Is tab completion in terminal on OSX directory-sensitive?

Question

Why does tab completion only work some of the time in OS X terminal? e.g. cd docuTab

For example, when I'm at /Users/ it works fine. But when I'm at ~/ it doesn't work at all.

Once inside ~/Documents/ it works again. What's the deal? I'm definitely typing enough to remove any ambiguity from the subfolders.

I've just tried in both and it works fine. Perhaps you're typing some UTF8 hidden characters, that are invisible but of which your shell (I assume bash) is aware ? Also beware that it's case sensitive (you mentioned `cd docu`). — Karolos, Feb 11 '12 at 17:36

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 19 '12 at 21:40

6

Tab completion is case sensitive.

Your username is usually all lowercase, which is why cd username works in /Users, but not cd docu in ~ — the folder name is Documents, with an uppercase D.

If you want to change this behavior, add the following lines to your ~/.inputrc.

$if Bash
  set completion-ignore-case On
$endif

If you do not have an ~/.inputrc you can create one and add the above with this command:

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

edited Nov 19 '12 at 21:40

ahsteele

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answered Feb 11 '12 at 18:02

Daniel Beck

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when i create the inputrc i have no permissions to modify it. how can i give myself permissions – iosMentalist Aug 04 '14 at 13:08

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 28 '22 at 16:04

Newer versions of MacOS (10.15+) use zsh in the terminal so you will need to configure that instead.

Add these lines to ~/.zshrc:

autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list 'm:{a-z}={A-Za-z}'

More info here: https://superuser.com/a/1092328/222897

Is tab completion in terminal on OSX directory-sensitive?

2 Answers2