Filed under: Windows, Productivity
Tab completion on the Windows command line
by Jordan Running Aug 7th 2006 at 6:05PM
Have I mentioned that I use the command line a lot? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I have. At any rate, one of the most useful features of the Windows command line, which I'm sure many of you use very day, is tab completion. In short, instead of having to type out an entire long filename, you can just type the beginning of it, press tab, and its name will be completed for you. This is especially handy for file and folder names that have spaces in them, which can otherwise be a pain. In case this is new to you, you can acquaint yourself with the feature with this guide from Microsoft blogger Derek Dysart. Oh, and in case you use Windows 2000, for which this feature is mysteriously disabled by default, Dysart tells you the magic registry setting for turning it on.[Via Lifehacker]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Zelidar said 5:37AM on 8-08-2006
To diminish the magic side of direct registry editing you have the good old TweakUI interface ("Command Prompt" entry) which, aside from Filename completion, adds a few more tweaks such as directory completion, word separators and even a peculiar "Enable selection coloring" which I have never tried.
p.s.: Thanks for that little and sexy cmd_tab_completion.gif ;-)
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Magic Power said 6:10AM on 8-08-2006
I use TAB-completion too, when I'm on the (Windows) Command-line. Although halfly already mentioned on the link, I use this registry setting (among many others) to set standard settings for my installs:
;;
;; Enable TAB as path and filename completion
;;
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftCommand Processor]
"CompletionChar"=dword:00000009
"PathCompletionChar"=dword:00000009
Note that there are two settings: If desired, you can set different keys for them. Also, the key for completion can be set, experiment with the settings to find out (registry reset required).
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Magic Power said 6:17AM on 8-08-2006
I use TAB-completion too, when I'm on the (Windows) Command-line. Although halfly already mentioned on the link, I use this registry setting (among many others) to set standard settings for my installs:
;;
;; Enable TAB as path and filename completion
;;
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftCommand Processor]
"CompletionChar"=dword:00000009
"PathCompletionChar"=dword:00000009
Note that there are two settings: If desired, you can set different keys for them. Also, the key for completion can be set, experiment with the settings to find out (registry reset required).
Reply
Jared said 1:03PM on 8-08-2006
I discovered this feature completely by accident. After using tab completion for a long time at work when using tcsh on linux boxes, I was at a windows console and tried it without even thinking. Tab completion also works inside the address bar in Windows Explorer, which can be very handy when you don't want to do a bunch of double-clicking.
It does work a little different than tab completion in tcsh, though. In Windows, it tab-completes to the first possible match when you hit tab. In tcsh, if there are multiple possibilities, it only completes to where they differ. If you hit tab again, it will display the multiple possibilities so you can type in a couple letters and finish with another tab-completion.
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