Tab completion in Windows NT & 2000
For the
souls that
balk at using such a
user-friendly piece of
software as
Tweak UI, here's the way to enable
tab completion on your
Windows NT or 2000 box using direct
registry editing. If you don't know how to edit the registry directly I recommend you do get Tweak UI and not muck about in this
database from hell thought up by the folks at
Redmond.
So, open up your
favorite registry editor and go to
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE for a
system-wide implementation or
HKEY_CURRENT_USER for a per user implementation. Note that the per user
setting takes
precedence.
Then go to
/Software/Microsoft/Command Processor
If there is already a
key named
CompletionChar then just change the value for the key to whatever you want. See below for possible values. If the key is not yet in existence, then add a value of
REG_DWORD named CompletionChar and set the value.
Now, for Windows NT you're done (well, not exactly: you need to
reboot).
Windows 2000 recognizes another key named
PathCompletionChar, also a REG_DWORD. This would apparently enable
path completion, with the value for CompletionChar enabling
filename completion. So what's the difference? I don't know and frankly don't care. I have set both of these keys to 9, which put the completion under the trusty
TAB key. I have enough trouble remembering not to use / when CD'ing under Windows.
Possible values
A value of 0 or the
absence of the key turns off completion completely.
A value in the range of 0x1 to 0x1F sets completion to the
ASCII control character of that value. Use 9 for the TAB key.
Differences with Linux
When you press the file or path completion, the
first matching entry appears. So, no list. Pressing it again retrieves the
next entry in the list. To go backwards, press SHIFT-{completion-character}.
Using completion only once (why?)
You get the ability to
enable completion on a per use basis under Windows 2000. Just add the
switch '/F:ON' when using
CMD. This sets the completion chars to CTRL-F for filename completion and CTRL-D for path completion, so I don't really know what use this could be.
Sources:
http://www.jsiinc.com/reghack.htm
April 26, 2001