Update: expanded.

If you're on Windows, your shell is CMD.EXE and it does support command-line completion, but (1) only for filenames, and (2) only if you enable it in the registry.

If you're on Unix/Linux, your shell may have completion support. Bash uses Tab, Csh uses Esc Esc. Some versions of these take completion heuristic rules in a separate configuration file.

If you ARE writing your own input routine, you'll need to read from the console in an unbuffered way, so that you can see each character typed. When they tab, you decide what else should be simulated as typed. If they tab again, you may have to erase things from the screen with backspaces before typing a replacement. It's painful to write something like this yourself, and it often raises platform-specific bugs. There's no "standard" way of doing key-by-key input in Perl's basic module library.

You could have a look at Bash programmable Completion, but note that this is platform and shell dependent. Incidently, it has nothing to do with Perl.

Hope this helps, -gjb-

It autocompletes on qw(one two three four five six seven).

It's entirely perl. I tested it on Solaris, and although I didn't test it on windows, it should work (i re-used code that i had tested on windows).

[~] perl -e 'use GetWord;$a=Get_Word();print"$a\n";'
Enter command > abc

your command was abc

[~] perl -e 'use GetWord;$a=Get_Word();print"$a\n";'
Enter command > o<tab>
->auto generated->one

[~] perl -e 'use GetWord;$a=Get_Word();print"$a\n";'
Enter command > tw<tab>
->auto generated->two
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I'm going to use readmore tags, but i'm never sure if it works, so if they don't, i apologize in advance.