Properly handling spaces and quotes in bash completion

Question

What is the correct/best way of handling spaces and quotes in bash completion?

Here’s a simple example. I have a command called words (e.g., a dictionar

Answer 1

_foo ()
{
  words="bar one"$'\n'"bar two"
  COMPREPLY=()
  cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}
  prev=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}
  cur=${cur//\./\\\.}

  local IFS=$'\n'
  COMPREPLY=( $( grep -i "^$cur" <( echo "$words" ) | sed -e 's/ /\\ /g' ) )
  return 0
}

complete -o bashdefault -o default -o nospace -F _foo words