Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Thu, Feb 01, 2007 at 09:58:11PM +1300, 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:
> Greg Mayman wrote:
> >
> > And doing dumb exercises from the linux CLI isn't 
> > going to help me either.
> 
> I'm surprised to hear a DOS user refer to the command
> line as dumb.

I'm pretty attached to mc and feel disoriented on any Linux system that 
doesn't have it installed. I'm not going to get 
into the philosophical underpinnings of that, though, since I see it as 
largely an exercise in futility (if the aim is 
to convince anyone of something rather than just to explain why I do what I 
do). But there's one very fundamental and 
powerful secret to the command line that no one has yet pointed out yet to 
Greg. With it, doing dumb exercises can 
actually help one learn the command line quite quickly. What am I referring 
to? Command-line auto-completion. Let's say 
you want to do something from the command line, Greg, and you're not sure of 
the command. You have some ideas of what 
it could be, or perhaps a vague memory. Let's say it's editing a file, and 
you suspect that the command may begin with 
the letter "e." 

Enter "e" on the command line and then hit the tab key. You'll see one of two 
things: either Linux will complete what 
you've written and the necessary command will appear or, if there's more than 
one command on the system that starts 
with the letter "e," nothing will appear but the system beep will sound. In 
the second case, if you hit the tab key 
again, Linux (bash, actually) will list onscreen for you all the commands 
that begin with the letter "e." It should be 
obvious how you can learn what commands are on your system this way: you 
could go through the whole alphabet doing a 
similar thing. The only further observation on this I have time for is to 
point out that the more letters you enter for 
the desired command at the command line before hitting the enter key, the 
more likely it will be that auto-completion 
will work the first time (i.e., will complete the command you want, as oppsed 
to showing you a list of possibilities). 
Auto-completion also works for entering directory and file names at the 
command line.

It took me a year or two to learn about this, but it has proven quite 
indispensible since then.

James