Bash – Prevent path autocompletion from using CDPATH in bash

autocompletebash

On my Mac, bash (version 3.2.53(1)) autocompletes command-line arguments using files only in the current directory.

On a Linux machine at work, bash (version 4.1.2(1)) autocompletes command-line arguments using files from the current directory and parent directories.

For example, given the directory tree:

/home/pjl/
    bin/
    foo/
        book/

If on my Mac I do:

$ cd foo
$ cd b<TAB>
$ cd book

bash autocompletes only to book. However, when I'm on the Linux machine and do the exact same thing:

$ cd foo
$ cd b<TAB>
bin book
$ cd b

bash presents two choices: book from the current directory and bin from the parent directory.

How can make bash autocomplete only using the current directory (like it does on my Mac)?

On both machines, I do have CDPATH set to:

.:..:../..:../../..:../../../..:../../../../..:/home/pjl/src:/home/pjl

and if I unset CDPATH on the Linux machine, then bash autocompletes using only the current directory (which is what I want); hence I know the bash on Linux is using CDPATH.

But how can I keep CDPATH set (so cd'ing works as before), but not have bash use CDPATH when doing autocompletion?

An alternate acceptable behavior would be to have autocompletion favor the current directory and use CDPATH if and only if nothing in the current directory matches.

Best Answer

The correct way would be to use the following in your ~/.bashrc as @Gilles suggested above (shorter version here):

_my_cd () { CDPATH= _cd "$@";}

A better way would be to check CDPATH if and only if no matches are found locally:

_my_cd () { CDPATH= _cd "$@"; if [ -z "$COMPREPLY" ]; then _cd "$@"; fi;}

This way you get the functionality of programmable completion without it being a nuisance. Do not forget

complete -F _my_cd cd

For some reason /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion has -o nospace for cd (even though nospace seems to be default), so you might as well have:

complete -F _my_cd -o nospace cd

Related Solutions

Bash – Change Starting Directory for Remote Autocompletion

Edit: Sliced it up some more.

You might find this useful, from Debian Administration: An introduction to bash completion.

Complete script: /some/location/my_ssh_autocomplete_script (only meant as a short starter):

#!/bin/bash

_get_rsync_file_list()
{
    # For test:
    #local -a flist=("foo" "bar")
    #printf "%s " "${flist[@]}"
    # Or:
    ls /tmp

    # For live something in direction of:
    #ssh user@host 'ls /path/to/dir' <-- but not ls for other then dirty testing.
}

_GetOptSSH()
{
    local cur

    COMPREPLY=()
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"

    case "$cur" in
    -*)
        COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W '-h --help' -- "$cur" ) );;
    *)
        # This could be done nicer I guess:
        COMPREPLY=( $( compgen -W "$(_get_rsync_file_list)" -- "$cur" ) );;
    esac

    return 0
}

Download script /some/location/my_ssh_download_script:

#!/bin/bash

server="myserver"
path="/home/pierre/downloads"

download_from_myserver() {
    for file; do
        rsync "$server:$path/$file"
    done
}

case "$1" in
    "-h"|"--help")
        echo "Download files from '$server', path: '$path'" >&2
        exit 0;;
esac

download_from_myserver "$@"

In .bash_aliases:

alias download_from_myserver='/some/location/my_ssh_download_script'

In .bash_completion:

# Source complete script:
if . "/some/location/my_ssh_autocomplete_script" >/dev/null 2>&1; then
    # Add complete function to download alias:
    complete -F _GetOptSSH download_from_myserver
fi

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