How can I hook into tcsh's TAB completion on Linux

Question

I have some directories with a number of "hidden" files. One example of this is I'm in a source controlled sandbox and some of the files have not been checked out yet.

When I hit TAB, I'd like the option of seeing these files.

A similar question has been asked before: CVS Tab completion for modules under linux The answers to that question summarize to: "Ubuntu's got that built in".

I don't have the option of switching to Ubuntu, but surely I can use the same mechanisms.

1. how can I hook into the TAB-completion feature of tcsh to add additional file Support for CVS, SVN and BitKeeper would all be useful.
2. More important than support for a specific source control system is the ability to control the returned list myself.
3. An acceptable solution would also be to use a key-binding other than TAB. (ctrl- perhaps)

Answer 1

From the manpage:

the complete builtin command can be used to tell the shell how to complete words other than filenames, commands and variables

might get you started

Answer 2

That's not Ubuntu-specific behavior, it's the bash-completion project.

You could use that, if you can switch from tcsh to bash.

Answer 3

I do not know how to program in tcsh. But if you can, then you could look at the file named "bash_completion" from the archive (find the download link here.)

On line 1673 begins CVS completion code - and this might be portable to csh if you are familiar with the differences between bash/tcsh.

On my ubuntu machine, there is also a section for SVN completion (in /etc/bash_completion) that doesn't seem to be present in the maintainer's archive.