In full disclosure, tab-completion and I have quite a history.  It therefore pains me to call-out this shell feature.

Out-of-the-box, Ubuntu is configured to not anoint vim or vi with the ability to tab-complete .class file names from bash.

e.g. If there existed a file, foo.class

mike@ubuntu:~$ ls
foo.class
mike@ubuntu:~$

Attempting to tab-complete the following will only ring that joyful bell

mike@ubuntu:~$ vim foo.   <--tabbing with fervor! FFFFFUUUUUU!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m capable of hitting the extra four keystrokes, but I’m also lazy.

It took a few searches to realize that there existed tab-completion config.  And for the record AND hilarity, yes, this took me more time than just typing the extra characters.

The solution is the following:

• Open /etc/bash_completion

• Search for your offending file extension.

…and in my instance, it appeared as:

complete -f -X '*.@(o|so|so.!(conf)|a|rpm|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|
mp?(e)g|MPG|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)' vi vim gvim rvim view
rview rgvim rgview gview

• Replacing the line with:

complete -f -X '*.@(o|so|so.!(conf)|a|rpm|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|
mp?(e)g|MPG|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)' gvim rvim view rview
rgvim rgview gview

…and a quick bash session restart, .class files were once again being massacred by my intentions.

FIN!

Wait, you mean this is a “dry” meeting?!