Command line completion

From Free net encyclopedia

Command line completion is a feature of many command line interpreters that allows automatically fill-in of partially typed words. Depending on the specific interpreter and its configuration, this may include commands, arguments, environment variables names and other entities.

Command line completion generally only works in interactive mode. Unix shells have a tradition of advanced and customizable completion capabilities. For further details see the external links section below. Command line completion is often invoked by default by the tab key and thus sometimes called tab completion even when bound to a different key or key combination.

Contents 1 Completion in Microsoft operating systems 2 See also 3 Notes 4 External links 4.1 Unix shells 4.2 Windows shells

Completion in Microsoft operating systems

Originally, MS-DOS did not have command line completion. Pressing the tab key would just advance the cursor. Before the release of Windows, various enhanced shells for MS-DOS such as 4DOS would feature Unix-style tab completion.

The cmd.exe command processor of Windows NT-based systems supports completion (with the possibility to use a separate key-binding for matching directory names only). For details see the External links section below.

See also

• Autocomplete

Notes

External links

Unix shells

• An easy to follow Bash completion overview

Windows shells

• Windows Server 2003:
  1. directory name completion
  2. filename completion
• Windows XP
• Windows NT 4/Windows 2000

sv:Tabulatorexpansion