From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu May 5 13:26:26 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 11F2016A4CE for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 13:26:26 +0000 (GMT) Received: from duke.cs.duke.edu (duke.cs.duke.edu [152.3.140.1]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 949DA43DAA for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 13:26:25 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from gallatin@cs.duke.edu) Received: from grasshopper.cs.duke.edu (grasshopper.cs.duke.edu [152.3.145.30]) by duke.cs.duke.edu (8.13.4/8.13.4) with ESMTP id j45DQOr5015237 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Thu, 5 May 2005 09:26:24 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from gallatin@localhost) by grasshopper.cs.duke.edu (8.12.9p2/8.12.9/Submit) id j45DQJsw054079; Thu, 5 May 2005 09:26:19 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from gallatin) From: Andrew Gallatin MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <17018.7931.658513.492252@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 09:26:19 -0400 (EDT) To: Brian Candler In-Reply-To: <20050504170737.GA15091@uk.tiscali.com> References: <20050504150209.GA2516@uk.tiscali.com> <200505041646.j44GkKXw037042@fire.jhs.private> <20050504170737.GA15091@uk.tiscali.com> X-Mailer: VM 6.75 under 21.1 (patch 12) "Channel Islands" XEmacs Lucid cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: boot banner project X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 05 May 2005 13:26:26 -0000 Brian Candler writes: > > Tab-completion is "on" in the sense that it works if only a single unique > filename matches. It is "off" in the sense that if more than one filename > matches, nothing happens except a terminal beep. > > The behaviour that many people miss from `bash` is that pressing tab in that > circumstance pops up a list of matching filenames to choose from. You can > then type the next character or two and hit tab again. That's what "set > autolist" gives you. > This is exactly the behaviour that drives me screaming from bash. Here's why: I do most of my work over an IPSec tunnel between endpoints 3000 miles apart. Interactive performance tends to be slow, and I'm a sucky typist, even after 20 years of computer use. For me, this combination of bad interactive performance and sucky typing is fine in tcsh, but annoying in bash. Being a sucky typist means I like to hit tab to get the shell to fill things in for me, up until the point at which things diverge. Bad interactive performance means that sometimes when I hit that first tab, its hard to know if I actually hit it. After a second or so of not seeing any completions, I just automatically hit it again. In tcsh, hitting a tab once or 2 times results in the same thing -- filling in the path until there are multiple choices. So that second, accidental tab is harmless. But in bash, that second, accidental tab results in a long pause while the shell lists all the different choices for the completion of the path. Which I don't want to wait for. If I could make bash's completion act like tcsh completion (^D rather than tab-tab), I'd probably use it. Drew