Question: double tab to display possibilities in Terminal

[Velocity]

Hello,

I read about and have seen people pressing tab twice quickly in terminal (on Mac) to display possibilities.

My Mac for some reason does not do this when pressing tab twice.

How can I access commands to add this ability? and what do I type in to add this ability?

Thanks for your help! I am not familiar with programming, so specific advice as to what to type into terminal would be appreciated!

 

[Cromewell]

Check your ~/.inputrc file. i.e. vi ~/.inputrc, or nano or whatever text editor you like.

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
TAB: menu-complete

You don't strictly need completion-ignore-case, but it can help if you have a lot of CamelCased or otherwise gOOfyCASED file names.

 

[Velocity]

Check your ~/.inputrc file. i.e. vi ~/.inputrc, or nano or whatever text editor you like.

set completion-ignore-case on
set show-all-if-ambiguous on
TAB: menu-complete

You don't strictly need completion-ignore-case, but it can help if you have a lot of CamelCased or otherwise gOOfyCASED file names.

Thanks so much! Where exactly do I access this file from my terminal? Do I need to go to /etc/.inputrc or just .inputrc upon opening terminal? If the file does not exist, do I create it, and if so, is this all I need to put in the file to have it work (i.e. are there any commands necessary to make it run)? Thanks again!

 

[Jiniix]

The "vi" in his example is a text editor, which instructs the text editor to open the file.
So for example it could look like this:

Where you edit the file inside the terminal.

"open -a TextEdit ~/.inputrc" should open the file in the default Notepad variant, but I don't use Macs, so I haven't test it at all.

 

[Velocity]

The "vi" in his example is a text editor, which instructs the text editor to open the file.
So for example it could look like this:

Where you edit the file inside the terminal.

"open -a TextEdit ~/.inputrc" should open the file in the default Notepad variant, but I don't use Macs, so I haven't test it at all.

Thanks! I created a .inputrc file in my home directory and added the proper text, however, the effect is not working still. Is there a command I must use to "activate" this?

 

[Cromewell]

You'll need to restart the terminal/open a new one, or exec /bin/bash or login

If it doesn't work, I've read that removing TAB: menu-complete sometimes fixes it.