Interactive shell doesn't complete property names

[GromNaN]

Description

According to the documentation:

The interactive shell also features tab completion for functions, constants, class names, variables, static method calls and class constants.

Only function, class and method names seems to be completing when hitting the TAB key.

Also, the completion is not contextualized: after $, it should be only variable names (not function and class names), and after -> it should be only property and method names of the current object.

The following command to run the interactive shell:

php -a

Completion of variable name

The following shell code:

php > $container = 'hello';
php > $co [⇥TAB]

Resulted in this output:

Collator                     collator_get_strength        constant                    
collator_asort               collator_set_attribute       convert_uudecode            
collator_compare             collator_set_strength        convert_uuencode            
collator_create              collator_sort                copy                        
collator_get_attribute       collator_sort_with_sort_keys cos                         
collator_get_error_code      compact                      cosh                        
collator_get_error_message   CompileError                 count                       
collator_get_locale          connection_aborted           count_chars                 
collator_get_sort_key        connection_status            Countable     

But I expected this output instead:

$container

Completion of property name

The following shell code:

php > $object = (object) ['foo' => 'bar'];
php > $object->fo [⇥TAB]

Resulted in this output:

fopen                     forward_static_call       forward_static_call_array

But I expected this output instead:

foo

PHP version

PHP 8.4.3 (cli) (built: Jan 15 2025 01:03:17) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Built by Homebrew
Zend Engine v4.4.3, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies
    with Xdebug v3.4.1, Copyright (c) 2002-2025, by Derick Rethans
    with Zend OPcache v8.4.3, Copyright (c), by Zend Technologies

PHP Version

PHP 8.4.3

Operating System

Mac 15.3 (24D60)

[nielsdos]

The autocomplete for a local variable does work for me. Can you try running without xdebug?
As for property names, this is known:

php-src/ext/readline/readline_cli.c

Lines 512 to 517 in 5f7a9ee

	/*
	TODO:
	- constants
	- maybe array keys
	- language constructs and other things outside a hashtable (echo, try, function, class, ...)
	- object/class members

I'm reclassifying as a feature request.

[GromNaN]

Thanks for checking. I tried by disabling Xdebug, Opcache and MongoDB extension, and I still have the same unexpected behavior.

I tried on Mac with docker docker run --rm -it php:8.4-cli php -a, the variable completion is working correctly. But the object properties and methods are not completed (this might be a different topic).