CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bash
Sam Saffron
Sam Saffron

Reputation: 131112

Auto complete by end/middle of line in bash

In bash is there a quick way to do tab auto-completion based on the middle of a word.

So for example, if I have these files in a directory: 

001_apple.txt 002_pear.txt 003_dog.txt

I would like to type the sequence: *d<TAB> to auto-complete 003_dog.txt.

Can this be done in bash? Is it easier to do in other shells?

Upvotes: 11

Views: 2036

Answers (5)

user49117
user49117

Reputation: 786

I think this is a feature of readline (may even not the default keybinding):

type ls \*middle\*, then type ctrl-x, * will replace \*middle\* with the files that match the pattern.

Upvotes: 0

Sam Saffron
Sam Saffron

Reputation: 131112

Looks like zsh does this plus quite a bit more. See: expand-or-complete-prefix and COMPLETE_IN_WORD options.

Fish also does this really nicely out-of-the-box.

Upvotes: 4

codelogic
codelogic

Reputation: 73622

ls *d*<TAB>

works in bash. Not sure if that's what Ben meant. ls could of course be any other command.

Upvotes: 2

PEZ
PEZ

Reputation: 17004

Try ESC-g for glob expansion.

And you should always install the bash-completion package (included by default often, but you need to source it in your bash profile script).

Upvotes: 6

Ben
Ben

Reputation: 1745

You can substitute `ls *d*` to achieve the same effect, not quite as convenient as tab-completion however

Upvotes: 0

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