Slow bash tab completion

Question

My bash shell's tab completion is very slow, usually taking 1-2 seconds per completion. This only seems to happen when I'm using my laptop from work. Tab completion is very speedy when using my laptop from home. I've tried looking around in ~/.bashrc and /etc/bash_completion.d, but I have not found a solution as of yet.

Solution

I had this problem on a Debian system recently, and found the solution on Unix.se.

It was this bug, fixed by this patch.

Comments

[Tim]

Is it just a normally slow laptop? Are there lots of files in the folders you are auto completing?

[Caleb Koch]

Tim, thank you for your response. It is not normally a slow laptop. In fact, it has a 2.7GHz processor so I imagine hardware shouldn't be the issue. Also, there are usually very few files in the folders that I'm auto-completing (I'd say about a dozen or less on average).

[that other guy]

Is Alt + / snappy while Tab is slow?

[Caleb Koch]

The problem randomly disappeared, otherwise I'd let you know. Thanks :)

[nmichaels]

@thatotherguy: I'm having this very problem and Alt+/ is indeed snappy while Tab is slow. Where were you going with this?

[that other guy]

@nmichaels It just narrows the problem down to the bash-completion package, and rules out the other things suggested like slow hardware and too many files.