Smarter Bash Tab Completion

bashterminal

As a recent switcher from Ubuntu (Well recent switch backer if that's a word) I'm finding myself in the command line a lot more than when I was a mac user before. One thing I really loved about Ubuntu was when I was compiling and running java programs for class my tab completion was really smart. When I needed to compile my class if I had a directory that looked like:

Example.java
Example.class
Client.java
Client.class

and I needed to compile the Client.java to take into account the most recent changes I would type:

javac C [TAB]

and it would complete to

javac Client.java

ignoring the .class files because you can't run javac on a .class. Also when I wanted to run the file typing

java C [TAB]

would result in

java Client

with no period. This was a very smart way of doing the tab completion that I got so used to that now it's driving me crazy when I hit tab and it gives me the Client. without actually completing to what I need it to be.

So is there any way to make the Mac bash completion smarter so that it would have this same effect?

Best Answer

*nix packages such as bash_completion can be installed with 3rd party package managers. I suggest Homebrew, but Fink and MacPorts also provide the bash_completion package. If it doesn't auto-handle the Java situation you describe, post back or read the man page.

Dock Behaviour

The Dock has several sections. Assuming you kept your dock on the bottom, the left side contains pinned and currently running apps. This is actually similar to Unity. You can enable a "dot" under running applications by right-clicking an empty space in the Dock and clicking Dock Preferences from the context menu, and selecting Show indicator lights for open applications.

After the divider, which can be clicked and dragged to resize the dock, there are your stacks. Stacks are previews to commonly-accessed folders, and you can drag any folder into this spot. You can preview the contents of stacks in several ways, right-click it to view the stack's options.

To the right of the stacks are the minimised windows or documents. OS X typically dedicates windows to documents, so the terms (especially in the old days) were considered pretty interchangeable.

Dock

Window Management

This was one of the biggest pain points when I switched, and now I really enjoy it.

Viewing Application Windows

You can quickly switch between open windows of the same app by pressing Cmd+`.

As you Cmd + Tab, you notice that you're tabbing through apps and not their individual windows. Note that you can activate an app (i.e. un-minimise or un-hide windows by holding down alt (option in the US).

If you want to see what windows an application has, you can either:

Press the Down arrow while the Cmd + Tab selector box is over the app.
Right-click the app's dock icon and select "Show All Windows".
If you are in the app, swipe three or four fingers down on your trackpad (configured by click the Apple on the top left, opening System Preferences, opening Trackpad, navigating to the More Gestures tab, and selecting to activate App Exposé with three or four fingers.).
Swipe three or four fingers down on its dock icon.

Any of those options (there might be more) will take you to App Exposé, this will show all the open windows in the center of the screen, and any minimised or hidden windows as thumbnails.

Switching to a minimised window in a different workspaces

This behaviour is app-dependent. Using a Finder window, the behaviour is as you wish. i.e. the window un-minimises itself, and the workspace is switched. Make sure to click the minimised window and not the app icon.

You might want to make certain apps available on all your workspaces. To do this, right-click the app's dock icon, and select its behaviour under the Options > Assign To section. The app needs to support this feature.

Moving and Resizing

Windows can be moved using only the chrome (the grey area above the app's actual content). Most of the chrome is on the top of the window, but certain apps such as Finder have bottom chrome that can be used to move the window around.

OS X does not recognise right-click drags. It just doesn't. The only real way to resize windows is by dragging from any edge using the left mouse button.

Using BetterTouchTool

If you want, you can download the excellent BetterTouchTool. Under Preferences, Advanced, Action Settings, Window Moving & Resizing, you can choose to move the window under the mouse by simply holding down a key (e.g. the alt (opt) key.

You can use BTT to change certain behaviours to just the way you want them. It's extremely powerful. You can also assign custom gestures to do almost anything, in any app (or globally).

BetterTouchTool's advanced settings.

Maximising and Zooming

OS X does not use the green "+" button zoom button to represent "maximise". That's the "zoom" button. The idea is that the app expands itself to occupy as much space as it needs. Unfortunately, the behaviour is extremely inconsistent, especially with third party apps.

More and more apps are beginning to support the FullScreen mode, which was a feature introduced in OS X 10.7 (Lion) fullscreen button . This button, if an app has it, will dedicate an entire space to the application. It will be accessible from Mission Control.

I'll give you two options, both involving third-party apps:

BetterTouchTool has an option to enable Windows-style snapping. So when you drag a window to the top of the screen, it will expand to fill the screen.

BTT options

Another option is to use RightZoom, which claims to change the functionality of the green zoom button to mimic a maximise button. It's free, but I haven't yet tried it.

Shortcuts

You can create a ton of shortcuts in OS X, even to specific menu-items from System Preferences. I'll address your specific concerns here.

Middle click to open and close tabs

I long ago solved this with BetterTouchTool. All you need to do is assign a shortcut like below, and it will be mapped to a three-finger click on your touchpad. You can choose anything else (e.g. three-finger tap if you prefer).

bettertouchtool

Middle click allow you to open a link in a new tab.

Safari does not support the closing of tabs using middle-click. You either need to click the little "x" that appears over the tab, or press Cmd+W.

Google Chrome supports middle click for both closing tabs.

Global Shortcuts

BetterTouchTool can make quick work of assigning some global shortcuts. I don't think you'll be able to replicate the Ctrl + Alt + B (opens a text box, then executes the command in a terminal).

Cmd + M will minimise a window, no need for BTT for this.

Etc

Apologies, but I can't answer your MOSH question

Alt-2 in Terminal

On my laptop, Alt + 2 produces the euro symbol, so it's keyboard-dependent. If you want the "@" symbol, it's normally found by pressing Shift + 2.

SFTP

I normally use CyberDuck for all my FTP needs. However, a quick web search turned up this: How to mount SFTP shares in Lion.

How to get tab completion back

In the Terminal, at the start of the command line, tab completion is looking for an executable file that is on the PATH (unless a specific directory is indicated).

When you are looking in the Movies directory, and the current directory is likely not to be on the PATH so it will find the three files indicated.

In order to find out where these files are, you can use the which command:

$ which SetFile
/usr/bin/SetFile

To find the contents of the current directory, you would type the ls command. That should list the files that are in the directory. For more information about all the files, type ls -l.

Once you have a command shown, tab completion will look for a file in the current directory to use as an argument.

If you are looking to do something with a movie, you'll need a command. You might want to type open. So, type open Stab, and it should do the tab completion magic for you. The open command will open a file as if you double clicked on it. You can find out more about the open command by typing man open.