On Thu 2017-08-31 10:50:57 -0300, David Bremner wrote:
> This eventually turned out to be a bug in the "npm" debian package,
> since fixed upstream there.

only if you actually purge npm itself :(

on a system where npm is in the "config-files" state, it's entirely
possible that the old/bad npm tab completion remains:


~$ dpkg -l npm
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version      Architecture Description
+++-==============-============-============-=================================
rc  npm            1.4.21+ds-2  all          package manager for Node.js
~$ dpkg -L npm
/etc
/etc/bash_completion.d
/etc/bash_completion.d/npm
~$ 

For those (like me) who had this problem, this is fixed with:

    apt purge npm

thanks for tracking it down and mentioning the cause here!

    --dkg