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I'm using scp to copy files from a remote server to a local one. What's really uncomfortable is that I need to type the file path precisely. I'm used to relying on autocompletion, because file names and folder structures can be long. I want to be able to see the names of files in each directory and autocomplete just like when browsing files locally.

Now, I could do SSH separately, find the file names, and use them in the SCP command. But of course, that would be a huge waste of effort. Also, I could use a GUI, but I prefer to avoid that because a command line is more lightweight.

Any way to use SCP without having to remember file names exactly?

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    For me, auto completion works if I have set key-based password less login. Commented Feb 13, 2015 at 11:48
  • There's also the problem with special characters (though they shouldn't be used). With files containing such characters, zsh seems OK, but bash-completion isn't (see my answer). Commented Feb 13, 2015 at 17:42

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bash-completion (which is available in Cygwin, Debian, Ubuntu and no doubt many other distributions) supports scp auto-completion, as long as the shell can access the required server with no prompting (it uses ssh in batch mode, see the ssh_config(5) manual page for details).

The easiest way to enable this is to use ssh-agent. This is probably enabled by default by your desktop environment; simply try

ssh-add

to add your default key to the currently-running agent (if any). If no agent is running, you can start one by running

eval $(ssh-agent)

Once your key is known to the agent, you'll be able to auto-complete scp commands involving servers you can access with the key.

I'm pretty sure zsh also supports scp auto-completion with the same caveats; the necessary support is in the zsh-common package in Debian. It needs to be enabled in your .zshrc though with something like

autoload -U compinit && compinit

(which loads all the supported completions).

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Zsh has remote scp completion, but you need to make sure that you don't use an alias to some wrapper function like the non-official glob_scp, or if you have one, it is possible to add the same completion mechanism like:

compdef glob_scp=scp

You'll note that zsh will correctly quote special characters such as * when needed (though this may look strange). Currently bash-completion doesn't do that, though failures should be uncommon.

Alternatively, in particular with shells that do not have remote scp completion, you could use sftp or sshfs:

  • sftp has its own completion system.
  • sshfs allows you to mount a remote directory via SSH, so that it suffices to use cp with the usual completion system.
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  • @muru Thanks, but this wasn't the reason (I use password-less SSH). The reason was that I was using an alias to the non-official glob_scp function (unfortunately the message in the mailing-list didn't mention the effect on the completion). I've corrected my answer. Commented Feb 13, 2015 at 17:07
  • Interesting. +1 and deleting my comment. Commented Feb 13, 2015 at 17:24

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