Prevent completion of the empty string

Question

I would like to prevent completions to the empty string in python and in inferior-python-mode.

To explain a bit better - when the prompt or the string is empty, there are no completions proposed. When I type something, say "a", I get a number of completions (such as abs, all, any, etc.). If I backspace and get back to the empty string, instead of just getting back to a normal cursor, I get empty string completions such as "%%!", "%%HTML" and more irrelevant options of the sort.

My completion-at-point-functions are (python-shell-completion-at-point comint-completion-at-point t)

I'm using spacemacs with the basic python layer and not too many changes (using ipython as my REPL, with python-shell-completion-native-enable set to true). I hope this might be enough information already to suggest a solution.

The issue seems to be with python-shell-completion-at-point since the behavior is maintained when I leave only that function in my local completion-at-point-functions alist.

Answer 1

Setting company-minimum-prefix-length to 2 for inferior-python-mode solved this.

On spacemacs

(spacemacs|add-company-backends
    :backends (company-files company-capf)
    :modes inferior-python-mode
    :variables
    company-minimum-prefix-length 2
    company-idle-delay 0.5)