lius@coral.cis.ufl.edu (Sying-Syang Liu) (07/29/89)
It will be great if the following "tcsh" [version tcsh 5.4 (Ohio State)
7/18/87 Patch level 0] "possible-completion" features are provided in
bash.
1) If leading string of a file name is not specified, the files with
leading character "." are not listed by tcsh while bash 1.02 lists
all files (except "." and "..").
This bothered me because I have a lot of "." leading files under
my home directory, which will be listed when
"possible-completions" is invoked.
It will be much better if the listing of possible completed files
can be controlled by a shell variable.
2) Some special trailing characters are used in tcsh to indicate the
difference of plain files, directories, symbolic link files.
For example, there are 6 files under the directory ~/test, which
are listed as follows:
coral:~/test/> ls -al
total 6
drwx------ 3 lius 512 Jul 27 23:34 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 lius 2560 Jul 27 23:22 ..
-rw------- 1 lius 0 Jul 27 23:34 .period
drwx------ 2 lius 512 Jul 27 23:22 directory
-rw------- 1 lius 0 Jul 27 23:22 plain
lrwxrwxrwx 1 lius 10 Jul 27 23:23 symbolic -> /etc/hosts
coral:~/test/>
The possible completions (list-choices) under tcsh are
directory/ plain symbolic@
in which it is easy to distinguish the type of each file.
The possible completions under bash are only a list of file names. No
type is indicated. For example, bash 1.02 generated the following
listing for "file-completions":
.period directory plain symbolic
-- lius, Sying-Syang Liu, University of Floridakayvan@mrspoc.Transact.COM (Kayvan Sylvan) (08/03/89)
I agree wholeheartedly!
I think that filename completion could be enhanced by the two things
that Sying-Syang Liu mentions.
1. The seeing of dot files should be switchable
2. Information about file types displayed by special characters. (*@/)
---Kayvan
--
Kayvan Sylvan @ Transact Software, Inc. -*- Mountain View, CA (415) 961-6112
Internet: kayvan@Transact.COM -*- UUCP: ...!{apple,pyramid,mips}!mrspoc!kayvanrsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz) (08/04/89)
>I think that filename completion could be enhanced by ... > 2. Information about file types displayed by special characters. (*@/) Ouch. This can be real expensive; just doing name-printing means a simple reading of the directory; finding the type of each item in the directory means a gazillion stat(2) calls. /r$ -- Please send comp.sources.unix-related mail to rsalz@uunet.uu.net. Use a domain-based address or give alternate paths, or you may lose out.