Hi All,

I found a hint that lets you tab complete what you type in terminal
regardless of case.

Jude asked:
>On Dec 01, 2007, at 09:17AM, Jude DaShiell wrote:
>>How do you enable tab completion in the terminal?  It appears to be 
>>disabled by default and I find this unacceptable.

and I responded by asking 

> Hi Jude,
>
>Are you using both upper and lower case letters when you type? Since
>Unix is case sensitive, when you use terminal the file names and paths
>that you tab complete should also match case. 

This may not have been the problem, but you can set up your terminal
so that tab completion will try to match what you type regardless of case.

For most of you (anyone using the default shell, "bash", in 10.3, 10.4, and 
I think 10.5) go to terminal and type:

echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc

you want to copy this line exactly.

If you are using the default shell from 10.2, "tcsh", go to terminal and type:

echo "set complete = enhance" >> ~/.tcshrc

instead.  Again, you want to type this line exactly.

This change won't take effect in your present terminal session. (Unix or 
linux types, you should just be able to do "source ~/.inputrc" or 
"source ~/.tcshrc" in your current terminal window, typed without the 
quotation marks, to activate it, I think.)

Any new terminal window you open after this (with command-N, for example)
will tab complete what you type regardless of case.

For the example I gave Jude in an earlier post, now if I'm in terminal
and I type:

cd des

and press the tab key, my shell will turn this into:

cd Desktop/

To undo case-insensitive tab completion, under the default shell for 10.3, 10.4,
and 10.5 (Panther, Tiger, and Leopard) type the same line with "On" changed 
to "Off", or:

echo "set completion-ignore-case Off" >> ~/.inputrc

And if you use tcsh (the default shell for Jaguar, 10.2) type:

echo "set complete" >> ~/.tcshrc

to undo case-insensitive tab completion.

This hint is described in Mac OS X Hints: Ignore Case with Terminal Tab
Completion:

http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2007/05/termcase/index.php?pf=1

Remember that your terminal still uses case sensitive commands and arguments;
this just may help fast typers.  Be aware that now tab completion will mix up 
files
that were originally separated by case.

HTH

Cheers,

Esther

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