Bash – Autocompletion with Wildcards for CD Command

autocompletebashwildcards

Using bash on ubuntu (debian jessie/sid) I'm not sure why I can't do tab completion of a wildcard with a builtin command.

for example, suppose my current working directory contains the following subdirectories..

% ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:46:40 0830a/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:46:52 0830b/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:47:33 0831a/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:47:18 0831b/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:50:38 z0830z/

I am able to hit [tab] after typing 'ls -l *31a' and get the completion to occur..

ls -l *31a<tab>

completes to..

ls -l 0831a

however, if I attempt the same with the builtin 'cd' command, it will not complete..

cd *31a<tab>

.. will not complete

Also, using a trailing wildcard fails as well..

cd z*<tab>

.. will not complete

Interestingly, completion without a wildcard character works OK for the builtins. For example, I am able make this completion work OK:

cd z<tab>

is completed to..

cd z0830z/

furthermore, I can use the 'cd *31a' command as-is and have it succeed (so long as it is unique). But I want the expansion to occur so I know for sure what I'm cd-ing into.

My .inputrc contains this..

$if Bash
  Space: magic-space
  set mark-directories on
  set mark-symlinked-directories on
  set completion-ignore-case off
  set show-all-if-ambiguous on
$endif

I don't have a ~/.bash_completion file. I do have /etc/bash_completion, which only does a source of /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion. That latter file is a bit long so I won't include it here.

My ultimate goal is to be able to have wildcard completion work for the cd command.

Best Answer

I'm fighting with the same problem. As @Gilles mentioned, there is no real bash-based solution right now.

Since bash-completion doesn't really add much functionality to cd (AFAIK only the use of $CDPATH directories), so if you're not using that then you can add this to your ~/.bashrc:

compopt -o bashdefault cd

This will reset the behavior of the cd completion to default (where wildcard completion works), and will not change anything else.

Related Solutions

ZSH to auto-complete directories in command-line arguments

Zsh is attempting to be clever in choosing completions, but it's not clever enough to know that after doctrine --configuration=, it should complete a file name. Bash is either clever enough to parse this command correctly, or too stupid to complete anything but a file name here.

You can write a completion function for doctrine. This is a little advanced, though — completion functions tend to be a little arcane. You may find it easier to write a completer using zsh's alternative, older, simpler, but less powerful completion system, compctl (documented in the zshcompctl man page).

If you have a bash completion function for doctrine, you might be able to get zsh to read it by including autoload bashcompinit; bashcompinit in your ~/.zshrc. See Switching from bash on the zsh wiki.

You may find it useful to bind a few keys to _bash_complete-word. This widget (interactive command) performs completion of a few built-in types, depending on the last character in the key sequence that invoked the widget: / for directories, $ for parameter names, etc. For example, include bindkey '^X/' _bash_complete-word in your ~/.zshrc, and press Ctrl+X / to complete a file name in any context (you might need to temporarily insert a space before the file name, if the file name is preceded by punctuation that is not a word separator in the shell).

Bash Wildcards – How to Let Bash Autocomplete Wildcards

You want either:

insert-completions

ALT* for 'insert all completions'

With this, a dir containing files name 'aa ab ac ad'
ls a* followed by alt + * would complete to ls aa ab ac ad

Man page entry on binding:

insert-completions (M-*)

Insert all completions of the text before point that would have been generated by possible-completions.

glob-expand-word

On some systems the above will not work with wildchars, the following does work on such systems for me:

ctrlx, * (a two stroke combo)

Example: I populated a dir with:

touch {a,b,c,d,e,f}{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,0}00{a,b,c,d,f,e}

I then ls *100* followed by ctrl + x, *, which turns my readline into:

ls a100a a100b a100c a100d a100e a100f b100a b100b b100c b100d b100e b100f c100a c100b c100c c100d c100e c100f d100a d100b d100c d100d d100e d100f e100a e100b e100c e100d e100e e100f f100a f100b f100c f100d f100e f100f

Man page entry for binding:

glob-expand-word (C-x *)

The word before point is treated as a pattern for pathname expansion, and the list of matching file names is inserted, replacing the word. If a numeric argument is supplied, a ‘*’ is appended before pathname expansion.

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