Shell tab-completion and other helpful command-line tricks

[Derek Broughton]

Paul Rumelhart wrote:

> Derek Broughton wrote:
>> Nils Kassube wrote:
>>
>>   
>> bash completion is fairly arcane to me, but aiui  it's up to the
>> command's
>> packager to add some relevant file with the completions.  Everybody
>> should
>> have apt-get - so you can try "apt-get -<tab>".  Unfortunately, apt-get's
>> completions are part of the default system, so the "apt" package doesn't
>> have a special file in it.
>>
>>   
> 
> I didn't know there were tab completion files involved.  That's good to
> know.

/etc/bash_completion.d/

> I've also found it works in some other programs that take input from the
> command-line, such as psql (an interface into Postgresql).  I assume
> that's built in to the psql code, and doesn't have anything to do with
> the bash shell.

Nope, it's built into readline - which is part of bash (if I'm not 
completely confused!).  In any case, it's possible to get completions from 
most such programs (and yes, I use it in psql all the time).
 
> There is a command called "compgen" that you can call that tells you
> what will be matched for whichever program.  For example, if you want to
> find out what tab completion will find for users on your system that
> start with the letter "r", type: "compgen -A user -- r" and it should
> give you the same list that "user r<tab>" does.  This could be helpful
> inside scripts for various user inputs.  There is also a command called
> "complete" that you can use to assign tab completion to your program,
> but I haven't tried that one.  I'll have to play around with some scripts.

Neat - I didn't know about those.