tab completion - single press for possibilities

Grasshopper · 11-15-2006, 09:52 PM

How do all.

THE PROBLEM: When I'm using tab-completion from within a shell I have to press the tab button twice in order to get a list of the possibilities.

What I've got right now

Code:

shell> cat /var/lo*<tab press>*

Nothing happens.

If I press the tab button twice:

Code:

shell> cat /var/lo*<tab press>**<second tab press>*
local/ lock/  log/
shell> cat /var/lo

WHAT I WANT: I'd like it so that after a single tab press with more than one possibility for completion I was shown the possibilities like in my second example above.

Now, to be fair the double tab press is the default, intended, behavior. However, in the past (I believe I was using Mandrake/Mandriva at the time) a single tab press that didn't have one and only one possible completion would immediately list the possibilities. Any way to get the same functionality under ubuntu/kubuntu?

Thanks all, enjoy!

slakmagik · 11-15-2006, 10:04 PM

You probably want either
set show-all-if-ambiguous
or
set show-all-if-unmodified
in your ~/.inputrc. The bash man page describes these options.

Grasshopper · 11-15-2006, 10:42 PM

Nice Work!

I added "set show-all-if-ambiguous" to my ~/.inputrc and that seemed to do it.

Code:

shell> echo "set show-all-if-ambiguous" >> ~/.inputrc

For anyone wondering, this appeared in the bash man page around line 2642 for me.

Code:

shell> man bash