[SOLVED] How to make PowerShell tab completion work like Bash

How to make PowerShell tab completion work like Bash

Let's say I have the following files in my current directory:

buildBar.bat
buildFoo.bat
buildHouse.bat

And I type the following at my command prompt, ./bu and then TAB.

In Bash, it gets expanded to ./build
In PowerShell, it gets expanded to ./buildBar.bat -- the first item in the list.
In Cmd, the behavior is the same as PowerShell.

I prefer the Bash behaviour - is there a way to make PowerShell behave like Bash?

Solution

New versions of PowerShell include PSReadline, which can be used to do this:

Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function Complete

or, to make it even more like bash where you can use arrow-keys to navigate available options:

Set-PSReadlineKeyHandler -Key Tab -Function MenuComplete

To make it permanent, put this command into your powershell profile, defined by $PROFILE (usually %UserProfile%\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\profile.ps1 for Windows PowerShell 5.x and %UserProfile%\Documents\PowerShell\profile.ps1 for PowerShell 6+).