Question

53

auto-completion does not work for "sudo apt-get install"

rated 0 times [ 53] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 54732 / 1 Year ago, sat, november 19, 2022, 4:18:57

Okay a college of mine just showed me that you could do

sudo apt-get install <type first letters of package> <TAB>

That it auto-completes the name of the package. Just for an example...

sudo apt-get install ged<TAB> results in sudo apt-get install gedit

Now I tried to do this but this does not work for me.

How can I solve this? Do I have to install a package? My college told me that he didn't install anything extra for it.

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ofunn

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3 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago shionnky · Accepted Answer

Bash does support some more kinds of autocompletion, not only filename completion.

In the file /etc/bash.bashrc, you will find a paragraph, like this or similiar to this:



# enable bash completion in interactive shells

#if ! shopt -oq posix; then

#  if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then

#    . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion

#  elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then

#    . /etc/bash_completion

#  fi

#fi

(this example is from debian, but is probably identical to the Ubuntu version)

By removing the # character in the beginning of each line you put a lot of additional completion rules into effect. (Don't remove the # on the first line... thats really a comment ;-)

I believe apt-get completions are among those enabled with this. If not you could think about switching to zsh. I know they support it ;-)