How to interrupt stuck bash tab completion?

Question

Case:

• A Windows share mounted using samba over a flaky VPN connection (sometimes very slow, sometimes it drops)
• When doing tab-completion on filenames, my bash shell can freeze up if the VPN is slow or dropped when I am attempting the tab completion.

Example:

$ cp myfile.zip /mnt/winbox-c/Progr<tab> key pressed here

Is there a key I can press to get bash out of its hung state when this happens?

Answer 1

Try CTRL+C

This works for me in tcsh and I believe it should work in bash as well.

Answer 2

In bash, I also found that CTRL+\ (control + backslash which I think sends SIGQUIT) also works, but leaves the cursor where it is instead of canceling the command completely.

I was looking for this answer myself because bash's ssh tab completion hangs for 5 to 10 seconds if it cannot lookup the remote hosts IP address. This happens on my home network where I don't have a local DNS. Setting correct IP addresses in /etc/hosts speeds it up.