I see strange behaviour when ivy starts a find-file completion when in a directory that contains dollar signs (on Linux). Here's a quick example:

Repro:

$ mkdir test && cd test
$ mkdir 'dir1' && mkdir '$dir2'
$ touch 'dir1/file1' 'dir1/file1-1' '$dir2/file2' '$dir2/file2-2'
$ cat > init.el <<EOF
(package-initialize)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa" . "https://melpa.org/packages/"))
(package-refresh-contents)
(package-install 'ivy)
(ivy-mode 1)
(find-file "~/$dir2/file2")
(setq use-file-dialog nil)
(call-interactively 'find-file)

EOF
$ HOME=$PWD emacs -Q -l init.el

When starting find-file when in dir1/file1, ivy populates the starting directory correctly

When starting find-file when in $dir2/file2, ivy starts the navigation outside $dir2 (sometimes the list also contains an extra copy of ~/$dir2 at the top as you can see on the screen, but i wasn't unable to repro it reliably):

It is likely related to the following:

• built-in find-file executes substitute-in-file-name on the final input string to replace environment variables in the supplied path
• hence, the initialisation for the completion escapes the directory as $$dir2 instead of $dir2 so that it can roundtrip without the expansion
• ivy is probably not ready for this.

I have seen some code that does (replace-regexp-in-string "\\$\\$" "$" s), but here in ivy--reset-state where initial-input contains escaped $$dir2, at least the following potential bugs may happen

• [https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper/blob/8dc02d5b725f78d1f80904807b46f5406f129674/ivy.el#L2364](this comparison) may fail comparing $$foobar to $foobar
• [https://github.com/abo-abo/swiper/blob/8dc02d5b725f78d1f80904807b46f5406f129674/ivy.el#L2370](this check) will fail when looking for $$foobar directory

i'll advice/hack around it on my side so that it just works, but i have no idea how to fix this correctly, so i'll leave it up to you folks