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Why does tab completion only work some of the time in OS X terminal? e.g. cd docuTab

For example, when I'm at /Users/ it works fine. But when I'm at ~/ it doesn't work at all.

Once inside ~/Documents/ it works again. What's the deal? I'm definitely typing enough to remove any ambiguity from the subfolders.

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    I've just tried in both and it works fine. Perhaps you're typing some UTF8 hidden characters, that are invisible but of which your shell (I assume bash) is aware ? Also beware that it's case sensitive (you mentioned cd docu).
    – Karolos
    Feb 11, 2012 at 17:36

2 Answers 2

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Tab completion is case sensitive.

Your username is usually all lowercase, which is why cd username works in /Users, but not cd docu in ~ — the folder name is Documents, with an uppercase D.

If you want to change this behavior, add the following lines to your ~/.inputrc.

$if Bash
  set completion-ignore-case On
$endif

If you do not have an ~/.inputrc you can create one and add the above with this command:

echo "set completion-ignore-case On" >> ~/.inputrc
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  • when i create the inputrc i have no permissions to modify it. how can i give myself permissions Aug 4, 2014 at 13:08
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Newer versions of MacOS (10.15+) use zsh in the terminal so you will need to configure that instead.

Add these lines to ~/.zshrc:

autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
zstyle ':completion:*' matcher-list 'm:{a-z}={A-Za-z}'

More info here: https://superuser.com/a/1092328/222897

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