Quick Linux Command Line Tip
Monday, December 8, 2008 at 3:01PMI'm pretty much a noob when it comes to Linux, although I have been learning a lot recently because I have had to dive into using the Linux CLI for work. One thing that was pissing me off was having to type really long paths out, for example, "cd /home/rsteenwyk/downloads/torrents/music/Keane/Perfect Symmetry/"
In instances where it wasn't a used enough path to warrant a link with the ln command I found out from a co-worker that hitting the Tab button would auto complete what I was typing. This really sped up how quickly I could move around in directories, and in general made the Linux command line a much nicer place to be for me. So borrowing from the above example, I could type "cd /home/rs" and then hit Tab and the rsteenwyk would automatically fill in, and then obviously I could continue doing that to get to the new Keane album much more quickly.
For people who have been using Linux for a long time, this is probably a no brainer. But for me, it was a life saver! Hopefully it can help out some other Linux noobs out there : )
Reader Comments (5)
Absolutely a must know command for any CLI work. Works in Windows too.
I think I might of stopped using linux cli if I didn't know about this awesome shortcut.
Yeah, I'm in the same boat Ben. Once I learned about that shortcut I finally understood what people meant when they said that using the CLI is much faster than the GUI in a lot of instances.
I think this feature is called 'autocomplete' and may differ slightly in operation in different shells.
Therefore it also works in Mac OS X's terminal.
Yup, it is called autocomplete. Never used Mac much, but the Linux version is much better than Windows XP. It seems to auto complete to the most random things, whereas Linux was doing a really nice job guessing what I wanted.