Fix the colors when completing using a relative path

[ymcx]

Description

Fixes a bug where the autocompletion menu has the wrong colors due to 'std::fs::symlink_metadata' not being able to handle relative paths. Attached below are screenshots before and after applying the commit, in which the colors are wrong when autocompleting on a path prefixed by a tilde, whereas the same directory is highlighted correctly when prefixed by a dot.

BEFORE:


AFTER:

[novaTopFlex]

My version of nushell has a grid/spreadsheet-style layout whenever I type the ls command. I am not having the colors issue, but I am having the issue where ./ and ~/ are not being treated as synonymous while in the ~ directory on my system (ls ./ results in relative paths while ls ~/ results in absolute paths).

[ymcx]

My version of nushell has a grid/spreadsheet-style layout whenever I type the ls command. I am not having the colors issue, but I am having the issue where ./ and ~/ are not being treated as synonymous while in the ~ directory on my system (ls ./ results in relative paths while ls ~/ results in absolute paths).

I might've worded the pull request poorly and picked the wrong command to showcase the issue with. The issue is able to be reproduced by typing in any command (not just ls) and then hitting tab in order to select a file with the autocompletion menu.
I also forgot to mention that the I was able to reproduce the bug on a Windows installition using an empty config file, so it does not seem to only affect Linux/Unix systems.

[ymcx]

I'm unsure if relative paths are supposed to work in the metadata (and symlink_metadata by proxy) function or if the current behaviour is intended and Nushell is not using the function correctly. Anyhow, you can verify for yourself that relative paths are not supported by running the following code.

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    println!("{:?}", std::fs::metadata("/home/{USER}/foo")?);
    println!("{:?}", std::fs::metadata("~/foo")?);
    Ok(())
}

> touch ~/foo
> cargo run
Metadata { file_type: FileType(FileType { mode: 33152 }), is_dir: false, is_file: true, permissions: Permissions(FilePermissions { mode: 33152 }), modified: Ok(SystemTime { tv_sec: 1716131487, tv_nsec: 847242904 }), accessed: Ok(SystemTime { tv_sec: 1716131487, tv_nsec: 847242904 }), created: Ok(SystemTime { tv_sec: 1716131487, tv_nsec: 846340977 }), .. }
Error: Os { code: 2, kind: NotFound, message: "No such file or directory" }

[sholderbach]

I think for the resolution of relative paths our utmost expert is @YizhePKU who may be able to help you there and can review this PR.

[YizhePKU]

I think there's some confusion of terminology. ./ is a relative path. What you actually mean is that paths that contains tilde components don't work, because std::fs::symlink_metadata doesn't accept paths with tilde.

In fact, it's not just tilde -- ndots components don't work either (e.g. .../). Tilde and ndots don't work in syscalls because they're shell-specific concepts (i.e. Nushell made it up).

Instead of trying to resolve paths yourself, you should use nu_path::expand_to_real_path(), which is created for this exact purpose.

[fdncred]

Thanks