diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index 4e9595f2..ab436c2a 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -8,6 +8,7 @@ bash-completion (2.x)
   * Add crontab and lrzip completions.
   * Add gif to mplayer filename completions (Alioth: #312512).
   * Add "short" tarball extensions to unxz, unlzma etc completions.
+  * Improve /etc/init.d/* completions.
 
  -- David Paleino <d.paleino@gmail.com>  Wed, 16 Jun 2010 17:53:22 +0200
 
diff --git a/contrib/service b/contrib/service
index f27222a1..6efd7c1a 100644
--- a/contrib/service
+++ b/contrib/service
@@ -32,10 +32,11 @@ _service()
     return 0
 } &&
 complete -F _service service
-[ -d /etc/init.d/ ] && (
-    services=$(for i in /etc/init.d/*; do
-        complete -p ${i##*/} &>/dev/null || printf '%s\n' ${i##*/}; done)
-    [ -n "$services" ] && complete -F _service -o default $services;)
+for svc in /etc/init.d/*; do
+    [ ! -x "$svc" ] || complete -p "${svc##*/}" &>/dev/null || \
+        complete -F _service -o default "${svc##*/}"
+done
+unset svc
 
 # Local variables:
 # mode: shell-script