Smarter Bash Tab Completion

Question

As a recent switcher from Ubuntu (Well recent switch backer if that's a word) I'm finding myself in the command line a lot more than when I was a mac user before. One thing I really loved about Ubuntu was when I was compiling and running java programs for class my tab completion was really smart. When I needed to compile my class if I had a directory that looked like:

Example.java
Example.class
Client.java
Client.class

and I needed to compile the Client.java to take into account the most recent changes I would type:

javac C [TAB]

and it would complete to

javac Client.java

ignoring the .class files because you can't run javac on a .class. Also when I wanted to run the file typing

java C [TAB]

would result in

java Client

with no period. This was a very smart way of doing the tab completion that I got so used to that now it's driving me crazy when I hit tab and it gives me the Client. without actually completing to what I need it to be.

So is there any way to make the Mac bash completion smarter so that it would have this same effect?

Answer 1

*nix packages such as bash_completion can be installed with 3rd party package managers. I suggest Homebrew, but Fink and MacPorts also provide the bash_completion package. If it doesn't auto-handle the Java situation you describe, post back or read the man page.

Answer 2

I would suggest you set your default shell to zsh instead of bash. It comes bundled with Mac OS X and it's fully compatible with bash, but adds some nice features including much smarter tab completion.

Try it with chsh /bin/zsh

There's also a great framework for managing your zsh environment called oh-my-zsh. It's a great starting point for some powerful customization.