Tab completion of “../” in zsh

autocompletedirectoryoh-my-zshzsh

In bash, I can use tab-completion to move one directory up and descend down again another path. For example, suppose I'm in $HOME/folder1, and I want to cd to $HOME/folder2. $HOME only has the two child directories folder1 and folder2.

In bash, I could just type

cd ..[TAB]f[TAB]2

and would end up in $HOME/folder2. In my fresh zsh installation, pressing cd ..[TAB] produces a list of those child directories of $HOME/folder1 which have two . in their name.

Is there a simple way to get the behaviour I'm used to? Or is there something even easier to achieve what I want in zsh?

Best Answer

Add this to your .zshrc and ..[TAB] will complete to ../ as per bash.

zstyle ':completion:*' special-dirs true

Related Solutions

ZSH: insert completion on first tab even if ambiguous

Add this line to your ~/.zshrc:

setopt menu_complete

See man zshoptions for details.

Dynamically update completion list in zsh

One way which might offer the solution you want, is incremental-complete-word:

zle -N incremental-complete-word
bindkey '^Xi' incremental-complete-word

This loads the funtion and binds it to Ctrl-X i. Now you can try it:

> k^Xi
incremental (complete): -no prefix-

In this example the letter k was typed, followed by Control-X i.

> kil
incremental (complete): kill

I typed il and now there was one possible completion (kill). One could accept that and press enter.

> kill^D
incremental (complete): -no prefix-
- external command -
kill      killall   killall5

By typing Ctrl-D the zsh shows possible completions.

From zshcontrib(1):

incremental-complete-word
This allows incremental completion of a word. After starting this command, a list of completion choices can be shown after every character you type, which you can delete with ^H or DEL. Pressing return accepts the completion so far and returns you to normal editing (that is, the command line is not immediately executed). You can hit TAB to do normal completion, ^G to abort back to the state when you started, and ^D to list the matches.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

ZSH: insert completion on first tab even if ambiguous

Dynamically update completion list in zsh

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