The official info is in the Bash Manual, http://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/bashref.html#Programmable-Completion . A lot of distros come with a large collection of completion scripts, but where those are located depends a bit on the distro. For example, on my system it's /etc/bash_completion.d . If your system is different, check your ~/.bashrc, that usually calls some scripts in /etc, of which one will hopefully handle completion. Without digging into the completion script for Perl, it might be possible for you to just copy over the script from a "working" computer to one where it doesn't work - provided it's compatible with whatever version of bash is running there.

I checked the .bashrc but couldn't find anything. Guess I'll have to screen the man then ... :)
Thanks for the hint.

At least on my system, I checked man bash, which referred me to the system-wide bashrc at /etc/bash.bashrc . Perhaps your system-wide bashrc handles completion, instead of the one in your homedir.

Hello Lowry76

For example, on my work laptop the "-d" parameter disables bash tab-completion.

Some technical tests to consider before ploughing into Bash source code.

Simply use the existing tab completion to complete the paths first than backtrack over the command line and enter the switches afterwards.

I have not experienced a switch controlling command line editing behaviour, at least not without a ctrl character input. Most times I CTRL+S to save, but on CLI scroll lock is set (for me).

Are you using absolute paths, or relative paths ? if the file is in the cwd prepend a ./
For example,
./fileinthisdir
/home/usr/absolutepathto/fileinthisdir

Are you using bash? ls -l /bin/sh should inform you of your shell, you may be surprised.

quick-tapping tab usually gives you info or completion selections.

Once you are sure about those then it may be time to go to another level.

DoC

On debian (derived) systems, the bash completion scripts are bundled in the package bash-completion:

qwurx [shmem] ~ > dpkg -l bash\*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/T
+rig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                   Version          Architecture     Descripti
+on
+++-======================-================-================-=========
+========================================
ii  bash                   4.2-5ubuntu3     amd64            GNU Bourn
+e Again SHell
ii  bash-completion        1:2.0-1ubuntu3   all              programma
+ble completion for the bash shell
un  bash-doc               <none>                            (no descr
+iption available)
[download]

Don't know how that is handled on systems with the RPM package manager (RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, CentOS etc.).

You could grab the debian package, make a temporary directory and unpack the package file there with

ar x ~/Downloads/bash-completion_2.0-1_all.deb
[download]

You will find a data.tar.gz which contains the files, unpacking that (tar xfz data.tar.gz) you will find the directories etc/ and usr/. Reolcate their content to the system root. The sourcing code for the completion files is in /etc/bash.bashrc as follows:

# enable bash completion in interactive shells
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi
[download]

I guess that on non-debian systems the setup is similar.