Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 09:26:19 -0400 (EDT) From: Andrew Gallatin <gallatin@cs.duke.edu> To: Brian Candler <B.Candler@pobox.com> Cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: boot banner project Message-ID: <17018.7931.658513.492252@grasshopper.cs.duke.edu> In-Reply-To: <20050504170737.GA15091@uk.tiscali.com> References: <B.Candler@pobox.com> <20050504150209.GA2516@uk.tiscali.com> <200505041646.j44GkKXw037042@fire.jhs.private> <20050504170737.GA15091@uk.tiscali.com>
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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
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