When you use the Command Line or Dynamic Input Cursor sometimes a wonderful thing happens, the application makes suggestions of commands,  or variables, a pull-down list or icons may even appear. What if you want to change how these suggestions behave and what is shown. Maybe even get rid of the pull-down list or suggestions all together?

Figure-1

AUTOCOMPLETEMODE is the system variable that control this. The setting is stored as a bitcode using the sum of the following values:

0          Turns off all automated keyboard features when typing at the Command prompt

1          Turns on any automated keyboard features when typing at the Command prompt

2          Automatically appends suggestions as each keystroke is entered after the third keystroke

4          Displays a list of suggestions as keystrokes are entered

8          Displays the icon of the command or system variable, if available

16        Excludes the display of system variables

Figure-2

Now, for those of us that are sometimes bitmode challenged and prefer a simple text prompt interface, you can use the AUTOCOMPLETE.  As you can see when you type this at the command line (Figure 3) you get a friendly textual prompt and when using Dynamic input you get a Listbox. (Figure 4)

Figure-3

Figure-4

A good practice when typing mostly commands, especially when using dynamic input is to turn Off the List option (Figure 5-6) and the System Variable options (Figure 7-8), which will set the “Autocompletemode” to 27.

Figure-5

Figure-6

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Figure-8