Tab-autocomplete in terminal

Hi fellow Mac users.
I have been !my head for a few hours.
When I am usin the Terminal program and I am in $HOME/me/other/ and I have a set of perl scripts (.pl or .sh) located in $HOME/dropbox/perl_stuff
how come when I type a few letters of the perl script while hitting TAB key it does not try to auto-complete
What can I change for this this to work?
BTW... I think my enviorment settings I am using is .profile
Thanks

It sounds vaguely like you're getting a visual bell with the sound muted. Is the sound muted? Is Visual bell selected in the Advanced Terminal preferences?

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Your terminal is working correctly. In unix-based systems, tab completion is situation-dependent, and for the most part is relative to the root of the drive. If you open a terminal and type P<tab> it will list all commands that are included in your $PATH variable. The $PATH contains file locations (starting from the drive's root) for all the commonly used utilities. To see what the $PATH contains, type the following command in the terminal:
echo $PATH
This command will output something like: /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin
All the paths listed there are targeted when you enter a command. When you press "P<tab>" the system looks for something in these directories that begins with a "P". The terminal assumes "/usr/bin/", "/bin", and the other paths have already been entered, so typing "P" just completes the path from there.
If you want to run the command "top" which shows all your running processes (similar to activity monitor) is located in the "/usr/bin" directory. Since that directory is in your $PATH, all you have to do is type "top" and press enter. For longer and unique commands you can use tab completion.
Running "top" as described above is the exact same thing as running "/usr/bin/top". This is the command that is actually run, but having the rest of the file path in the $PATH variable makes it easier than having to type out the whole command.
As for directories and user files, they're accessed from the root ("/") as well. If you want to access your user folder and show the contents in it via tab completion, start at the root of your drive, as follows:
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Press tab twice to show the available commands or paths. If you want to change your current directory to a new folder, type "cd" before the full file path, as such:
cd /Users/username/Desktop
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To reference the current folder, use the ".", and to reference the parent folder type "..". To reference the user home folder type "~". Other than these options, everything is assumed to be referenced from the root of the drive "/".
As such, you can change to your home folder these ways:
cd ~
cd /Users/username
These commands perform the same function. The tilde (~) just indicates the current user's home folder, so you dont have to always enter "/Users/username" whenever you want to target something in your home folder.
Lets take your home folder for example. I'll assume your home's name is "jcoyle".
If you want to reference your desktop, you are currently trying to do it by pressing "D" and the pressing tab. This wont work. To reference your desktop you'll need to start at the root, or at some of the shortcuts provided by Unix (namely the tilde):
/Users/jcoyle/Desktop (references from the full path)
~/Desktop (references from the user's home folder)
Continue to press tab to see all the available targets in the desktop folder, and then enter part of the name of one of them and tab-complete it. You can list contents of folders this way.
Getting back to the periods ("." and ".."), you can reference things relative to your current position. For instance, if you are currently in your Desktop folder, you can change back to your home folder by pressing "cd .." to go up one level. From there you can "cd" into your Movies folder, for example. Alternatively, if you are in your "Desktop" folder you can get to your "Movies" folder directly by typing "cd ../Movies". This tells the computer to go up one level and then target the "Movies" folder that should be there.
Targeting files and folders like this in the Terminal, however, will not do anything unless the final targeted file is an executable binary file (such as a program). You must perform an action (via a program, ie: one of the commands like "cd") on the referenced path in order to do anything.
Think about wanting to open TextEdit. You can open it by entering this command:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
If you are in the "Applications" directory, you can type the command above, or type:
./TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
The period references the current directory ("Applications") and then continues the command from there.
Say you want to open a file on your desktop called "file.txt" in TextEdit. With the TextEdit program, if you enter the full path of a target file after the command to open the program then the program will try to open that file. For instance, this full command will open the file "file.txt" in the TextEdit program:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit /Users/jcoyle/Desktop/file.txt
Alternatively, this will work:
/Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit ~/Desktop/file.txt
(The tilde references the home folder)
If you are currently in the Applications folder, then this command will also do the same thing:
./TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit ~/Desktop/file.txt
(The period references the Applications folder itself, so you dont have to type the path before where you currently are located)
Lastly, if you are in the Applications folder, then this command will also work:
../Applications/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit ~/Desktop/file.txt
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/Users/jcoyle/Desktop/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
./Desktop/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
~/Desktop/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit (in this case the tilde is redundant, since you are already at your home folder)
../jcoyle/Desktop/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
../../Users/jcoyle/Desktop/TextEdit.app/Contents/MacOS/TextEdit
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I hope this long-winded explanation clarifies how paths work in Unix-based systems. Just that by default everything is assumed to be referenced from root, and the included file paths in the $PATH variable is why you see the files from those folders when you just press a letter and tab-complete it.
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Message was edited by: Muthuveerappan

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Done! Thanks!
https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa/6/wo/iLhrfiEtEJtPFTt J8S23O0/23.83.28.0.9
https://bugreport.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/RadarWeb.woa/6/wo/iLhrfiEtEJtPFTt J8S23O0/23.83.28.1.9

Tab-autocomplete in terminal

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