41.7 Shell Mode Options

If the variable comint-scroll-to-bottom-on-input is non-nil, insertion and yank commands scroll the selected window to the bottom before inserting.

If comint-scroll-show-maximum-output is non-nil, then arrival of output when point is at the end tries to place the last line of text at the bottom line of the window, so as to show as much useful text as possible. (This mimics the scrolling behavior of many terminals.) The default is nil.

By setting comint-move-point-for-output, you can opt for having point jump to the end of the buffer whenever output arrives—no matter where in the buffer point was before. If the value is this, point jumps in the selected window. If the value is all, point jumps in each window that shows the Comint buffer. If the value is other, point jumps in all nonselected windows that show the current buffer. The default value is nil, which means point does not jump to the end.

If you set comint-prompt-read-only, the prompts in the Comint buffer are read-only.

The variable comint-input-ignoredups controls whether successive identical inputs are stored in the input history. A non-nil value means to omit an input that is the same as the previous input. The default is nil, which means to store each input even if it is equal to the previous input.

Three variables customize file name completion. The variable comint-completion-addsuffix controls whether completion inserts a space or a slash to indicate a fully completed file or directory name (non-nil means do insert a space or slash). comint-completion-recexact, if non-nil, directs <TAB> to choose the shortest possible completion if the usual Emacs completion algorithm cannot add even a single character. comint-completion-autolist, if non-nil, says to list all the possible completions whenever completion is not exact.

Command completion normally considers only executable files. If you set shell-completion-execonly to nil, it considers nonexecutable files as well.

You can configure the behavior of ‘pushd’. Variables control whether ‘pushd’ behaves like ‘cd’ if no argument is given (shell-pushd-tohome), pop rather than rotate with a numeric argument (shell-pushd-dextract), and only add directories to the directory stack if they are not already on it (shell-pushd-dunique). The values you choose should match the underlying shell, of course.

If you want Shell mode to handle color output from shell commands, you can enable ANSI Color mode. Here is how to do this:

     (add-hook 'shell-mode-hook 'ansi-color-for-comint-mode-on)