Enable autocomplete in an sqlite3 interactive shell

autocompletesqlite

I am using sqlite3 on a machine where I can use tab completion (ie .read abc will autocomplete to .read abcdefghij.db. I would like to know how to enable this on my personal machine.

Both machines are ubuntu linux and the shell is bash. I am referring to autocompletion in the sqlite interactive prompt.

Originally posted on dba.

Best Answer

Compile the program with readline supoort. Readline is a common library that handles user input in interpreters such as bash and python. Fetch the source, the dependencies and configure with: 

user@computer in: ~/src/sqlite-autoconf-3071602
$ ./configure --enable-readline=yes

Consult the INSTALL file for details. Also, it's worth mentioning that there are probably binaries of sqlite3 with readline support already packaged for your distro. Look around.

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