Re: leaving a shell

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From: Aaron Crane
Subject: Re: leaving a shell
Date: 17:44 on 30 Mar 2005
Simon Wistow writes:
> In tcsh (at least on this system) Ctrl-D does auto-completeion. The
> fact that it's called Tab Completion everywhere else appears to have
> sailed cleanly past who ever decided that.

The earliest references I can find to filename completion talk about its
implementation in TENEX.  TENEX first ran in 1970; this paper

  http://www.opost.com/dlm/tenex/tenex72.txt

=66rom 1972 describes the use of ESC and ? for completion in the same way
that csh uses ESC and ^D.  Apparently, csh acquired filename completion
some time between 2.9BSD (1983) and 2.10BSD (April 1987); the csh
manpage in 2.10 is dated 1986-06-05.

I like this description of how csh actually implemented completion
(warning: contains description of earlyish Unix tty interaction).  Near
the bottom of this page:

  http://groups.google.co.uk/groups?selm=3D21501%40adm.BRL.MIL&output=3Dgpl=
ain

But yes, the entire known universe -- even Windows! -- has now settled
on TAB for completion.  tcsh also has TAB for completion by default, but
still supports uses ESC/^D because, well, that's what csh did, and if
it's good enough for Bill Joy, it's _clearly_ good enough for anyone.

Sorry, insufficient hatred in this message.  I'm busy saving it for the
Big Crazy Work Project with the Crazy Deadline.

--=20
Aaron Crane

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