Quick Start Guide

Just type one or several letters from the command you are searching for. Each
character you enter narrows down the search. The corresponding search result
is shown on the right side of the colon whereas your input appears on the left of
the colon. To accept a search result, press [Esc]. The prompt now changes to its
normal appearance and shows the command you chose. You can now edit the
command or directly execute it by pressing [Enter].
Completion
Completing a lename or directory name to its full length after typing its rst
letters is another helpful feature of Bash. To do so, type the rst letters then press
[→|] (Tabulator). If the lename or path can be uniquely identied, it is completed
at once and the cursor moves to the end of the lename. You can then enter the
next option of the command, if necessary. If the lename or path cannot be
uniquely identied (because there are several lenames starting with the same
letters), the lename or path is only completed up to the point where it becomes
ambiguous again. You can then obtain a list of them by pressing [→|] a second
time. After this, you can enter the next letters of the le or path then try comple-
tion again by pressing [→|]. When completing lenames and paths with the help
of [→|], you can simultaneously check whether the le or path you want to enter
really exists (and you can be sure of getting the spelling right).
Wild Cards
You can replace one or more characters in a lename with a wild card for path-
name expansion. Wild cards are characters that can stand for other characters.
There are three dierent types of these in Bash:
FunctionWild Card
Matches exactly one arbitrary character
?
Matches any number of characters
*
Matches one of the characters from the group specied
inside the square brackets, which is represented here by
the string set .
[ set ]
7.6.1 Examples For Using History, Completion and Wildcards
The following examples illustrate how to make use of these convenient features of
Bash.
Procedure 7.6 Using History and Completion
If you already did the example Section 7.3.1, “Examples for Working with Files and
Directories” (page 91) your shell buer should be lled with commands which you
can retrieve using the history function.
Shell Basics 97