[Novalug] Tab Completion on Usernames

Matthew A. Thompson, Contractor, Code 6189 matthew.thompson.ctr@nrl.navy.mil
Tue Apr 21 13:53:38 EDT 2009


The heavens stretched forth and Jon LaBadie decreed the following on or 
about 04/21/2009 01:00 PM:
> On Tue, Apr 21, 2009 at 12:19:15PM -0400, Matthew A. Thompson, Contractor, Code 6189 wrote:
>> Folks,
>>
>> I know this is probably a newbie question, but for the life of me, I 
>> can't figure out what happened/how to fix it.
>>
>> For, well, ever, I was able to tab-expand on usernames to access their 
>> home directories, a la:
>>
>> # cp ~thomp[TAB]              would expand out to:
>>
>> # cp ~thompson/
>>
> 
> Dangerous, a newbie experimenting while working as root :)

Heh. Well, it doesn't work for root or non-root, which is one reason I 
think it isn't .bashrc related...but perhaps.

> Is it possible there are two files beginning with "thomp".
> The tab will only take you to the end of the common part.

Well, it's not files, it's usernames, and there are only a few it can 
expand on this machine (4 or 5) and they are all radically different. 
Mine is the only one in the T's, say (although thompson is not my 
username...).

In the past I could do (as user, now):

 > cp ~t[TAB] and get that to do: > cp ~thompson/

now, no go.  I'm going to try and disable bash-completion as mentioned 
here, although on my Mac, bash-completion is installed and username 
tab-completion works there...

-- 
Dr Matthew Thompson, NRC Postdoc (Contractor)
Naval Research Laboratory, Code 6189
202-767-2167



More information about the Novalug mailing list