Man, fish has me spoiled
this post was submitted on 13 Dec 2025
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i need to get familiar with fish. syntax is super basic compared to zsh/bash. those two have so many fucking {\\/\^/\asdf$$(dog)}
These auto-completions are dependent on having the corresponding completions information installed and enabled. Which it is with most modern distros, but more bare-bones setups won't have it.
I have two Linux VMs, one Fedora, the other Arch. I'm guessing tab autocompletes are built into those as well?
In case of Arch, for bash, you have the bash-completions package, apart from which some program packages install their own bash completions.
Then there is also zsh-completions for zsh.
I remember having to install them separately, but maybe you know some package group that did it for you.
I usually use --help as it also gives descriptions for the command, though some programs may only accept -h or no argument to show the help menu.
In zsh, you can configure the completion to also show descriptions.
Interesting, I use fish shell and as far as I know it just shows you the options for most programs.
Anyone who is learning new stuff in this thread should really try fish, it makes using the command line so much nicer.
Finally, a command line shell for the 90s
π
(originally debuted in the mid aughts)
I started out with bash, then eventually realized that I was using zsh because I'm a macbro. I'm a little slow :(
To be fair, they only switched to zsh in 2019, so a lot of tutorials probably still assume bash
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Fish is such a nice shell.
I wrote a collection of small apps for fish a few weeks ago. If anyone wants to check it out: https://github.com/matdombrock/angler.fish
Just tried it, working is indeed nicer after some nice fresh tuna and Sushi.
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Look at Carapace for even better completions
i got carapace installed with homebrew. looks pretty sweet! i'll be making use of the tab button a lot more now
interesting, didn't know that... Will try!
Finding out about "Ctrl-r" also was a gamechanger.
What does CTRL+R do?
Lets you easily and interactively search your command history.
Half the stuff I do is usually preceded by that, it's really useful!
Oh that is nice, I usually use ββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββββ
"I knew I had an ls somewhere in my history"
Thatβs part of the natural progression. Canβt remember if that comes before or after βhistory | grew command.β
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Whenever someone says they don't really like terminal because they don't like to type or remember commands. This is what I think "they didn't use auto complete".
Auto complete works for file names and paths by default, but the development can write it to only complete certain extensions. Like auto complete for image program only completes image files. Then you have completion for commands, subcommands and flags.
Auto complete is done through calling a bash script with currently typed line, and the bash script can call other commands. So developer can write a really complicated auto complete and make it available as a binary if they want, and just use that in bash. Or you can use many tools that will generate auto complete script for you based on your commandline args.
If you write your own scripts/cli binaries I recommend learning how to write auto complete for it. Makes it incredibly easy to use the tools.
i was in the dark for so long because i thought tab autocompletions only worked with file paths. i can't believe that whole time i didn't even accidentally hit tab once on a command
I guess it can go unnoticed, I use Arch so maybe that's why I got more involved. I remember searching why auto completion didn't work, then finding out I need to install bash-completions package. After knowing that it makes one curious about how it works. Then the next stage is writing it for my own programs because it obviously won't come with bash-completions package.
I once wrote a shell (terminal) to watch anime, and I wrote auto completion for different commands on it, it was really nice to just type play then prefix and then tab for auto completion on anime names, and even for episodes I wrote auto completion give me last episode I watched + 1.
I'd like something like on Cisco equipment.
Tab completes a command
? prints possible options with brief descriptions, filtered by starting letters if you already typed anything
if there is just one option left, you can just use it directly, so you can write shortened commands (similar to ip commands on Linux)
That would be the dream indeed. It's so fluid after you learn it. Other networking equipment often has good configuration CLIs as well (like juniper and vyos), but Cisco is probably the best in my experience. It's also nice how consistent they are across generations.
You can get about as close as it's possible in a normal operating system with zsh and plugins like zsh-autocomplete. Bash tries to pick up the possible alternatives from context as well (with tab suggestions) that act somewhat like ? on Cisco CLI, but implementing it is left up to the command itself to provide for the shell. Many commands luckily provide very robust autocompletion to bash out-of-the-box, especially if installed via the system package manager.
Unfortunately we'll probably never reach the point of actual configuration CLIs since they only have a set amount of commands that are developed by the same company. It would be close to impossible to achieve the same level of standardisation for a general operating system, as we don't know the entire configuration of the system and there are multiple incompatible flag schemes. (As styles go, things like dd and ffmpeg throw a wrench in the works with their non-standard flags)
-h
ls -Slut
Does it depend on some shell or shell extension? My bare bones Debian installs don't do this. Powershell does but I'd like it on Linux too.
I think on Debian you need to install bash-completion to get bash to complete flags.
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TIL
Incredibly stupid, but should work
My favorite kind of advice
For a moment I thought that 'commandName -' was some PowerShell stuff.
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Been a Linux user since 2018 and I've never know this, wtf
It depends on the shell you're using, if it's enabled and if you have completions for that particular command installed. For bash you might have to install a bash-completion package, depending on your Linux distro. Zsh is similar but had more powerful and user friendly completion options. Fish is even better and comes with completion for a lot of standard commands pre-installed.
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