# In Julia, I accidentally typed "\<tab\> \<tab\>". What a nice surprise!

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/in-julia-i-accidentally-typed-tab-tab-what-a-nice-surprise/136762>\
**Category:** New to Julia\
**Created:** [April 18, 2026, 6:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/in-julia-i-accidentally-typed-tab-tab-what-a-nice-surprise/136762 "2026-04-18T06:21:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Tigerbyte](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7cd45c/32.png) [@Tigerbyte](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tigerbyte)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2026, 6:21am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/in-julia-i-accidentally-typed-tab-tab-what-a-nice-surprise/136762/1 "2026-04-18T06:21:03Z")

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see topic as shown at the top.

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**Author:** ![lilachint](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ee7513/32.png) [@lilachint](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/lilachint)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2026, 4:42am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/in-julia-i-accidentally-typed-tab-tab-what-a-nice-surprise/136762/2 "2026-04-19T04:42:02Z")

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Surprise! Julia REPL accepts [tab]s for autocompletion. The first [tab] tries to autocomplete ε (the empty string), which gives you ε again, since it is the most ambiguous string. The second [tab] gives you the full list of possible autocompletions of ε, which is all autocompletable strings in Julia, since they all start with ε.

If you want to look up all autocompletions starting with something in the REPL, enter two [tab]s would do the job! E.g. `a[tab][tab]` would give you all symbols starting with `a`.