Tab Key Acquired Some Special Meaning? Cygwin

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ron Hardin
  • Start date Start date
R

Ron Hardin

In XP Home Cygwin /bin/sh, a tab typed to the shell doesn't show up as
input data but rather seems to have become a meta-character.

Any idea what's going on?

Typing a few tabs at the command prompt gets you

$ <---- tabs typed here; do not advance the cursor but instead produce:
Display all 3360 possibilities? (y or n)
! keyboard.sys
$MSI31Uninstall_KB893803v2$ keymgr.dll
$NtServicePackUninstallIDNMitigationAPIs$ khsetter.exe
$NtServicePackUninstallNLSDownlevelMapping$ khsetter.sh
$NtUninstallKB834707$ kill
$NtUninstallKB873333$ kill.exe
$NtUninstallKB873339$ kill.sh
$NtUninstallKB883939$ killrp.sh
$NtUninstallKB885250$ killrp2.sh
$NtUninstallKB885835$ killse.sh
$NtUninstallKB885836$ kmddsp.tsp
$NtUninstallKB886185$ know
$NtUninstallKB887472$ kodaktouch.sh
$NtUninstallKB887742$ korean.uce
.....many more lines, seems to be an grand ascii sort of all filenames
in $PATH directories.

A tab typed to an application still works properly, eg. /bin/ed.
 
Ron said:
In XP Home Cygwin /bin/sh, a tab typed to the shell doesn't show up as
input data but rather seems to have become a meta-character.

Any idea what's going on?

Typing a few tabs at the command prompt gets you

$ <---- tabs typed here; do not advance the cursor but instead produce:
Display all 3360 possibilities? (y or n)
! keyboard.sys
$MSI31Uninstall_KB893803v2$ keymgr.dll
$NtServicePackUninstallIDNMitigationAPIs$ khsetter.exe
$NtServicePackUninstallNLSDownlevelMapping$ khsetter.sh
$NtUninstallKB834707$ kill
$NtUninstallKB873333$ kill.exe
$NtUninstallKB873339$ kill.sh
$NtUninstallKB883939$ killrp.sh
$NtUninstallKB885250$ killrp2.sh
$NtUninstallKB885835$ killse.sh
$NtUninstallKB885836$ kmddsp.tsp
$NtUninstallKB886185$ know
$NtUninstallKB887472$ kodaktouch.sh
$NtUninstallKB887742$ korean.uce
....many more lines, seems to be an grand ascii sort of all filenames
in $PATH directories.

A tab typed to an application still works properly, eg. /bin/ed.
Click to expand...

It seems to be the thing handling the window for the shell, because I
can edit say temp.sh
which ' ' [a tab between the ' ']

and it executes correctly ([tab]: Command not found)

Only when it's at the top level in the shell window does somebody
intercept the tab character and do who knows what with it.
 
Aha, what I am seeing is auto tab complete.

$ ech[tab]

produces

$ echo


How do I turn this nifty facility off?

too many idle graduate students.
 
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