Is it possible to extend the functionality of the TAB based autocomplete? - batch-file

Question

When using the TAB key in the dos command prompt you can cycle through the names of files and folders in the current directory... (and it even seems to work with historical commands via DOSKEY as well). Does anyone know if it's possible to extend this somehow so that pressing TAB (or any other key combination) would autocomplete from a provided list of items as well as the previously mentioned sources? I think an example is in order....
My desired behavior is to add another source to the possible items that would appear when TAB is used. At my job we make heavy use of a scheduling product called AutoSys and administer it almost exclusively through command prompt. Basically I would love to find a way to cycle through job names so the prompt would autocomplete the names when we have the first part of the job name entered already...
Common command usage:
'autorep -J JOBNAME'
Example of what I'd like to do:
'autorep -J ABC_C_EXPORT_Re' [TAB]
where the TAB key press allows me to cycle through the jobs that start with 'ABC_C_EXPORT_Re' until I find the one I want.
It seems like a possible (but very poor) ïsolution would be to have one empty file created and named for each job in the environment... But this doesn't strike me as an effective solution to the problem, especially considering that at any one time we can have between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand jobs in our environment.
I apologize for posing this strange question in an even stranger way..... I hope I was at least able to convey a sense of the central question I'm asking. Something like this would be a huge help to our operations support staff who have to find jobs by command line all day long!
Thanks for having a look!
Scott

Answer 1

You can make your own command processor pretty easy.
Here's something from Filter.vbs. Unlike this you'd want to read characters rather than lines (so .read(1) rather than .readline). Echo out each character, do something special on tab, when user presses enter execute the command line you built in memory, capturing it's stdout using wshshell.exec.
Here's something from help
Do While Not WScript.StdIn.AtEndOfLine
Input = Input & WScript.StdIn.Read(1)
Loop
WScript.Echo Input
Here's a menu, not everything is included.
Set Arg = WScript.Arguments
set WshShell = createObject("Wscript.Shell")
Set Inp = WScript.Stdin
Set Outp = Wscript.Stdout
Showmenu
Sub ShowHelpMenu
outp.writeline " -----------------------------------------------------------------------------"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.writeline " Menu"
outp.writeline " ----"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.writeline " 1 Help 2 HTML Help 3 Version 4 History"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.writeline " 5 Exit"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.write "Filter>"
End Sub
'=============================================
Sub ShowMenu
Do
ShowHelpMenu
Answ=Inp.readline
If Answ = "1" Then
ShowGeneralHelp "TEXT"
Elseif Answ = "2" Then
ShowGeneralHelp "HTML"
Elseif Answ = "3" Then
Version
Elseif Answ = "4" Then
History
Elseif Answ = "5" Then
Exit Do
End If
Loop
End Sub
'=============================================
Sub History
On Error Resume Next
WshShell.Run """" & FilterPath & "FilterHistory.txt""" , 1, False
err.clear
End Sub
'=============================================
Sub Version
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.writeline " Version"
outp.writeline " -------"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.writeline " Filter Ver 0.6 - 2015 (Public Domain)"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
outp.writeline " by David Candy"
outp.writeblanklines(1)
End Sub