path completion with cd - similar to tcsh
Hi all I have been using tcsh for a long time on Red Hat Linux boxes, and bash on other UNIX-boxes. One thing I really love with tcsh is the way I can swiftly operate using the to do auto-complete, when having a deep directory hierarchy. I have that... With bash I surely could use your skills to improve my usage of bash (read; allow me to ditch tcsh fully). I have an annoying bash-problem on Red Hat Linux 5.x. If I e.g. try to move to a subdirectory of another directory (e.g. $HOME), where the tab-expand works poorly; Assume $HOME=/home/pto "cd $HOME" is expanded to "cd /home/pto " (without the quotes). I get $HOME expanded - quite ok - but I get an annoying space efter the path. I will never like that space, I strongly prefer if I could get "cd $HOME" expanded to "cd /home/pto/" (without the quotes) so I could continue to press and see the allowed sub-directories - much faster for me. I have also understood I can do $ complete -o nospace cd to change the mode of operation, but this seems to disable the auto-complete function when doing cd $VARIABLE. I am guestimating, that you have discussed this in February (cf. http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/user/227574) but the February archive seems to be lost; http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-02/msg00274.html so I cannot get the details of it. That cited link is suggesting; "ESC ctrl-e gets rid of the backslash, and if you want to keep the $VAR as $VAR, backspace over the terminal space and continue. Or you can ESC ctrl-e again, and convert the $VAR to its value, so you won't need to repeat the single ESC ctrl-e for each further ." which IMHO is not really what I want. Any hints on this? Can I set the mode of operation as I like where the infamous space is replaced by a slash when doing "cd ... "? Best -- Peter Toft, PhD http://petertoft.dk
Re: path completion with cd - similar to tcsh
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 15:07:16 +0800, Clark J. Wang wrote: On Fri, Apr 15, 2011 at 6:19 AM, Peter Toft wrote: Hi all I have been using tcsh for a long time on Red Hat Linux boxes, and bash on other UNIX-boxes. One thing I really love with tcsh is the way I can swiftly operate using the to do auto-complete, when having a deep directory hierarchy. I have that... With bash I surely could use your skills to improve my usage of bash (read; allow me to ditch tcsh fully). I have an annoying bash-problem on Red Hat Linux 5.x. If I e.g. try to move to a subdirectory of another directory (e.g. $HOME), where the tab-expand works poorly; Assume $HOME=/home/pto "cd $HOME" is expanded to "cd /home/pto " (without the quotes). I get $HOME expanded - quite ok - but I get an annoying space efter the path. I will never like that space, I strongly prefer if I could get "cd $HOME" expanded to "cd /home/pto/" (without the quotes) so I could continue to press and see the allowed sub-directories - much faster for me. I have also understood I can do $ complete -o nospace cd to change the mode of operation, but this seems to disable the auto-complete function when doing cd $VARIABLE. I am guestimating, that you have discussed this in February (cf. http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/user/227574) but the February archive seems to be lost; http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-02/msg00274.html so I cannot get the details of it. That cited link is suggesting; "ESC ctrl-e gets rid of the backslash, and if you want to keep the $VAR as $VAR, backspace over the terminal space and continue. Or you can ESC ctrl-e again, and convert the $VAR to its value, so you won't need to repeat the single ESC ctrl-e for each further ." which IMHO is not really what I want. Any hints on this? Can I set the mode of operation as I like where the infamous space is replaced by a slash when doing "cd ... "? Best -- Peter Toft, PhD http://petertoft.dk That also annoys me much. Try like this: $ complete -o default -o nospace -d cd $ cd $VAR/ well - with this I have to add the slash before the $VAR is expanded. So - not quite there yet[1]. Best Peter [1] who is lazy :) -- Peter Toft, PhD http://petertoft.dk
Re: path completion with cd - similar to tcsh
On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:12:24 -0400, Chet Ramey wrote: On 4/14/11 6:19 PM, Peter Toft wrote: I have an annoying bash-problem on Red Hat Linux 5.x. If I e.g. try to move to a subdirectory of another directory (e.g. $HOME), where the tab-expand works poorly; Assume $HOME=/home/pto You should see whether or not you have a completion already defined by running `complete -p cd'. It would also help to know the version of bash you're using. That will help establish a baseline. (And RHL 5.x? That's pretty old.) Right! bash --version gives -> 3.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) RH5.6 is not cutting edge (but I need it for tools-reasons), but I also dislike the current working method on e.g. Ubuntu 10.10, so I really like to get into the dirt on this one :) $ complete -p cd bash: complete: cd: no completion specification "cd $HOME" is expanded to "cd /home/pto " (without the quotes). I get $HOME expanded - quite ok - but I get an annoying space efter the path. I will never like that space, I strongly prefer if I could get "cd $HOME" expanded to "cd /home/pto/" (without the quotes) so I could continue to press and see the allowed sub-directories - much faster for me. I have also understood I can do $ complete -o nospace cd to change the mode of operation, but this seems to disable the auto-complete function when doing cd $VARIABLE. You need to add -o bashdefault to restore the bash default completions, which include shell variable completion. oki, but "complete -o bashdefault -o nospace cd" will give me tab complete on the possible environment variables, e.g. $ cd $HOME shows "$HOME", which is nice, but I prefer the expanding, and $ cd $HOME/ does nothing (with the -o bashdefault) Any hints on this? Can I set the mode of operation as I like where the infamous space is replaced by a slash when doing "cd ... "? Right now, you cannot do this using only the built-in bash completion mechanisms. The best you can do is to suppress the space. You can write a function to do this, though, and bind it using complete -F funcname cd. That would be really nice, hints to do so would be very welcomed! You can't prevent the `$' from being backslash-quoted and still quote other filenames containing shell meta-characters unless you use a shell function. Chet Thanx Chet for your efforts. BTW; Anyone who has the february emails from this list; "I am guestimating, that you have discussed this in February (cf. http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/gentoo/user/227574) but the February archive seems to be lost; http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2011-02/msg00274.html so I cannot get the details of it." Anyone who can forward the february-emails? Best Peter -- Peter Toft, PhD http://petertoft.dk
