How to autocomplete at the KornShell command line with the vi editor

Question

In the KornShell (ksh) on AIX UNIX Version 5.3 with the editor mode set to vi using:

set -o vi

What are the key-strokes at the shell command line to autocomplete a file or directory name?

Solution 1

ESC\ works fine on AIX4.2 at least. One thing I noticed is that it only autocompletes to the unique part of the file name.

So if you have the files x.txt, x171go and x171stop, the following will happen:

Press keys:           Command line is:
x                     x
<ESC>\                x
1                     x1
<ESC>\                x171
g<ESC>\               x171go

Solution 2

Extending the other answers: <ESC>* will list all matching files on the command line. Then you can use the standard vi editing commands to remove the ones you don't care about. So to add to the above table:

<ESC><shift-8>             x.txt x171 x171go

Then use backspace to go get rid of the last two, or hit <ESC> again and use the h or b to go backwards and dw to delete the ones you don't want.

Comments

[paxdiablo]

Risky talking about the previous answer: order can change based on votes - a better solution would be to quote the previous and expand on it.