Auto-complete of @ in extension sidebar stops working when text is deleted from search box

[waldyrious]

Having initially reported #46333, I was eager to test the functionality that was implemented in #53915. I came across the following issue that doesn't sound like desirable/intentional behavior.

• VSCode Version: 1.26.0
• OS Version: Ubuntu 16.04.5 LTS

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open the extension sidebar.
2. Type @ in the search box. An auto-complete menu appears with several possible options (@builtin, @disabled, etc.)
3. Type or pick one of the options, e.g. @builtin. A list of extensions is shown below.
4. Select all the text in the box except the @, and delete it

Expected behavior: the initial list of available keywords should appear again.

Actual behavior: The autocomplete list is not shown, and the extension sidebar shows simply "No extensions found."

[JacksonKearl]

Does triggering suggestions cause the list to appear again? This is ctrl+space be default.

[JacksonKearl]

Testing on 1.26 just now I'm seeing that simply deleting to the @ does not trigger suggestions, but pressing ctrl+space from there does show the suggestions again. This is as designed, it works the same in the editor: if you type this. suggestions will appear, but if you delete until the period, they wont appear again.

As a side note: you actually don't need to type the @ at all; you can use ctrl+space from the empty search box or any word boundary within the query and it will show suggestions. The @ is simply what we call a trigger character, which means the act of typing it forces suggestions to show, but the act of deleting something up until it does nothing.

[waldyrious]

Ok, understood. Thanks for the detailed explanation.

(For the record, I still think that not hiding the suggestions list would be improved behavior in this case.)