Tab completion, part I
Posted on September 9th, 1997 by shacker
On most Unix systems, and in BeOS, you can let the OS finish typing long path and filenames for you by hitting the Tab key after you’ve typed a partial pathname. For instance, let’s say you want to gunzip a file called
BeBox_Updater_ROM_September23_1997.tar.gz
and you’re already in the directory where that file lives. Try typing
gunzip BeB
and then hit the Tab key. You’ll see your command line automatically fill in with the complete filename, and all you have to do is hit Return. But what if there’s another file that starts with BeB? No problem — the command line is smart — it will complete out to the point where it’s not sure which file you mean. Then all you have to do is type the next unique letter or letters and hit Tab again.
Don’t forget, you can „cut and paste“ multiple commands into the Terminal, by typing them in exactly as you want them executed (hit [Return] at the end of each command line) and saving that as a text file.
When you highlight and copy the text and then go to the Terminal and hit the Right mouse button, it all gets spit out into the Terminal, just as if you had typed it in manually.
Quite a time saver.
This is, however, covered under „Easy Paste into Terminal“ under the „Terminal“ tab on this site. 🙂