Bash completion in terminal – files vs folders

bash

I just recently started out with MacOS, but there one some strange completion behaviour with the bash shell (compared to OpenSuse Linux with tcsh where I come from) that is bugging me:

For example, when I am in $HOME and write Pu on the command line, followed by tabbing for completion, I expected that one of the options shown would be my Public/ directory. However, as long as there are executable files, the completion never shows directories that share the same prefix. Only after entering Publ, the tab completion gives me Public/ as there are no more executables with that prefix.

So my question would be, is there an option to have the completion directly show executables and directories with the given prefix?

I already tried upgrading to bash 4 and installing bash-completion via homebrew but that did not help. I suspect that either the MacOS readline behaves differently or that there are some more setting for .inputrc which I do not know about.

I further know that by starting with ./ I only get directories. This is the bandaid that I use at the moment.

Best Answer

For most shells with a file expansion function what is expanded in argv[0] position is an executable found within one of the directories of the PATH variable.

If you want to find directories when entered as 1st argument within bash or zsh, simply modify PATH as follows:

PATH=${PATH}:.

and test it with:

Pubtab

For tcsh the equivalent modification of PATH is obtained with:

setenv PATH ${PATH}:.

Warning

To include . into the PATH variable is a security risk. Since this modification any file in the directory where you are will be found as a standard command. This might lead you to execute files you would never had tried to execute otherwise: executables which will cause a core dump in a development directory, or binaries which will make you execute commands to get priviledged access to your system.

This risk is the same for any Unix like OS.

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