In Linux, and many other systems, when navigating the terminal you can press Tab to auto complete a directory or file name.
I'm wondering if there is anything like that in the MySQL terminal. For example, if I want to get the description of someTableWithRidiculousLongName I could type describe someTableW then Tab and it would auto-complete the rest.
Does anything like that exist in the MySQL terminal?
Edit or create a file called .my.cnf in your home directory, containing:
[mysql] auto-rehash 
--disable-auto-rehash flag. But now you've turned it on by default.
To enable autocomplete within the MySQL prompt type:
mysql> \# After that you can type:
mysql> describe someTableW[TAB] To get:
mysql> describe someTableWithRidiculousLongName 
mysql> rehash - As an alternative to "\#", we can also type "rehash" mysql command as follows. Thought of sharing as "rehash" might be easier to remember for some people like me: mysql> rehash After that autocomplete will start working!
start MySQL console with additional option --auto-rehash, i.e.
mysql --auto-rehash -u root -p 
I know this is an old question, but I've found very helpful MySql cli client with advanced autocompletion: mycli. It's much smarter than builtin auto-rehash feature.
auto-rehash doesn't work on mine. Switched to mycli and boom.... worked like a pro.On OS X 10.11.6 I set --auto-rehash as described above, but it did not work. (This is OS X so mysql is compiled with the BSD libedit library.)
Then I remembered that I had set vi key-bindings for mysql client by creating ~/.editrc, containing one line: bind -v. This works great for giving me vi-like navigation in mysql client, but it broke column name completion (I was able to verify this by removing .editrc).
So I researched a little bit and found that ~/.editrc should have at least the following lines:
bind -v bind \\t rl_complete With this additional line, name completion works correctly in mysql AND vi-like navigation works also. (There are other .editrc settings which greatly improve mysql client navigation, but this isn't the place to start that thread of discussion.)
Some notes about auto-rehash:
When you enable autocompletion editing the mysql config file..
[mysql] auto-rehash You can do it for all users or only for one user:
/etc/my.cnf: All Users
~/.my.cnf: Actual user
You can also disable autocompletion adding:
no-auto-rehash Extracted from: http://www.sysadmit.com/2016/08/linux-mysql-autocompletar.html
You can also auto-complete based on the command history. Start typing, then invoke the keys which are bound to ed-search-prev-history and ed-search-next-history. This applies if mysql comes with libedit support. The default keybindings are Ctrl-P and Ctrl-N, but this can be customized in .editrc. My example for Ctrl-up and Ctrl-down:
# start typing, then press Ctrl-Up bind "\e[1;5A" ed-search-prev-history # start typing, then press Ctrl-Up, then Ctrl-Down bind "\e[1;5B" ed-search-next-history Previously, mysql was based on readline, and then history-search-backward and history-search-forward are the correct commands. Configuration then was by means of .inputrc. Same example as above:
# these are the key bindings for the readline library # start typing, then press Ctrl-Up "\e[1;5A": history-search-backward # start typing, then press Ctrl-Up, then Ctrl-Down "\e[1;5B": history-search-forward So, say you started typing sel and invoke Ctrl-Up, select * from some_long_table_name would come up if that is a command I have used earlier.
