Technology Tales

Adventures in consumer and enterprise technology

Filename autocompletion on the command line

Published on 19^th October 2007 Estimated Reading Time: 1 minute

The Windows 2000 command line feels an austere primitive when compared with the wonders of the UNIX/Linux equivalent. Windows XP feels a little better, and PowerShell is another animal altogether. With the latter pair, you do get file or folder autocompletion upon hitting the TAB key. What I didn't realise until recently was that continued tabbed cycled through the possibilities; I was hitting it once and retyping when I got the wrong folder or file. I stand corrected. With the shell in Linux/UNIX, you can get a listing of possibilities when you hit TAB for the second time and the first time only gives you completion as far as it can go with certainty; you'll never get to the wrong place, though you may not get anywhere at all. This works for bash, but not ksh88 as far as I can see. It's interesting how you can take two different approaches to reach the same end.

Keywords

Just click on one of these terms to find more like this:

The content, images, and materials on this website are protected by copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, or published in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. All trademarks, logos, and brand names mentioned on this website are the property of their respective owners. Unauthorised use or duplication of these materials may violate copyright, trademark and other applicable laws, and could result in criminal or civil penalties.

All comments on this website are moderated and should contribute meaningfully to the discussion. We welcome diverse viewpoints expressed respectfully, but reserve the right to remove any comments containing hate speech, profanity, personal attacks, spam, promotional content or other inappropriate material without notice. Please note that comment moderation may take up to 24 hours, and that repeatedly violating these guidelines may result in being banned from future participation.

By submitting a comment, you grant us the right to publish and edit it as needed, whilst retaining your ownership of the content. Your email address will never be published or shared, though it is required for moderation purposes.