Tab completion is a
feature that has long been taken for granted by
UNIX users, but for some reason it never made its way into the
MS-DOS commandline. Luckily for us,
Windows 2000 has commandline tab completion built in, but it's not enabled by default.
To turn on tab completion in Windows 2000:
- Open the registry editor (regedit.exe)
- In HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor, double-click on the CompletionChar value.
- Set the base to "Hexadecimal" and the value to "9". Click OK.
The change will take effect next time you open a command prompt.
Note: You can actually substitute any ASCII value for "9" -- the completion key will be the key corresponding to the value you set. Nifty, eh?
yerricde points out that bash is available for Windows 2000 and Windows 9x through Cygwin, and for MS-DOS through DJGPP