View Source: TabCompletion - Waikato Linux Users Group

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A time-saving tool is known as command completion, currently known as Tab Completion.  If you type part of a file, command, or pathname and then press the ~[Tab] key, bash(1) will present you with either the remaining portion of the file/path, or a beep (if sound is enabled on your system). If you get a beep, just press ~[Tab] again to obtain a list of the files/paths that match what has been typed so far.

For example, if you forget the command updatedb, but remember a portion of the command, you can su to root, then at the shell prompt, type up, press the ~[Tab] key twice and you will see a list of possible completions, including updatedb and uptime. By typing the partial command "upd" and pressing ~[Tab] again, your command is completed for you.

!!bash(1)
You may need to <tt>source /etc/bash_completion</tt> before you get extra programmable completion features, if your system doesn't already source this for interactive shells.

!!zsh(1)
Zsh has a more powerful tab-completion mechanism than bash. This comes at the cost of slightly more processing and bloat, although these days you won't notice. To get the advanced shell function-based completion, you need to run the <tt>compinstall</tt> function once (which will set up your .zshrc file for future use).

Examples include:
<verbatim>
$ ls -l
total 1
-rw-r--r--  1 me me  0 Jul 29 09:45 file1
-rwxr-xr-x  1 me me  0 Jul 29 09:45 file2*
$ chmod -x [TAB]
</verbatim>
completing to only those files that currently have the +x permission set -- in this case, <tt>file2</tt>.

<verbatim>
$ tar [TAB]
A  -- append to an archive
c  -- create a new archive
f  -- specify archive file or device
t  -- list archive contents
u  -- update archive
v  -- verbose output
x  -- extract files from an archive
</verbatim>
tells you all the available options for this command (and what they do), based on any options you have already added. For <tt>tar</tt>, it will only complete files ending in ".gz" or ".bz2" if the <tt>-z</tt> or <tt>-j</tt> option is given, respectively.

See the zshcompsys ManPage for details on customising the completion rules.

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You can enable limited tab-completion on Windows 2000 - see WindowsNotes.
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Last edited on Friday, July 29, 2005 10:18:19 am by JohnMcPherson
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