Turn off bash completion?

[James Wilkinson]

Mike McCarty wrote:
> I'd like to disable the bash "completion" feature. I've read
> the info bash stuff, and I see lots of ways to specify what
> happens after or during completion, but I didn't see (overlooked?)
> how to turn it off. Any bash gurus out there know how to disable
> it entirely?
>
> I don't want to turn off line editing, just completion.

Out of interest – why? The easiest way would surely be just not to use
it.

The bash man page says:
   disable-completion (Off)
      If set to On, readline will inhibit word completion. Completion
      characters will be inserted into the line as if  they  had been
      mapped to self-insert.

Earlier, it mentions where to put this:
   Readline Variables
      Readline has variables that can be used to further customize its
      behavior.  A variable may be set in the inputrc file with a
      statement of the form

              set variable-name value

On Fedora, /etc/profile sets the inputrc file to /etc/inputrc unless
~/.inputrc exists when you log in (or the environment variable INPUTRC
has been set).

So if you put
set disable-completion on
into ~/.inputrc , and log in again, completion should be disabled.
You’ll also have disabled the rest of the settings in /etc/inputrc: you
might like to either copy them across, or try putting
$include  /etc/inputrc
into ~/.inputrc .

Hope this helps,

James.

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