Comment 12 for bug 1390061

The problem does not come from upstream... it it caused by a patch created by canonical.
debian/patches/00-fix_quote_readline_by_ref.patch:

From: JuanJo Ciarlante <email address hidden>
Subject: fix _quote_readline_by_ref to:
 - avoid escaping 1st '~' (lp: #1288314)
 - avoid quoting if empty, else expansion without args only shows dirs
   (lp: #1288031)
 - replace double escaping to single (eg for completing file/paths with
   spaces)
Origin: vendor, https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=739835
Bug-Debian: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=739835
Forwarded: yes, <email address hidden>

---
 bash_completion | 13 ++++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 12 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

--- bash-completion.orig/bash_completion
+++ bash-completion/bash_completion
@@ -536,13 +536,24 @@ __ltrim_colon_completions()
 # @param $2 Name of variable to return result to
 _quote_readline_by_ref()
 {
- if [[ $1 == \'* ]]; then
+ if [ -z "$1" ]; then
+ # avoid quoting if empty
+ printf -v $2 %s "$1"
+ elif [[ $1 == \'* ]]; then
         # Leave out first character
         printf -v $2 %s "${1:1}"
+ elif [[ $1 == ~* ]]; then
+ # avoid escaping first ~
+ printf -v $2 ~%q "${1:1}"
     else
         printf -v $2 %q "$1"
     fi

+ # Replace double escaping ( \\ ) by single ( \ )
+ # This happens always when argument is already escaped at cmdline,
+ # and passed to this function as e.g.: file\ with\ spaces
+ [[ ${!2} == *\\* ]] && printf -v $2 %s "${1//\\\\/\\}"
+
     # If result becomes quoted like this: $'string', re-evaluate in order to
     # drop the additional quoting. See also: http://www.mail-archive.com/
     # <email address hidden>/msg01942.html