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In a directory I type vi and then tab (twice), this gives me 

user$ vi CMakeFiles/ global/ libs/

whereas ls followed by 2 tabs gives me 

user$ ls ! core.log CMakeFiles/ global/ libs/ _jni/

(Note: ls is aliased to `ls -Ah --color=auto', _jni is a symlink, and none of the files are hidden.)

I think vi is not showing any files, but only directories during tab-completion. Why is this happening? How to make vi behave same way as ls? I put following line in ~/.vimrc after going through one of the posts on SE. But it doesn't seem to do anything in this case.

set wildmode=longest,list,full set wildmenu

Version of vi: VIM - Vi IMproved version 7.3.429
Version of ls: ls (GNU coreutils) 8.13

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3 Answers 3

Reset to default
6

I had the same problem on Arch Linux, and finally I found that was the completion function's problem.

use complete -r vim to remove the completer. (or put that line to your bashrc)

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  • Thanks! complete -r vi did it for me. Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 4:20
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This behavior is not directly related to the ls command or the vi binary. It is, instead, controlled by the tab completion function of your shell. If you're using bash on linux, you've probably got /etc/bash_completion and /etc/bash_completion.d/* full of rules for how to implement completion.

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  • Thanks. Does this mean I should ideally put the line complete -r vi in /etc/bash_completion? Also what does -r (or other options) mean. Both man complete and complete --help don't seem to tell this. Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 4:26
  • @user13107 bash builtins are hard to find good documentation for. What you probably want to do is get rid of /etc/bash_completion.d/vi or some file similar to that Commented Oct 30, 2012 at 4:58
  • @user13107 Since complete is a bash built-in, use help complete or search for it in the SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS section in man bash. The latter one is usually more detailed. Commented Jul 2, 2014 at 8:46
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Check that line similar to below is present in your file /etc/bash_completion:

complete -f -X '*.@(o|so|so.!(conf)|a|[rs]pm|gif|jp?(e)g|mp3|mp?(e)g|avi|asf|ogg|class)' vi vim gvim rvim view rview rgvim rgview gview emacs xemacs sxemacs kate kwrite

Execute this command on shell. Alternatively add above line in the file /etc/bash_completion and execute:

bash /etc/bash_completion
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