Re: boot banner project

Brian Candler writes:
 > 
 > Tab-completion is "on" in the sense that it works if only a single unique
 > filename matches. It is "off" in the sense that if more than one filename
 > matches, nothing happens except a terminal beep.
 > 
 > The behaviour that many people miss from `bash` is that pressing tab in that
 > circumstance pops up a list of matching filenames to choose from. You can
 > then type the next character or two and hit tab again. That's what "set
 > autolist" gives you.
 > 

This is exactly the behaviour that drives me screaming from bash.
Here's why:   I do most of my work over an IPSec tunnel between
endpoints 3000 miles apart.  Interactive performance tends to be slow,
and I'm a sucky typist, even after 20 years of computer use.  For me,
this combination of bad interactive performance and sucky typing is
fine in tcsh, but annoying in bash.

Being a sucky typist means I like to hit tab to get the shell to fill
things in for me, up until the point at which things diverge.

Bad interactive performance means that sometimes when I hit that
first tab, its hard to know if I actually hit it.  After a second
or so of not seeing any completions, I just automatically hit
it again.

In tcsh, hitting a tab once or 2 times results in the same thing -- 
filling in the path until there are multiple choices.  So that
second, accidental tab is harmless.

But in bash, that second, accidental tab results in a long pause while
the shell lists all the different choices for the completion of
the path.  Which I don't want to wait for.

If I could make bash's completion act like tcsh completion (^D rather
than tab-tab),  I'd probably use it.

Drew