0-alpha10.

Please let us know if this isn't working for you, or if you're unable to use this solution 🙇🏼

Hey, I just spend some time investigating this problem (completion not working for flags if I type -- and then <TAB>) and was going to write a new issue, but found this one instead – nice.

Not sure what the expected behavior should be here. Ideally, it should autocomplete all of the long flags

I think I disagree with PR #1938 – it essentially broke shell completion for flags.

if this is the case, should the PR be reverted?

I agree with expecting autocompletion options when typing --<tab>, potentially including the -- itself as valid completion.
I can confirm this behavior on bash 5.3 with v3 (v3.6.1) as well.

This appears to affect the Spacelift spacectl CLI, which uses v3.4.1. spacelift-io/spacectl#361

I'm not familiar with the code here, so take this with a grain of salt, but IMO the approach of appending --generate-shell-completion seems quite fragile. I might suggest the fix should use a separate subcommand instead of an option, so there's less danger of accidentally executing the underlying command.

So when completing after cli foo --bar, it might run:

cli __complete foo --bar

Instead of the existing

cli foo --bar --generate-shell-completion

@ab

@ab that's a fantastic suggestion. Unsure why we couldn't have done it this way. I have to dig into the history and investigate

@ab

@ab @dearchap I believe __complete is also how Cobra does shell completion (link)

@bartekpacia

@bartekpacia If I make this change would it be considered a breaking change ? If so we would need to release it as v4

@dearchap

@dearchap I assume this could also be non-breaking as an internal option when enabling the shell completion? So you could have the old behaviour in v3 but an additional EnableBashCompletionAsArg: true and in v4 you make that one a noop.

docs: say what a script generated before this change actually does

fix: never run command action on shell completion past a double dash

chore(deps): update dependency pinact to v5 (#600)

!20094 merge bump-pinact-5.0.0 into main

chore(deps): update dependency aqua:suzuki-shunsuke/pinact to v5 (#5)

chore(deps): update dependency aqua:suzuki-shunsuke/pinact to v5 (#133)

Navigation Menu

Repository navigation

Autocomplete after double dash (--) executing command action. #1993

My urfave/cli version is

Checklist

Dependency Management

Describe the bug

To reproduce

Observed behavior

Expected behavior

Additional context

Want to fix this yourself?

Run `go version` and paste its output here

Run `go env` and paste its output here

9 remaining items

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Autocomplete after double dash (--) executing command action. #1993

Description

My urfave/cli version is

Checklist

Dependency Management

Describe the bug

To reproduce

Observed behavior

Expected behavior

Additional context

Want to fix this yourself?

Run go version and paste its output here

Run go env and paste its output here

Activity

dearchap commented on Oct 24, 2024

AaronLieb commented on Oct 24, 2024

dearchap commented on Oct 24, 2024

dearchap commented on Oct 25, 2024

dearchap commented on Oct 27, 2024

AaronLieb commented on Oct 27, 2024

AaronLieb commented on Oct 28, 2024

dearchap commented on Oct 28, 2024

AaronLieb commented on Oct 28, 2024

dearchap commented on Oct 28, 2024

meatballhat commented on Oct 30, 2024

9 remaining items

mrueg commented on Jul 15, 2025

TimSoethout commented on Dec 4, 2025

ab commented on Dec 5, 2025

dearchap commented on Dec 5, 2025

bartekpacia commented on Dec 5, 2025

dearchap commented on Dec 6, 2025

mrueg commented on Mar 10, 2026

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

Labels

Type

Projects

Milestone

Relationships

Development

Issue actions

Run `go version` and paste its output here

Run `go env` and paste its output here