Re: [HACKERS] Autocomplete <TAB> on Postgres7.4beta5 not working?

Alvaro Herrera Munoz <alvherre(at)dcc(dot)uchile(dot)cl> writes:
> I found it very irritating at first, but when I discovered that I could
> tab my way to syscatalogs by using "pg_catalog." as prefix, I started
> feeling it was actually a nice behavior.

Hm. Okay, Ian isn't completely alone then ;-)

I tried out that approach just now, though, and found that I still had
to type at least "pg_c" before I could get any tab completion help at
all. Another odd thing was that after completing "pg_catalog.", it
wouldn't go any further --- one must type "p" here, even though all the
possible completions begin "pg_". (Possibly that could be fixed, but
I don't know readline's behavior well enough to be sure.) So that's
five typed characters and two tabs before one starts getting into the
system catalogs. That seems like a lot of typing. If Ian were willing
to type one more character of his p-something table names before hitting
tab (I assume he's not calling them pg-something), then he'd not have a
problem with the availability of tab completion for system catalogs.
I think saving one keystroke for p-something user tables is a poor
return for requiring seven keystrokes for system catalogs.

Anyway, it seems like we need a vote to see how many people prefer
each choice.

regards, tom lane