## Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Administrator's Companion by Sharon Crawford & Charlie Russel copyright (c) 2000 by Microsoft Corporation all rights reserved

Home Articles Utilities Software Electronic Book |  | Command Line Auto-complete To avoid having to type long file names on the command line, here are a couple solutions for file and directory name completion: Solution #1: Navigate to the following node in the registry: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor Once there, you'll see a value called CompletionChar. This should be 0x00000000. Change it to '9' (the tab character). To use this feature: cd \prog (and press the tab key) The command line should display: cd \program files Pressing tab again gives you other choices of directory names, if such directories exist. To demonstrate, go to a root drive and type: cd(tab) Solution #2: As another solution use: cmd /f:on (see http://www.wugnet.com/wininfo/win2000/showcase/beta3/cli.htm) However, the file and directory name completion is NOT enabled by default. You can enable or disable file name completion for a particular invocation of CMD.EXE with the /F:ON or /F:OFF switch. You can enable or disable completion for all invocations of CMD.EXE on a machine and/or user logon session by setting either or both of the following REG_DWORD values in the registry using REGEDT32.EXE: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\PathCompletionChar and/or HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\CompletionChar HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\PathCompletionChar Use the hex value of a control character for a specific function (e.g. 0x4 is Ctrl-D and 0x6 is Ctrl-F). The user specific settings take precedence over the machine settings. The command line switches take precedence over the registry settings.