mksh complete when moving to parent directory

Question

I just installed the mksh and don't know how to solve one litte problem I have. When trying to change directory to the parent directory mksh does not complete when pressing "tab". Let me visualize:

$ cd .."tab"

will not end in

$ cd ../

What needs to be added to the mkshrc in order to get this feature?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Tab completion uses globbing internally. In mksh (and possibly other Korn Shell variants), . and .. are never matched in globbing (to prevent accidents with rm, mostly).

Using a German keyboard is unfortunate, otherwise I’d say I’m with @Gilles on this… (I switched from de to us layout and don’t regret it, personally). But this does mean that there is nothing you can do to make mksh tabcomplete ...

If you need it often, you could use this:

function .. {
    cd ../"$1"
}

Unfortunately, this would still not allow tab-completing through it. So, Shift-7 or switching kezboard (spelling intended) layout is the way to go.

Disclaimer: I’m the mksh developer.