auto complete in shell script

Question

My folders are named by date:

20140930DoingShellStuff
20140931HopefullyShellIsDone
...

What I want to do is write a shell script to auto cd into the folder which corresponds to the current date. I already know how to format the date:

date +"%Y%m%d"
output: 20140930

But I don't know how to do the autocompletion:

cd $(date +"%Y%m%d") **tab for autocopmlete**

to get the output of: cd 20140930DoingShellStuff

Related link: Add autocompletion for custom script

Have you tried appending an asterisk to the end of the cd command? Assuming you are in bash and that there won't be two folders with the same date. E.g. cd $(date +"%Y%m%d")* — transistor1
– transistor1, Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 16:58
Thanks, $(date +"%Y%m%d")* works. Although it would be nice to learn how complete command works — Sida Zhou
– Sida Zhou, Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 17:53

jimmij · Accepted Answer · 2014-09-30 17:30:53Z

4

Try this:

for folder in $(date +"%Y%m%d")*; do
   if [[ -d "$folder" ]]; then
     echo "Entering $folder"
     cd "$folder"
     echo "$PWD"
     cd ..
   fi
done

edited Sep 30, 2014 at 17:30

answered Sep 30, 2014 at 17:19

jimmij

48.7k20 gold badges136 silver badges141 bronze badges

Thanks, $(date +"%Y%m%d")* works. Although it would be nice to learn how complete command works

Sida Zhou
– Sida Zhou

2014-09-30 17:54:41 +00:00
Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 17:54
@SidaZhou you cannot "complete" command inside script in the same sense as you do in interactive shell. TAB completion is just a feature added for user convenience but only to use in interactive mode.

jimmij
– jimmij

2014-09-30 18:02:23 +00:00
Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 18:02
do I misunderstand about this link then? I thought it says we can do autocomplete inside a script(?)

Sida Zhou
– Sida Zhou

2014-09-30 18:04:01 +00:00
Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 18:04
@SidaZhou I think that user is trying to add bash completion to their custom command-line program. Bash is capable of autocompleting things such as flags for a command, which is provided by the bash-completion package on Debian.

transistor1
– transistor1

2014-09-30 18:26:52 +00:00
Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 18:26
@SidaZhou Everything what is written there is about interactive completion. The thing is that shell core doesn't know by itself about external commands and their arguments, so doesn't know what to complete. You need to tell bash about it. And that question was about "how to tell bash that my script expects pkgnames so that they will be completed". But once again - this completion will work only in interactive mode.

jimmij
– jimmij

2014-09-30 18:38:00 +00:00
Commented Sep 30, 2014 at 18:38

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