Peter van Hardenberg <pvh@pvh.ca> writes:
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 4:15 PM, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
>>> Here's a reliable reproduction on my OS X laptop.
>> OS X? Are you using GNU readline, or Apple's libedit?
> I reproduced it with both, but if that news is surprising to you, I
> can certainly re-test.
Actually, what I should have asked is "are you running Lion?".
Because with libedit on Lion, tab completion is 100% broken, as per
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-07/msg01642.php
This is just the latest installment in a long and sad story of
libedit being mostly not up to snuff on OS X.
I can reproduce the behavior you mention on my own Mac, but the fact
that it appears to work after the first time is probably just blind
luck from happenstance locations of malloc results :-(
As for GNU readline, I suspect you weren't actually testing it.
Note that the thing called /usr/lib/libreadline.dylib is not GNU
readline, it's only a symlink to libedit.
regards, tom lane