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bashautocompletecase-insensitivecd

Tweaking Bash 'cd' and TAB completion to recognize spelling mistakes

I was looking for a tweak to the cd command so that it recognizes spelling mistakes of directories and auto complete similar directory names.

Right now, I have settings that recognize the spelling mistakes of directory but does not auto complete them.

For directory spelling mistake correction I have this code in ~/.bashrc:

shopt -s cdspell

Now it works in the following manner, suppose I have a directory called "trash"

vickey@home:~$ cd tras
trash
vickey@home:~/trash$ cd ..
vickey@home:~$ cd trasx
trash
vickey@home:~/trash$ pwd
/home/vickey/trash
vickey@home:~/trash$ 


vickey@home:~$ cd Trash
trash
vickey@home:~/trash$ pwd
/home/vickey/trash

But the problem I have is suppose I make a directory called Temp and do something like

vickey@home:~$ mkdir Temp
vickey@home:~$ cd temp
Temp
vickey@home:~/Temp$ cd ..
vickey@home:~$ cd te #and tab here
test/   textin/

it does not show Temp as an option. Is there anyway to make auto completion case insensitive?

Solution

  • Completion is a feature of readline.

    You can enable case insensitive completion either by:

    1) Adding to your ~/.bashrc:

    bind 'set completion-ignore-case on'

    OR

    2) Adding to your /etc/inputrc:

    set completion-ignore-case on

    Notes:

    • /etc/inputrc, as @mak comments, effects all shells that use readline, and not just bash.

    • This will make all completions case insensitive.