Case-insensitive Autocomplete in Bash

Posted on 27 May 2010

I use auto complete on the command line all the time to avoid having to type the full name of a file. Love it. What I hate is how it’s case-sensitive in bash, so I can’t do “cd ~/desk” to go to the “~/Desktop” folder.

The fix for this is to use the shell input options file: .inputrc

Just set this one option and restart your shell:

echo 'set completion-ignore-case On' >> ~/.inputrc

If you happen to have a system wide inputrc settings ( /etc/inputrc ) and want it included then you should add the following to your .inputrc file:

$include /etc/inputrc