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I understand that .DS_store files serve a purpose. That said, they are a nuisance when auto-completing with the cd command. When I type cd in Terminal and press tab twice it lists all directories in the working directory.

Is there a way of removing .DS_store from this auto-complete directory listing in the terminal?

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When I type cd in Terminal then key Tab twice: there's a prompt before all possibilities (not only directories) are listed. – Graham Perrin Nov 13 '12 at 1:16
That's seems like better behaviour; Do you know how to prevent listing of files when double tabbing after cd? – Jeromy Anglim Nov 13 '12 at 1:23
cd */ followed by two tabs lists all subdirectories of the current directory. But you have to backspace to select one... – lhf Nov 13 '12 at 1:38
@lhf Thanks. It's good to have that option. It would be better if cd was smart enough to only list directories by default. – Jeromy Anglim Nov 13 '12 at 1:45

1 Answer

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export FIGNORE=DS_Store works for me.

The GNU Bash manual provides extensive information on programmable completion.

Specifically, from the documentation on bash variables

FIGNORE [is a] colon-separated list of suffixes to ignore when performing filename completion. A file name whose suffix matches one of the entries in FIGNORE is excluded from the list of matched file names. A sample value is ‘.o:~’

If you are concerned that there might be existing suffixes in FIGNORE, then you can use:

export FIGNORE=$FIGNORE:DS_Store
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