Bash autocompletion in Emacs shell-mode

bash shell emacs autocomplete
Chris Conway picture Chris Conway · Oct 2, 2008 · Viewed 28k times · Source

In the GNOME Terminal, Bash does smart auto-completion. For example

apt-get in<TAB>

becomes

apt-get install

In Emacs shell-mode, this auto-completion doesn't work, even after I explicitly source /etc/bash_completion. The above example sticks as in or auto-completes with a filename in the current directory rather than a valid apt-get command option. Presumably, this is because Emacs is intercepting the Tab key-press. How do I enable smart auto-completion in shell-mode?

Answer

David Christiansen picture David Christiansen · Nov 16, 2011

I know this question is three years old, but it's something that I've also been interested in solving. A Web search directed me to a piece of elisp that makes Emacs use bash for completion in shell mode. It works for me, in any case.

Check it out at https://github.com/szermatt/emacs-bash-completion .

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