Comment 35 for bug 882307

I don't have time to setup a dev environment and compile and test nautilus, but I did browse the source code a bit to narrow down the problem.

So I looked in the file nautilus-list-view.c [1] and found there are different ways to end a renaming action. Turns out, this bug only happens in one specific case. After pressing F2 and Ctrl-C, you can:

* Press enter to actually rename the file: works.
* Clear the file name and press enter, so the original file name is restored: works.
* Don't change the file name and press enter: works.
* Clicking on an empty part of the window to stop editing: works.
* Change directories while editing the file name: works.
* Press the Escape key to stop renaming: causes this bug!

So in short: this bug only happens if you use Escape to stop editing. My guess is none of the cleanup-methods in nautilus-list-view.c are called when you press Escape, leaving Nautilus in an invalid state. Hopefully somebody with an already running nautilus dev environment can take a closer look. Even though this bug is a bit rarer than I initially thought, it's still a pretty breaking bug for the file manager of an LTS release IMO.

[1] http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-branches/ubuntu/trusty/nautilus/trusty-updates/view/head:/src/nautilus-list-view.c