How to avoid writing full filenames

Question

I was wondering whether there is a way in the linux shell to type the first unique part of a filename or dirname and then add "~" or "..." and avoid writing the entire filename.

For example if I have to cd to the directory

example-program-source-0.11.229-dev

Instead of writing

cd example-program-source-0.11.229-dev

Just to write something like that

cd example-program...

Or

cd example-program~

I think there should be something like that integrated in shell, but I don't know what to search for exactly.

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Most shells support what is known as "Tab Completion". Just type the unique part of the filename, and then hit your Tab key. The shell should auto-complete the rest of the filename for you. If there are still multiple files which match what you've typed so far, the shell will either cycle through the matching files as you hit Tab, or will print a list of all matching files when you double-hit Tab, depending on the configuration. Bash by default prints a list when you tap Tab twice.

Answer 2

You may use * as a wildcard:

cd example-program*

Note that this will expand to all the files matching the wildcard. In your case you can only use it if there are only one path starting with example-program. If there are multiple directories with the prefix, the command would effectively be expanded to for example:

cd example-program-source-0.11.229-dev example-program-other example-program.txt

This can be useful if you in fact want to work on multiple files, for example if you want to show the contents of all .log files in a folder:

cat *.log