Quick version

I made a bash script that allows one to autocomplete the name of file starting from the end ; and to use a command on it.

Example :

2017-09-02-the-quest-of-artificial-intelligence.md
2017-10-08-sync-files-between-osx-and-linux.md
2018-01-05-dynamic-programming.md
2018-01-14-autocomplete-from-the-end.md

Just type

end-autocomplete vim end

You can find it here :

https://gist.github.com/GarreauArthur/caf12287a4316c0d3526c855681ac6a9

The story (who cares ?)

I recently start this blog using jekyll, and jekyll requires that the names of the posts start with the date of creation. Which means that I am going to end up with a lot of files beginning with 2018-.

I am a vim user, because I am really cool & it’s way better than Emacs (let’s start a war for fun).

So everytime I want to edit a draft, or a post, I need to write the complete date, before being able to autocomplete the rest of the file.

I asked myself :

Am I doomed to write the date every single time I need to interact with these files ?

wait a minute

The file names don’t end with the same letters, so I can just try to type the end of the file name and autocomplete it from there.

Ok, let’s build a bash script for that.

It’s not really hard to understand, so if you’re interested by it, you can clone the gist.

Just a couple of command

# a short alias is always better
alias ea='. /path/end-autocomplete.sh'
# open the file in vim
ea vim end
# print the name of the file
ea echo end
# copy the file name in the clipboard
ea echo end | pbcopy # macOS way
ea echo end | xclip  # the linux way