3

Using bash on ubuntu (debian jessie/sid) I'm not sure why I can't do tab completion of a wildcard with a builtin command.

for example, suppose my current working directory contains the following subdirectories..

% ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:46:40 0830a/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:46:52 0830b/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:47:33 0831a/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:47:18 0831b/
drwxr-xr-x 2 userX 4096 2016-08-31 11:50:38 z0830z/

I am able to hit [tab] after typing 'ls -l *31a' and get the completion to occur..

ls -l *31a<tab>

completes to..

ls -l 0831a

however, if I attempt the same with the builtin 'cd' command, it will not complete..

cd *31a<tab>

.. will not complete

Also, using a trailing wildcard fails as well..

cd z*<tab>

.. will not complete

Interestingly, completion without a wildcard character works OK for the builtins. For example, I am able make this completion work OK:

cd z<tab>

is completed to..

cd z0830z/

furthermore, I can use the 'cd *31a' command as-is and have it succeed (so long as it is unique). But I want the expansion to occur so I know for sure what I'm cd-ing into.

My .inputrc contains this..

$if Bash
  Space: magic-space
  set mark-directories on
  set mark-symlinked-directories on
  set completion-ignore-case off
  set show-all-if-ambiguous on
$endif

I don't have a ~/.bash_completion file. I do have /etc/bash_completion, which only does a source of /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion. That latter file is a bit long so I won't include it here.

My ultimate goal is to be able to have wildcard completion work for the cd command.

1

1 Answer 1

1

I'm fighting with the same problem. As @Gilles mentioned, there is no real bash-based solution right now.

Since bash-completion doesn't really add much functionality to cd (AFAIK only the use of $CDPATH directories), so if you're not using that then you can add this to your ~/.bashrc:

compopt -o bashdefault cd

This will reset the behavior of the cd completion to default (where wildcard completion works), and will not change anything else.

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .