How to make terminal autocomplete when there are several files/directory?

If I have several directories, like:

afoo abar

sometimes my terminal will refuse autocomplete when I press tab (e.g. "cd a" then tab), and print the list of directories instead. Sometimes it even throws a noisy, annoying sound. Any idea how to make it autocomplete in cases like this? E.g it can show abar first, and then afoo if I press tab again. I saw this is the case in windows, or some applciation in Ubuntu

3 Answers

Something that is a life-saver for me is to have bash cycle through the possibilities instead of showing a dumb list.

As bash is using readline for its auto-completion, add the following lines to ~/.inputrc

Once you're satisfied and have thoroughly tested below solution for a few days/weeks, cut and paste (don't copy!) the same settings from ~/.inputrc to /etc/inputrc which contains the system-wide settings, making this available to all users on your system (including guest).

The codez:

# mappings to have up and down arrow searching through history:
"\e[A": history-search-backward
"\e[B": history-search-forward
# mappings to have left and right arrow go left and right:
"\e[C": forward-char
"\e[D": backward-char
# mapping to have [Tab] and [Shift]+[Tab] to cycle through all the possible completions:
"\t": menu-complete
"\e[Z": menu-complete-backward

then exit your terminal (or remote terminal like putty) and open it again...

Examples:

1. When you have 3 files: file1, file2 and file3 and you type:

   e fTabTabTab

   it'll cycle through:

   e file1
   e file2
   e file3

   and when you want to cycle backwards, just hit Shift+Tab

2. When you type:

   very-complicated-command with lots of command line parameters

   and next time you need the same command, you just type:

   very↑

   and it'll type for you:

   very-complicated-command with lots of command line parameters

This will save you a ton of time in bash! ;-)

After the 1st tab you need to insert more letters. So if you type

cd a

and hit tab you get nothing and after a second tab (immediately following) you get a list of the names starting with a and then need to insert an f to have it auto complete the remainder so

cd atabtabftabtab

will result in

cd afoo

To do it in Bash add the fllowing to your bash file:

# make tab cycle through commands after listing
bind '"\t":menu-complete'
bind "set show-all-if-ambiguous on"
bind "set completion-ignore-case on"
bind "set menu-complete-display-prefix on"

Works nicely. (Taken from here as mentioned in a comment by @muru).