Ubuntu – Terminal, how to quit –More— list

auto-completionbashcommand line

I use autocomplete a lot in the terminal, like for example for cp command. But sometimes, when I am putting in the directory for the cp command and I press Tab, the list of files is so long that Ubuntu spits out part of the list and then waits for key input before sequentially listing the rest of the files, one by one. This feature is near useless because you never know how many files are left, and almost always end up with an error.

Is there some way to leave this list and go back to my cp command, or do I have to press Ctrl+C and start typing in my cp command again?

Best Answer

You can type in the Q key. ...

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Is it possible to get tab completion with sftp

Thanks to shellholic's answer, I was able to make it (somewhat) work for sftp. First, create the file /etc/bash_completion.d/sftp with the following content:

# custom sftp(1) based on scp
# see http://askubuntu.com/questions/14645/is-it-possible-to-get-tab-completion-with-sftp
#
_sftp()
{
    local configfile cur userhost path prefix

    COMPREPLY=()
    cur=`_get_cword ":"`

    _expand || return 0

    if [[ "$cur" == *:* ]]; then
        local IFS=$'\t\n'
        # remove backslash escape from :
        cur=${cur/\\:/:}
        userhost=${cur%%?(\\):*}
        path=${cur#*:}
        # unescape spaces
        path=${path//\\\\\\\\ / }
        if [ -z "$path" ]; then
            # default to home dir of specified user on remote host
            path=$(ssh -o 'Batchmode yes' $userhost pwd 2>/dev/null)
        fi
        # escape spaces; remove executables, aliases, pipes and sockets;
        # add space at end of file names
        COMPREPLY=( $( ssh -o 'Batchmode yes' $userhost \
            command ls -aF1d "$path*" 2>/dev/null | \
            sed -e "s/[][(){}<>\",:;^&\!$=?\`|\\ ']/\\\\\\\\\\\\&/g" \
            -e 's/[*@|=]$//g' -e 's/[^\/]$/& /g' ) )
        return 0
    fi

    if [[ "$cur" = -F* ]]; then
        cur=${cur#-F}
        prefix=-F
    else
        # Search COMP_WORDS for '-F configfile' or '-Fconfigfile' argument
        set -- "${COMP_WORDS[@]}"
        while [ $# -gt 0 ]; do
            if [ "${1:0:2}" = -F ]; then
                if [ ${#1} -gt 2 ]; then
                    configfile="$(dequote "${1:2}")"
                else
                    shift
                    [ "$1" ] && configfile="$(dequote "$1")"
                fi
                break
            fi
            shift
        done

        [[ "$cur" == */* ]] || _known_hosts_real -c -a -F "$configfile" "$cur"
    fi
    # This approach is used instead of _filedir to get a space appended
    # after local file/dir completions, and $nospace retained for others.
    local IFS=$'\t\n'
    COMPREPLY=( "${COMPREPLY[@]}" $( command ls -aF1d $cur* 2>/dev/null | sed \
        -e "s/[][(){}<>\",:;^&\!$=?\`|\\ ']/\\\\&/g" \
        -e 's/[*@|=]$//g' -e 's/[^\/]$/& /g' -e "s/^/$prefix/") )

    return 0
}
complete -o nospace -F _sftp sftp

Then in bash you need to execute . /etc/bash_completion.d/sftp in order to load the script.

All I really did was copy/paste the scp completion script from /etc/bash_completion.d/ssh and replace scp occurences with sftp.

Ubuntu – How to make terminal autocomplete when there are several files/directory

Something that is a life-saver for me is to have bash cycle through the possibilities instead of showing a dumb list.

As bash is using readline for its auto-completion, add the following lines to ~/.inputrc

Once you're satisfied and have thoroughly tested below solution for a few days/weeks, cut and paste (don't copy!) the same settings from ~/.inputrc to /etc/inputrc which contains the system-wide settings, making this available to all users on your system (including guest).

The codez:

# mappings to have up and down arrow searching through history:
"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
# mappings to have left and right arrow go left and right: 
"\e[C": forward-char
"\e[D": backward-char

# mapping to have [Tab] and [Shift]+[Tab] to cycle through all the possible completions:
"\t": menu-complete
"\e[Z": menu-complete-backward

then exit your terminal (or remote terminal like putty) and open it again...

Examples:

When you have 3 files: file1, file2 and file3 and you type:
```
e fTabTabTab
```
it'll cycle through:
```
e file1
e file2
e file3
```
and when you want to cycle backwards, just hit Shift+Tab

When you type:

very-complicated-command with lots of command line parameters

and next time you need the same command, you just type:

very↑

and it'll type for you:

very-complicated-command with lots of command line parameters