Tab autocompletion and history in tcsh

Question

I use tcsh, and I'd like to set up the following behaviour, which I've seen on some systems in the past. If I type

!string TAB

then:

• If the history contains a unique entry beginning with string, autocompletion should take place, and I can edit the resulting command, or just press return to execute it.

• If the history contains multiple entries beginning with string, a list of possible completions is displayed, the command is partially completed as far as possible (without eliminating any possibilities from the list), and on the command line I should have an exclamation mark followed by the partially completed command, so that I can type more characters and press TAB again.

How do I achieve this?

Answer 1

Add

set autoexpand

to .tcshrc to activate this feature.

Answer 2

Probably, you are searching for history-search-backward and history-search-forward editor commands.

As default, these commands are binded to M-p (usually alt+p on pc keyboards) and M-n (alt+n).

You can re-bind them to any other key sequence using bindkey command. E.g.:

 bindkey '\t' history-search-backward

Note that you do not need to place a ! at line beginning to use these commands.