Add the following to your ~/.bash_completion file (create it if it does not exist):

_vim_ctags() {
    local cur prev

    COMPREPLY=()
    cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
    prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"

    case "${prev}" in
        -t)
            # Avoid the complaint message when no tags file exists
            if [ ! -r ./tags ]
            then
                return
            fi

            # Escape slashes to avoid confusing awk
            cur=${cur////\\/}

            COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "`awk -v ORS=" "  "/^${cur}/ { print \\$1 }" tags`" ) )
            ;;
        *)
            # Perform usual completion mode
            ;;
    esac
}

# Files matching this pattern are excluded
excludelist='*.@(o|O|so|SO|so.!(conf)|SO.!(CONF)|a|A|rpm|RPM|deb|DEB|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|mp?(e)g|MP?(E)G|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)'

complete -F _vim_ctags -f -X "${excludelist}" vi vim gvim rvim view rview rgvim rgview gview

Once you restart your bash session (or create a new one) you can type:

~$ vim -t MyC<tab key>

and it will auto-complete the tag the same way it does for files and directories:

MyClass MyClassFactory
~$ vim -t MyC

I find this really useful when I'm jumping into a quick bug fix.

Comments

I've added a similar tip for ZSH.

I was very excited to see this, but I was very annoyed that it expected a tags file in the current directory. I keep a tags file at the root of each project, and vim -t is smart enough to find the correct tags file, so I wanted bash completion to be just as smart.

So, I modified the file a bit. It will now look for a tags file in the current directory, and then keep looking in parent directories until it finds one.

(note: changed `pwd` to $PWD)

_vim_ctags() {
  local cur prev

  COMPREPLY=()
  cur="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]}"
  prev="${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}"

  case "${prev}" in
    -t)
      while [ "${PWD}" != "/" ]; do
        if [ -r ./tags ]; then
          # Escape slashes to avoid confusing awk
          cur=${cur////\\/}

          COMPREPLY=( $(compgen -W "`awk -v ORS=" "  "/^${cur}/ { print \\$1 }" tags`" ) )
          return
        fi

        cd ..
      done

      return
      ;;
    *)
      # Perform usual completion mode
      ;;
  esac
}

# Files matching this pattern are excluded
excludelist='*.@(o|O|so|SO|so.!(conf)|SO.!(CONF)|a|A|rpm|RPM|deb|DEB|gif|GIF|jp?(e)g|JP?(E)G|mp3|MP3|mp?(e)g|MP?(E)G|avi|AVI|asf|ASF|ogg|OGG|class|CLASS)'

complete -F _vim_ctags -f -X "${excludelist}" vi vim gvim rvim view rview rgvim rgview gview

Here is how I modified the completion function with tags-file search for my own .bashrc. I basically rewrote most of it, partly just for stylistic preference, but also to make some improvements:

• the upward directory search doesn't change the current directory, which is typically not a good idea in a shell function

• it uses grep instead of awk. grep is most likely faster, and the invocation is simpler

_vim_ctags() { local cur prev

cur=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD]} prev=${COMP_WORDS[COMP_CWORD-1]}

$prev = -t || return

local tagsdir=$PWD while "$tagsdir" && ! -f "$tagsdir/tags" ; do tagsdir=${tagsdir%/*} done -f "$tagsdir/tags" || return

COMPREPLY=( $(grep -o "^$cur[^ ]*" "$tagsdir/tags" ) ) }

I haven't done extensive testing on it, but it works for me so far.

Note that there is an invisible tab character inside the grep pattern.