zsh tab completion awesomeness

I have been using [zsh]{tag/zsh} for a few months. I love it. The best part of zsh is the tab completion.

Here are a few examples (note that you don’t actually type in the <tab>):

• I need to see how I coded something up a month ago, I don’t remember what project it was in but I know the filename:

    vim work/**/prime.c<tab>
  

  zsh generats

    vim work/one/prime.c work/two/three/four/prime.c ...
  

  • I want to perform an operation on several file in different subdirectories:

    something dir/{file1,file<tab>
    

    and zsh completes the files inside the {}s. Even better is that it does not get confused by nested {}s…

    something dir/{file1,subdir/{file2,<tab>
    

  • say I have a directory of pictures with filenames that have dates, and I want to get a file not in 2007…

    something ^2007*.jpg<tab>
    

    the ^ negates the exapnssion.

  • my files are in YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.jpg format, and I know it was between 2005 and 2007, and between the hours of 20 and 22…

    something 200<5-7>*-<20-22>*.jpg<tab>
    

    the <a-b> will match anything between a and b.

  • zsh can also try to fix type-o’s, if all other completions fail

    touch foo.c bar.h
    vim fox.c<tab>
    

    will complete to foo.c.

  • zsh also makes it easier to edit a filename you forgot…

    touch really-long-file-name-that-has-a-unique-word-xxx-in-it.txt
    vim xxx.txt<tab>
    

For more, see man zshall. :)