Shell Programming and Scripting

Hello,

Bash completion is great, but there are some features I'd like to change. One thing is the behaviour when there are lots of very similar possibilities.

E.g., my directory contains 133 files, from pubmed_result1.txt to pubmed_result133.txt

Code:

[jos@faba Bib]$ ls Lyonprim/p[TAB]
Display all 133 possibilities? (y or n)

Here, one has to choose either y or n to get the completion up to "pubmed_result".
I seem to remember from a linux computer I worked on a few years ago, that pressing tab once would immediately complete as much as possible, and if one wanted to see the possibilities, one would have to press TAB again ; only two consecutive hits of TAB would trigger the question.

To stick with the example, I'd like to change this sequence :

Code:

[jos@faba Bib]$ ls Lyonprim/p[TAB]
Display all 133 possibilities? (y or n)[n]
[jos@faba Bib]$ ls Lyonprim/pubmed_result

into

Code:

[jos@faba Bib]$ ls Lyonprim/p[TAB]
[jos@faba Bib]$ ls Lyonprim/pubmed_result[TAB]
Display all 133 possibilities? (y or n)

Did you get what I wish to obtain ?
Does anyone know how to do this ?

Thanks a lot in advance !

You might having at least one file which starts with "p" but not followed by "u" or "ubmed_result" ( depends on the existence of files with various names).

---------- Post updated at 20:34 ---------- Previous update was at 20:29 ----------

If you are on bash you can check that easily with extglob option.

Code:

shopt -s extglob
cd Lyonprim
ls !(pubmed_result*)

To turn-off extglob

Code:

shopt -u extglob

No I don't, because answering "n" to the question immediately expands to "pubmed_result". If one could simply press TAB to get this completion ...