[vox-tech] Bash completion mystery

[Bruce Wolk]

On 02/23/2012 07:51 PM, Bryan Richter wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 23, 2012 at 13:00, Bruce Wolk<bawolk at ucdavis.edu>  wrote:
>> I am trying to find the location of an executable file named
>> mkvirtualenv.  If I run "locate mkvirtualenv" it does not find it.  If I
>> run "sudo find . -name mkvirtualenv" from the root directory it does not
>> find it.  "which mkvirtualenv" yields nothing.  But if I type mkvi<tab>,
>> bash completion completes it and it will execute from any directory.
>> Can someone explain to me what is going on?  I am using Ubuntu 10.04.
>> Thanks.
>>
>
> Looks like it's a bash function brought to you courtesy of the package
> virtualenvwrapper.
>
> Functions can be discovered with 'declare -f'. There are a ton if
> you're using the bash-completion package, so what I'd do is type
> 'declare -f mkvi<tab>'  ... if it's a function, the full name will tab
> complete. Then press<return>  to see its definition if you like.
>
> And digging deeper yet, if you incant 'shopt -s extdebug; declare -F
> mkvi<tab><return>' you can find where it was defined!

Thanks so much for your explanation.  I've never dealt with this aspect 
of linux.  Your incantation at the end is amazing!