Bash – Why can’t I use tab expansion/auto-complete of shell variables with cd

autocompletebash

I have setup a variable in .bashrc:

export SOME_DIR=/path/to/some/dir

Now, with ls I can type ls $SOME_DIR[tab] and the variable will be expanded, and I can then use tab for auto-completion when going deeper into the filesystem.
However, if I try cd $SOME_DIR[tab] or cd $SOME_DIR/[tab], nothing happens.

Why does this only work with ls? Is it possible to make it work with cd?
I have tried adding shopt -s direxpand to .bashrc, to no effect:

Best Answer

Apparently shopt -s direxpand works with everything except the built-in cd. So I just added alias xy=cd to my profile, and xy works just like cd except direxpand works using TAB. (Who would have thought it would be so simple?)

Related Solutions

Bash – Apt-get autocompletion

Your /etc/bash_completion file must be missing.

sudo apt-get install bash-completion

should solve all your problems.

Given that you already have lines uncommented in /etc/bash.bashrc as Faheem Mitha and others pointed out, it should work now:

# enable bash completion in interactive shells
if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ] && ! shopt -oq posix; then
    . /etc/bash_completion
fi

Reason: The bash-completion package now has that file (/etc/bash_completion). It used to be in the bash package, but not any more.

info on package change

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.

Man Page