Making Terminal bash auto-complete stop at ambiguous character and display all possible options

auto-completebashterminal

The behavior I see happening is that when I type something partially and hit TAB, if there are multiple files/commands that match what I had typed in, only the first one is displayed. Further TAB hits result in other matches being shown. Instead, I want the auto-completion to fill till the first ambiguous character and then if I hit TAB again, display all possible choices (as in say Ubuntu terminal). This is what I have in my .inputrc:

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on 
TAB: menu-complete

The show-all-if-ambiguous seems to be what I am looking for, but it doesn't seem to work for me.

I actually want the behavior that this member doesn't:

Skip first terminal beep and to display ambiguous filename expansions

I like hearing the first BEEP (or stop) and then typing in some more characters to fix the ambiguity.

Best Answer

Thanks to comment from mtklr. Many web pages that talk about Mac OS X Terminal auto-complete asks you to add the 3 lines I mention in my question. But if you want behavior as on say Ubuntu, you need just the first 2 lines:

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on

Do not add TAB: menu-complete

Related Solutions

Way to auto-complete the open command in Terminal

_complete_open() {
        COMPREPLY=()
        local cur="${COMP_WORDS[$COMP_CWORD]}"
        local prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"
        [[ "$cur" == -* || "$prev" != '-a' ]] && return
        apps="$(mdfind kMDItemKind==Application -onlyin /Applications -onlyin ~/Applications -onlyin /Developer -onlyin ~/Developer | grep -v '/.*/.*/.*/.*/' | sed -E 's|.*/||g;s|\.app$||g' | uniq)"$'Finder\nArchive Utility\nCharacterPalette\nKeyboardViewer'
        local IFS=$'\n'
        if [[ "${cur:0:1}" = '"' || "${cur:0:1}" = "'" ]]; then
            quote="${cur:0:1}"
            cur="${cur:1}"
        fi
        local found="$(grep -i "^$cur" <<< "$apps")"
        if [[ "$quote" == '"' ]]; then
            found="$(sed "s|^|\"|g;s|$|\"|g" <<< "$found")"
        elif [[ "$quote" == "'" ]]; then
            found="$(sed "s|^|'|g;s|$|'|g" <<< "$found")"
        else
            found="$(sed 's| |\\ |g' <<< "$found")"
        fi
        COMPREPLY=($found)
}

complete -o default -F _complete_open open

Third version, which should now both be case insensitive and work within quotes.

MacOS – What options does Terminal pass to bash on startup

No arguments are passed. The terminal runs login -pfq $USER $PROGRAM, which in turn runs the specified program. login signals to the program that it is a login shell by prepending a - to argv[0] (the program name).

For the default shell, Terminal actually does something different. It invokes login -pfl $USER /bin/bash -c exec -la bash /bin/bash, where the -l option to login tells it not to run the command as login shell, while the -l option to exec tells it to run its argument as a login shell (by adding the dash). The reason while this is done is that login also sets the current directory to the user's home directory when it runs a program as a login shell, while exec doesn't. This allows the Terminal to open shells in the same current directory as the current tab, without login setting it back to the home directory.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Way to auto-complete the open command in Terminal

MacOS – What options does Terminal pass to bash on startup

Related Question