Bash-completion has errors on Debian Squeeze, and while they've been fixed, it'll be forever until we get it officially backported.

Bash-completion Debian Squeeze backport.md

Tilde expansion

Bash-completion has errors on Debian Squeeze, and while they've been fixed, it'll be forever until we get it officially backported. (See http://ask.debian.net/questions/why-did-bash-compleation-expand_tilde-stoped-working-in-squeeze)

I have taken the liberty of using the commit where it was fixed, and making a simple patchfile. (See http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=bash-completion/bash-completion.git;a=commit;h=ccbf141e13eaa98d6a8721ae015a5504654424cb)

Save this gist to a file, and apply using the following:

cd /etc; patch < your_filename

You're done! You'll have to re-source /etc/bash_completion for the change to affect your shell. Or, just log off and back on.

bash_completion.patch

--- bash_completion        2010-11-16 00:08:47.000000000 -0800
+++ bash_completion     2013-01-10 11:13:40.461543043 -0800
@@ -602,7 +602,7 @@
 {
     local i IFS=$'\t\n' xspec
 
-    __expand_tilde_by_ref cur
+    _tilde "$cur" || return 0
 
     local -a toks
     local quoted tmp
@@ -805,7 +805,26 @@
 }
 
 
+# Perform tilde (~) completion
+# @return  True (0) if completion needs further processing, 
+#          False (> 0) if tilde is followed by a valid username, completions
+#          are put in COMPREPLY and no further processing is necessary.
+_tilde() {
+    local result=0
+    # Does $1 start with tilde (~) and doesn't contain slash (/)?
+    if [[ ${1:0:1} == "~" && $1 == ${1//\/} ]]; then
+        # Try generate username completions
+        COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -P '~' -u "${1#\~}" ) )
+        result=${#COMPREPLY[@]}
+    fi
+    return $result
+}
+
+
 # Expand variable starting with tilde (~)
+# We want to expand ~foo/... to /home/foo/... to avoid problems when
+# word-to-complete starting with a tilde is fed to commands and ending up
+# quoted instead of expanded.
 # Only the first portion of the variable from the tilde up to the first slash
 # (~../) is expanded.  The remainder of the variable, containing for example
 # a dollar sign variable ($) or asterisk (*) is not expanded.
@@ -834,7 +853,7 @@
             #    becomes "~a".  Double quotes allow eval.
             # 2: Remove * before the first slash (/), i.e. "~a/b"
             #    becomes "b".  Single quotes prevent eval.
-            #                          +-----1----+ +---2----+
+            #       +-----1----+ +---2----+
             eval $1="${!1/%\/*}"/'${!1#*/}'
         else 
             # No, $1 doesn't contain slash

Wheezy fixes this issue. And there was much rejoicing!